Zoo Bar

Just another Saturday night.

2009-11-06T22:09:00.001-08:00

iii - Mathalon = Success Squared

2009-06-12T04:40:00.000-07:00

When Louise Bedichek, a retired Foreign Services worker, spoke at G16's IST in January about creating interscholastic sports leagues in Guinea, she was met with a room full of skeptical education volunteers. Had she ever been to a school in the bush? Had she considered the logistics involved? The funding needed? It simply wouldn't happen.

A few months later, though, Alison and I began talking about ways to motivate our students for the upcoming Brevet and the conversation turned to Ms. Bedichek: why not stage a math competition between our schools? After all, nothing fuels motivation better than a little healthy competition.

Over the spring holiday, we mapped out a plan and a budget. Including transport to and from one village to another for eight students and one of us, and a meal with soda for each competitor, we needed 250.000FG. An e-mail and phone call with Ms. Bedichek found the funding and Mathalon was born.

With the competition set for Sunday, May 17th, we had several weeks left to prepare our students. Both Alison and I regularly held reviews, tryouts and practices, ultimately selecting two teams of four, with at least one girl on each team, for both schools. Prior to the conception of the competition, I held three reviews a week with, on a lucky day, five students in attendance. Upon the announcement of the match, however, more and more students arrived every day and I saw quiz scores skyrocket. Even before its day had come to pass, Mathalon had already proven itself a success.

The weekend before, Alison and I met for a question-writing session. Since there would be and A team match and a B team match, there would be two sets of questions, one set slightly more challenging than the other. The questions were to be written on the board, one at a time, and the teams would have five minutes to derive a response, at which point we'd collect the answers and commence with the next question. At the end of the ten, we would review the answers, award points and determine the winner. In the case of a tie, we prepared an 11th question for a sudden death round.

May 17th arrived and things could not have gone any better. My students came early and helped clean the classroom, set up the tables, and decorate the chalkboard with a big BISSIKRIMA and CISSELA on either side. Alison had prearranged a taxi deplacement and they showed up with plenty of time to spare. The students were pumped. Her students were so pumped, in fact, that several students who hadn't even made the teams hopped on their own motos and travelled the 50km between Bissikrima and Cissela on their own dime, just to watch the match.

At precisely 10am, we started. The B teams fought fiercely and, at the end of 50 minutes, the Bissikrimans proved the victors by a mark of 8 points to 6. Following a brief intermission to reset the board, the battle of the A teams took off. Going into the sixth question, Cissela commanded a strong lead, 5 to 2.5. But then they faltered. A few missed questions on their part and a few correct answers from the other team meant Bissikrima had tied it up on the penultimate question. It all came down to question #10, a word problem:

Le triple d'un nombre augmente de quatre est egal a huit fois ce nombre diminue de six. Trouvez ce nombre.
(Three times a number, increased by four, is equal to eight times this number, decreased by six. Find the number.)

Bissikrima answered 2; Cissela 2,5. The correct response: 2. Once again, Bissikrima rose to the occasion, although this time by only the closest of margins - a single point.

To the victors went the spoils - new sets of Academy geometry kits. To the rest went... the most dejected looks I've ever seen on Guinean faces. In all the preparation leading up to Mathalon, the one thing I'd never stopped to consider was the harrowing effect of defeat. Photos were taken. I stood with a big smile, my arms wrapped around students who refused to look up from the floor.

And then we ate! Once again, we had prearranged for a bowl of rice and sauce for each student and purchased cold sodas from the gas station. The students mingled and Alison and I basked in the glow of our success.

Although my students seemed down and out over their loss, it was only a day before the were back in school practicing, begging for another crack at Bissikrima. We're going to give it to them, although this time it'll be bigger and better, bringing in teams from Dabola and Dialakoro as well.

So thanks, Ms. Bedicheck, for helping me get my students to my reviews, and for helping give these kids something to look forward to.

ii - Where are the cows?

2009-06-10T10:49:00.000-07:00

Let's face it: I don't speak a lot of Malinké. In fact, if you were to scan through this blog and pick out all the various Malinké words I've thrown in, you'd know the language about as well as I do.

I arrived in a Malinké village four months ago, previously having lived in a Dialonké village and, prior to that, a small Susu town. When I got here, I could say, "i ni ké" (hello/thank you). Not a whole lot has changed since then. Unlike in Sandenia, where I had over a month of integration into village life before teaching, in Cisséla I reported to the school the day after moving in. Having expected to take over somebody else's classes already in progress, it's not surprising I was rather taken aback when I learned I'd be picking up my programs from the very beginning of the school year. Basically, I had less than half a school year to cram a year of knowledge into the students' heads. Needless to say, my hands were full. Learning a new language was the last thing on my mind.

In spit of my complete lack of skill in her native tongue, my neighbor is always thrilled when I correctly answer her questions in Malinké.

She asks the same four questions every day. I give her the same four answers every day. And every day, the result is the same: she appears absolutely floored by my apparently bottomless vat of knowledge in the mandinka-kan dialect. She claps her hands, shouts "Uh-huhhhh!" in approval, and flashes a smile big enough to be seen from a place where they might speak something I can actually understand.

Always a fan of praise and congratulations, I decided it was finally time to give my Malinké comprehension a boost. So one day, while walking back from one of our runs, I asked my friend, Bangaly, to teach me a new phrase. He taught me to say, "I just went running."

"Nanta bori diya," I repeated over and over, committing the phrase to memory. When I got back to my hut, I was going to say this to my neighbor and it was going to BLOW-HER-MIND.

I got back to my hut.

I said it to her.

She nodded and walked away.

...

Hold the phone... what had just happened? Talk about anticlimactic! I'd practiced it so many times with Bangaly, I must have said it correctly...

The next day, I said it again. This time, I managed to earn a verbal response. "I don't speak French," she told me in Malinké. As she said this, Bangaly's father chimed in to say it wasn't French, that I was, in fact, speaking Malinké. She looked at me again.

"Nanta bori diya?" I offered, though with a bit more timidity this time around.

"Nanta bori diya! Nanta bori diya! [something something something] nanta bori diya!" she cried. She'd lost it - clapping, smiling, laughing, telling the other neighbors. She could not have been more pleased.

The next day, I had Bangaly teach me a new phrase.

"i la nisii alu fandjon?" I asked my neighbor - "where are the cows?"

She regarded me as though I'd just asked if the sky was blue. "They're up on the hill, eating," said said, as she shook her head and walked away.

...

I dunno.

i - How to Talk Donkey

2009-06-10T01:07:00.000-07:00

"Ba! Ba! Ba!" goes the cry of three little boys flying past me as I make my way down the narrow dirt path to school. The oys, the oldest of which is probably no more than six, the youngest barely old enough to mouth the "Ba!" command of the other two, are riding on a two-wheeled cart harnessed to a donkey. Her offspring trots alongside in the brush. The cart hits a bump and its payload, a sack of mangoes, takes flight. The middle child sprawls out across the back, rescuing the fruit before it topples over the edge and is gone forever. A moment later, the cart rounds a bend and they're gone.

My morning commute to the collège in Cisséla could not be any more different from the two blocks I used to walk down Mt. Vernon Drive every day to get to school as a child. Approaching an aged patch of sidewalk, I would take special steps to avoid "stepping on a crack"; these days, special steps are taken to avoid unreasonably large piles of cow manure. I used to wait at the stoplight on Tremont Ave until it was safe to cross Tates Creek Road; now, I wait as I give a moto the right of way to cross the rickety wooden bridge spanning a dried-out ravine - I'm not overly confident in its ability to support the both of use at once. Just before I reach the school, I cross the only bit of asphalt within miles and miles of my village - it's the First National Road, running all the way from Conakry to Kankan, and it sees less traffic in a day than does the intersection of Tremont and Tates Creek from 8:00 to 8:05 in the morning.

The walk from my hut to the school is about a mile and a quarter (or roughly two kilometers for those progressive, metric-minded types), the first bit of which takes me through my compound and the heart of the village. The salutations commence as I remove the key from my front door and only taper off as I ascend the hill on the far side of the village. The women in my quarter are greeted with the standard Malinké, "i ni sooma," the men with the French, "Bonjour, vous avez bien dormi?" The village elder receives my handshake and occasionally allows me to carry his chair to the shady spot across the street as he slowly shuffles along behind.

As I mount the hill and leave the village, Woodland Terrace (or so I've dubbed it), the newest Cissélan suburb, comes into view. Previously devoid of inhabitants, this fertile stretch of land has sprouted ten new, thatched-roof, mud huts in the last month. Next on the builders' docket are a Chili's and a Starbucks, respectively. Only kidding. Probably just some more mud huts. From time to time, the brick makers and roof weavers will be out working and we'll exchange pleasantries as I pass through.

A few minutes further along the trail, I arrive at the aforementioned bridge which, upon arrival of the heavy rains, hopefully won't be washed away. Without the benefit of the bridge, the next closest route to the school is nearly three times as long. Also - don't ask me how the three little boys, two donkeys, and cart managed to negotiate the bridge. My best guess? Magic.

On the far side of the bridge, I'm treated to a walk through a wild mango grove before reaching the road and, finally, the school. The mango tree, one of the largest in the region, towers over its scrubby counterparts. In the offseason, it has the semblance of a soft, pillowy cloud. Upon arrival of the fruit at the end of the dry season, however, it shows its true willowy self: the mangoes droop from stems two and three feet long, giving the tree a sad (or should I go French on you and say... tree-ste?), weeping appearance. But look out! Those "tears" will drop and when those puppies are falling from 100ft (or 30m) at an acceleration of 32.2 feet per second per second (or 9,8 meters per second per second)... well, you don't have to do the math to know that'll leave a mark.

Having successfully traversed the mango mine field, I safely arrive at school. If the day is not yet screamingly hot, I can breath a sigh of relief, knowing the heavy sweating won't start until the walk home. But if it is already screamingly hot and I am already sweating profusely, well... who am I kidding? This is Africa! And that's exactly what happens every day. So I roll up my sleeves, wipe off my forehead, and move on with the day. Ba! Hunter, Ba!

Jumpkicks and Barracuda in Sierra Leone

2009-04-24T13:56:00.000-07:00

After nearly nine months of service in Guinea, 7 friends and I finally made our escape, in the form of a nine day vacation to Sierra Leone. Talk about a different world! Just crossing the 100 feet of no man's land between Guinea and Sierra Leone made all the difference. On one side, there was a lady selling rice with a fishy, bony, leaf sauce; on the other, a lady selling fried chicken and cold beverages. Guess which one wasn't Guinea!

The trip started out with a bit of a hitch (shown below). Although Alison, Jesse and I had negotiated for the taxi the day before, striking a deal to deplace the taxi (meaning we'd have it all to ourselves), the driver arrived the next morning with another man in tow. Apparently, the other man was the owner of the vehicle and was determined to get a free ride out of us. After vehemently declaring we would cut the price of the ride by one ninth, the man squeezed into the middle seat next to me and we commenced the 400ish kilometer ride to Freetown, four men abreast in the middle seat. As you can see, we were quite happy with the situation ;)
Between the two West African capitals lay 20 or so barrages, or military/police "checkpoints", five of which were in Guinea, the remainder in Sierra Leone. At the Guinean barrages, we were harrassed over and over again, pestered for bribes in spite of the fact that we're living alongside these militaires in the country, working to try to make it a better place. Every Sierra Leonian official, upon learning who we were, shook our hands, smiled and told us to have a good trip. Unfortunately, they weren't quite as friendly to our paperless companion. As a consequence of a complete lack of official papers, the car owner had to get out and bribe each and every official, the whole way to Freetown, resulting in a total trip time of 13 hours and 13 minutes. Yeah, it was a pretty long trip. But worth it!

Freetown seemed to have everything Conakry lacks: sidewalks, trash collection and Faygo Diet Rootbeer. Believe it. Faygo Diet Rootbeer is sold on the streets. In a country which, only a decade ago, was torn apart by civil war, it was impossible to understand how it could appear so much more developed than it's Guinean brother to the north. At dinner the first night, I feasted on mozzarella sticks, shrimp cocktail and a bacon cheeseburger. Can't beat that.

The following day, we went into Freetown and did a tour of sorts: when we saw something interesting, we'd go check it out! Sites visited include the Cotton Tree, some 500 years old, where they used to hold the slave market, King Germaine's Wharf, where the slaves were brought in/sent out, and the National Museum of Freetown, a one room deal exhibiting old warrior masks and snake skins.

After sating our capital cultural curiosity, we hopped down the coast about an hour to the No.2 River beach. Talk about gorgeous! Mountains. Beach. Water. The next week comprised not much more than swimming, sleeping, throwing the frisbee, and sitting around bonfires. For a guy looking to unwind from the stresses of village life, this hit the spot.

Did I mention we went crocodiling nearly every day?? That's right - crocodiling. A lagoon ran behind the beach, growing as the tide came in, shrinking as the tide went out. At just the right time, the lagoon would be anywhere from 8 inches to a few feet deep: perfect depths for a crocodile. We would get in the water, crouch down, and, only moments later, transform into the terrifying, prehistoric crocodiles we all have pent up inside. As the tide went out, we would be drawn along the length of the lagoon, in our own lazy river of sorts, a team of crocodiles 5 or 6 strong, making our way to the beckoning waves of the ocean.

PICTURE INTERLUDE! Enjoy some photos of our sojourn:

The Sierra Leone flag at the border.

This little guy was always hanging around. Why not let him try on a pair of sweet shades?

On our last night, travelling back into Freetown, we encountered the Easter Monday celebration overtaking the streets. Every year, the day after Easter, the various secret societies in Sierra Leone dress up a "devil" and chase it all through the streets, "beating" it out of town. This was still going on when we left at 5:30 the next morning. The photo is taken from the balcony of our hotel on Wilberforce Street.

The Cotton Tree.

Supposedly about a million bats live in the Cotton Tree. These are just a few of 'em.

King Germaine's Wharf. The locals did NOT like it when I made my snap snaps (took pictures). I got out of there pretty quickly.

Pigs eating trash around the wharf, a site uncommon in the Muslim country of Guinea, where pigs are much harder to find.

An Anglican church built in the 1800's. Across the street is a wonderful crafts market, where I bought a hand-woven poncho and a shirt painted with a elephants. One woman really wanted to sell me something, but I really wasn't crazy about her stuff. When she asked what I wanted, I decided to throw her a curveball and said I wanted a lion's tooth. You better believe she sent that curve ball right back -- the lady had a lion's tooth! Too bad the sucker was too expensive or else I'd be rocking a fierce lion's tooth as we speak. We also saw a gnarly streetfight across from the church - one fellow hit the other with a 2x4. The second responded with a jumpkick. The jumpkick failed, he fell to the ground, everybody laughed, and the fight was over.

We got one room at the beach and pitched tents on the sand. Not a bad way to sleep.

We ate dinner on the beach every night - the choices were limited, but delicious: barracuda, shrimp or lobster.

Each night ended with a bonfire on the beach.

... And now I'm back in Guinea! After a wonderful 9 day visit from my friend Katie, tomorrow morning I'm hopping back into a bush taxi and scooting out into the void for six or seven straight weeks of village life. I won't be back online until the 12th of June, but in the meantime I have sent all of my current Africa pictures to my mom on DVD, so perhaps some of those will turn up on my picasa page before too long. Furthermore, I have invited Katie to do a guest-posting, giving you guys an outsiders perspective to this insider's life. I hope she doesn't make it look too grand ;-)

Remember, I'm just a phone call - wait, no - an e-mail - wait, that's not it either... I'm just a hand written letter and 6 weeks away, haha. Take care while I'm away!

OO-oo-OO

Hunter

Holy Smokes! Look at all 'em pictures!

2009-04-03T08:18:00.001-07:00

Welcome! Welcome to another post at Zoobar - the place where wishes are made and dreams come true! Please accept my apologies for such a long absence. In an attempt to make things up to you, I have posted over 100 pictures to chronicle my adventures of the last few months. Sorry about the gray spot in all the shots - the lens is dirty and I can't find a lens cleaner in this country...

To get things started, we have several photos from my bike ride home from Bissikrima back in February. Bissikrima is about 50km (30 miles) from my village and I go there to visit friends, drink cold sodas, and use the telephone. The ride back was done between 7am and 9:45am.

Okay, now for some pictures around my hut and the village. The area surrounding my village is quite beautiful, but photos would not do it justice right now, as the dust in the air really just makes everything look grimy - I'll post a full series of village photos in about a month, once the rain has come and washed the filth out of the air. Here's Banana again - she can sleep anywhere.

Hornets come into my hut WAY too often. They're about the size of my head. I was stung once while on my bike - the stinger went through my shirt and got me on me chest, and it still hurt like a son of a gun. There are more hornet photos further down.
Cows are always just outside my front door.

My new whip:

Kids
Props to Laura and Jamie - Connect 4 is a big hit with the neighborhood. They still don't get the rules but man do they love dropping those pieces in the slots!!

A bushrat fell the forty feet down the hole in my backyard, died, and stank to high heaven. I paid a fellow 2000gf (40 cents) to climb down and scoop it out.

They finally poured the concrete for my latrine (and to those curious PTO examiners - they did NOT use a single one of the new-fangled rebar connectors I spent the last two years examining. They connected the rebar with wire.), but they are still yet to move the slab over the hole, so I'm still using the neighbors (disgusting!) latrine. Here comes the third month of privacy-free life!

These next photos were all taken in Kankan. People get upset if you take unsolicited photos, so these were all taken from my hip. Apologies for the skewed/out of focus photos. I think it's artistic.

I wanted to test her sleeping strenght, so I played the balance game. She never even stirred, not even when all the objects came crashing down :-p

This darn cow is always sneaking into my backyard, eating my fence, and keeping me awake at 4 in the morning.

This is Mr. Bah, manager of the local gas station, and my go-to go for electricity. He is the first Guinean I've met to have a computer (granted, it's from 1987), so I teach him Excel on his PC while I charge my iPod. Booya. This is his family:

That's all of the photos for now, but I'll be back tomorrow for a more in-depth update, and back again on the 15th with updates from Sierra Leone!

At last! The Prodigal Sun has Returned!

2009-03-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

March 7, 2009...Hellooooo everyone! So sorry I've been away for so long - such is the life of a celebrity in high demand... or a peace corps volunteer living deep in the bush. As you've read in the last post, I have moved. My new site is some 200 kilometers northeast of my old site, and also approximately 200 degrees hotter! As the "hot season" has just started, that's also where I'll start this post (if you get a letter in a few weeks and some of the lines look a lot like what you're reading here, that's because I really liked what I wrote to you and decided to save it!).

The hot season, which runs from March through the end of April, is about the same temperature as the surface of the sun. Perhaps that's a bit of an overdramatization, but I'm not exaggerating in the least when I say the temperature often peaks over 100 degrees as early as ten in the morning. By mid afternoon, it's become a barely-tolerable 115 and by three or so it isn't uncommon to be looking at an unbearable 120 or 130 heat in the sun. On Tuesday, my friend Alison used her super-fancy (that's a scientific term) thermometer and it read 106 in the shade. On a good night, the temperature will dip back below 100 by midnight, only to make a brief rendez-vous with the upper 90's before recommencing it's climb back into the land of pain.

On Tuesday, I decided to ride my bike to my new phone spot to give my friend Pat a Happy Birthday call. Hunter, what were you thinking?!? While the 16 mile ride out to the phone spot was manageable, the return trip was probably more akin to the Baton Death March. In spite of a generous lathering of sunscreen, my shoulders are still PURPLE. Normally, the wind generated when pedaling along at twenty miles an hour is enough to cool me down; on this day, though, the air in my face was about as useful as riding with a hot air blowdryer right in front of my face. At times, I thought about stopping to sit in the shade, but then what? Would I just sit in the heat until the sun disappeared hours later? No thanks! So I toughed it out the rest of the way and then collapsed on the floor of my hut, where I stayed for the next four hours. Whew!

On top of the overpowering heat, one must also contend with fierce amounts of dust. Rain has not blessed the Haute Guineen soil since October 30th, so anything that may have once used it's roots to hold the dirt in place has long since turned to dust and only worsened the situation. Some evenings the haze from the dust is so severe the sun will disappear as much as an hour or two before it's naturally appointed bedtime. The dust makes running quite painful on the lungs - if you want to know how it feels, my best guess at a comparison would be to run while smoking about a pack of cigarettes.

My new school seems to function quite a bit better than the old one. I left the old village after months of frustration with a non-existant administration and staff came to a head. One day, the principal finally decided to show up, only to come into my classroom and start yelling at me for letting a student out to use the bathroom. He couldn't believe I was stupid enough to break the rules! I couldn't believe he was stupid enough to yell at me like that. Taking him outside, he received a good piece of my mind, and then he lost his village a perfectly good Fote.
Now settled into the new school, I can happily report every class has a teacher (although some classes are covered by the principal), and my students' attendance rate is better than 80%. Unfortunately, my success seems to sort of end right there.

Although my three months of training in Forecariah was spent learning how to teach math in French, the principal insisted I teach 9th and 10th grade physics as well. Alright, I'm an aerospace engineer. I can't turn down a simple 9th grade physics class. Except, how in the world do I teach resistance, voltage, and current to students who don't even know what electricity is?! I'm starting to get my footing in physics (I'm sort of picking it up along with the students), but only after the principal told me I was no good at it, that maybe I should just teach math. Come on!

Math isn't going much better. After administering an exam a few weeks ago and only having two students of twenty-seven pass, I decided to go over a review of several basic principles. Guinean students really struggle with negative numbers, so I wrote 21-27=? and 27-21=? They'll often say 21-27 is 6, understanding how to find the difference, but not realizing that in this case this difference must also be negative. By also writing 27-21, I thought I might be able to show them the difference between 6 and -6. Think again, Mr. Science! I had THREE kids tell me 27-21 is 94. How in the world?? I have no idea. I asked them to explain, but after their explanations I was only more confused.

Later that day, I was doing a review and using problems from an old Brevet, the national exam used to determine who can move on to 11th grade. This particular version was pulled from the 1994 exam. Thinking myself a clever man, I said, "These problems are taken from the Brevet of '94 or, as some of you may lead me to believe, the Brevet of 27-21." They didn't get it. I thought it was hilarious.

Last weekend, some friends biked to my village for a visit and we spent two nights at the local hotel. By Guinean standards, it's super nice. By American standards, well... we're not in America, ok? There was powered lighting from 6pm on, but no generator - they only use it when there are large groups; seeing as we were the only ones there, it was no dice for us. The gas station across the street occasionally has cold drinks, although not from a drink machine. They have a "refrigerator" in which they keep several bottled Fantas and Cokes. On a good, hot and really lucky day, I can get there when they have a drink 'bien glace' and it's like my own little moment of heaven.

Last night was full of excitement! In order to use the internet today, I had to ride my bike 70 kilometers this morning to get to Dabola. Given that I'd need lots of energy, I decided to fix myself a big meal of pasta and some packaged salmon my mom sent me. After putting the water on to boil, I turned my attention to the salmon. Moments later, I heard a "WHOOSH!" and looked over to see two-foot flames shooting directly out of my propane tank. WHOA! Not wanting the flames to retreat into the tank and blow up my entire hut (I don't know if that's actually possible, but it sure seemed like it), I heroically threw my hand in amongst the flames and closed the valve. Disaster averted! After standing there in shock for about five minutes, I looked down and noticed a bright red ring on my hand from where I'd grabbed the hot valve... Needless to say, I'm not going to be cooking for a while. I ended up eating the salmon cold, served over a small bed of raw pasta. Mmm!

I have a cat. Her name is Banana. Actually, that's her middle name, adapted from the moderately less cute 'Mister Berginski', the full appellation being Mister Banana Berginski. Here in Guinea, everybody goes by their middle name, thus I call her Banana. She's really good at catching flies and at waking me up at four in the morning by catching my toes just as well as she catches the flies.

My mom has some pictures of her - hopefully she'll copy and paste them over this line ;)

I have lots of good pictures for you, but you're going to have to be patient... as always. Luckily, I'll be in Kankan for a St. Patricks Day party in less than two weeks, so you won't have to wait too long. I'm also still working on writing a quasi-entertaining recount of my January adventure to Kankan. It should be ready soon!

I hope you're all doing well! Thanks for still reading all the junk I have to write and not letting me disappear into the void that is the Lost Continent.

One of my classes. Grade levels are relative in Guinea--my youngest student is 19! Students have no textbooks and can only study what they've copied from the chalk board.

Mister Banana Berginski

My bike helmet--Banana's favorite place to nap--until she grew too big for it.

Digging the latrine behind my hut...

...and you think your job stinks!!

All tuckered out after a long day of fly chasing.

2009-01-29T11:08:00.000-08:00

Hi! This is Hunter's mom.

Remember the post that Hunter was going to make while he was in Mamou this week??? Well, it won't be coming for some time as Hunter has been literally whisked off to a new site. Hunter had training with all of the PVCs in his group from Monday--Wednesday of this week. Then today he went with the Education Director to Cissela (also spelled Sissela) where they are in need of a math teacher. After weeks of waiting to know if he was to stay or go, things suddenly started to happen at lightening speed. I got a call from Hunter about 10:15 this morning and they were in Dabola on the way back to Sandenia. Hunter was to say his goodbyes, pack up tonight, be ready to roll at 8:00 tomorrow morning, and be prepared to start teaching on Monday morning at the new site. Unfortunately, Hunter's cell phone battery was low, so we didn't get to talk for very long, but here's what I know...

Cissela is a bigger town and actually shows up on a map if you Google it. Though Google will show you the geographic location of Cissela that's about all you can find--Hunter can be the first to put any info about it on Google and Wikipedia! Hunter is pleased that it actually has a gas station and in that gas station is a pop machine that dispenses cold drinks; the village also boasts a fairly nice hotel that hopefully has a generator. The school is small, but the kids do attend consistently and there are other teachers there on a regular basis, so that part was very encouraging. Hunter's hut was without a bed, table, or latrine this morning, but that's supposed to be taken care of before he arrives back at site, so someone may be busy digging as I type!

On the down side...he'll miss the friends he's made while in Sandenia, especially the Andersons and Tourre. There is no electricity or cell phone service. Unless he can find a hillside tree like he did outside Sandenia, phone calls will be limited to every few weeks when he goes to visit another PVC about 50 kilometers away, and it may be March before he has internet access again.

Please keep Hunter in your prayers as he embarks on this newest African adventure. He misses all of you and wishes that there had been more time for phone calls and e-mails before this transfer took place.

i ni ke!

2009-01-16T07:28:00.000-08:00

This was taken during the Tabaski fete in December; I had just finished a long run and wanted to check out the soccer game (which is going on behind me), so I threw on my boubou and headed out.

A cellphone antenna has been erected in Sandenia!.. now we just have to wait for the actual network components to be installed. Somebody told me it should be ready on 25 January.

Green mamba!

"I'm gonna catch it in the coat... And smack it with the hammer."

Belt snake!

Toure and I at the clinic. Griffey Jr is his favorite player, in case you were wondering.

Christmas dinner photo.

My little neighbor. She's adorable, except when she's crying - gosh! what an awful racket. I'm going to try to get a video up sometime of her trying to catch her cat, because my writing just won't do justice to how cute it is.

My little buddy.

There was a yellow fever outbreak in a nearby village, so Toure had to vaccinate everybody - he did something like 15,000 injections in three days. It was complete madness as everybody tried to shove their way in to get their shots. Don't worry - I was vaccinated before I came.

Showing off their shots.

These are my neighbors. I wanted a picture of the cat, so I got all of them in it as well. Salle, the tall girl standing in the middle, is one of my ninth graders. She also does my laundry and my dishes. I think I'd die without her.

My sisters sent me some coloring books to give away. I kept most of them for myself, because, you know, I love to color, but I did give ONE to this little girl. She just pretends to color when I watch, because I don't think she actually knows what to do. Then, at night, Salle takes it and colors. She did the entire book in just a few days. See below.

These women hosted a soccer game the other week, so they got all dressed up - the one in the police outfit is married to the local cop and the one in the fatigues is married to the gendarme. I have NO IDEA why they dressed up like that, but it was pretty hilarious and we all had a good laugh.

A village woman sifting her rice - they do this to get the rocks out after it's dried in the sun on the road all day.

When the camera comes out, everybody wants their picture taken. I have no idea who this family is.

This woman really likes to aggravate me. She sells oranges on the road right where I begin and end my runs. Every day, just as I start, she tries to give me oranges, but I tell her I can't take them until after I run. When I return, she retracts her offer.

I caught this sneaky guy eating my neighbor's banana tree when he shouldn't have been. He ran away like a dg who'd just pulled the bacon off the counter.

My school consists of four classroom and the admin building, over on the right.

Hey everybody! I'm in Kankan right now for the G-17 site visit party, so I thought this would be a good time to try to post some pictures. If you'd like to try calling me, I am using a new number while in Kankan - 011.224.65.72.25.67. (and if that one doesn't work, you can try the other number - 011.224.66.51.86.03)

Things are going pretty well right now. School is still barely functioning, and it looks like there isn't a house for me in Dabola, so I won't be moving there after all, but perhaps to another village. Who knows? I'm getting started on some really exciting secondary projects, including a village sensibilization on crossing the road, and perhaps organizing the first Guinea marathon. It's all just in the brainstorm stage right now, but I've got some great ideas coming together. Hopefully I can flesh them out a little bit over the next week and give you some more info next weekend, when I go to Mamou for in-service training for a week; I'd love to get a little help/support for some of these projects, and I know there are a lot of you out there who would like to get involved, so let's see what we can do!

Okay - my time is up on the computer, but I'll be back in a week or so... wo-o-oh! (goodbye in Susu, Malinke and Dialonke)

A lot of people have been asking me for my address. Voici:

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

2009-01-03T19:18:00.000-08:00

Happy New Years everybody!

At last, here’s my blog entry for December (posted with the help of the Anderson’s e-mail and my lovely mother). I’m sorry there aren’t any pictures, but hopefully I’ll get them up when I go to Mamou for in-service training on the 25th. This time around, I’ve decided to put the blog in Chapter format. Now I feel like I’ve written a little book! Like, a really little book, because each chapter is only about 2 pages long...

Chapter 1
The Most Dangerous Man in Guinea

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my mom on the phone and she mentioned something she’d heard on NPR about West Africa: the number one killer of small children is car accidents – not car on car accidents, rather, car on child accidents. Although I’m fairly confident malaria is actually the number one killer (supposedly one West African child dies from malaria every thirty seconds), I have to agree that roadside accidents are all too common. Three kids have been struck and killed in my village since I move there in September. Not long ago, a one year old boy ran after a ball behind a reversing taxi. Unaware of this, the driver backed over the boy and crushed his head. Yes, this kind of thing happens all too often around here.

As I cycled home from the phone tree following this conversation, I couldn’t help but think all the close calls I’ve had with hitting pedestrians while riding in bush taxis. My thoughts strayed from the potential taxi accidents to potential bicycle accidents as a group of goats scooted out of my way on the road. What would happen if, just once, the goat changed his mind and ran right into my bike? Would the impact kill the goat? Would it bring my bike to a halt as I sailed over the handlebars to the demise of my left wrist, repeating my feat of the seventh grade? Trying to brush these morbid thoughts aside, I double checked the strap on my helmet and pedaled on.

Arriving in my village, I was making great time – with the wind at my back, this had probably been my fastest return trip yet. I rode past the “Marche le Lundi” sign and thought, “only about a quarter mile left! Step on it!” Just then, a little boy shot out across the road, right in front of me. I slowed down a little, but, seeing he was clear of my path, I continued. As I was about to pass him, a man who I can only assume was his father, yelled at him in Dialonke, telling him to look out for the bike. The boy, never having seen me, spun around and ran headfirst into my handlebars.

The poor kid never stood a chance. His head smacked off my handlebars and then smacked off the ground. Surprisingly, I didn’t go down. I did, however, stop, and was immediately shaken by the incident, even before I’d turned around to see him crumpled on the road. My first thought was that he was dead. He wasn’t moving and I couldn’t stop visualizing the impact as his head hit the asphalt. But then he stood up. He screamed for about a half second, but he must’ve stopped when he saw the blood.

As he turned to face me, he held his hand to his eye, but that did little to allay the blood pouring from all over his head. I tried to move towards him, but his instant recoil reminded me that little African boys are absolutely terrified of big white men. His father came over, yelling at me in words I will never understand, and I simply said I would go get the doctor. The father, not wanting blood on his clean white shirt, told the boy he had to walk to the clinic. I rode ahead, wanting to tell Dr. Toure what was on the way, hoping he could help, but not sure what to expect from a village hospital, with no electricity or running water, in the middle of the bush.

At this point, I was visibly shaken. Toure could see that, and told me to go home; he’d take care of everything. To me, though, that was the easy way out and I wasn’t taking it – I needed to stay and do whatever I could; I needed to stay and suffer the consequences. The boy arrived shortly after, followed by a crowd of thirty or forty angry villagers. Shouting and finger-pointing ensued, but I’ll never really be sure what was said, but I’ll never forget how uncomfortable I was, as though I were on trial in front of a firing squad, as far as could be from a jury of my peers. The boy stood there, blood still dripping from all over his face and from a deep gash on the top of his head. He stared at me fixedly, blinking as the blood dripped over his eyes. Weeks later, I can still see the fear in his eyes when I close my own.

Toure, ever the hero, took the boy back in his office and proceeded to fix everything. In the meantime, I went home and raided my care packages for candy to give to my victim – what else could I do? When I arrived back at the clinic, Toure had already shaved his head and started putting in stitches. I handed the candy to the father, apologized profusely, and went back to my hut, where I put my head in my hands and wept for about two hours.

Eventually, Toure came over to tell me head taken care of everything, that the boy would be fine… but I still couldn’t shake the thought that, between the complete lack of teaching I’ve done due to poor school organization and hitting the boy, I’d effectively done more damage than good to my community. That was probably about as close as I’ve ever come to throwing in the towel and going home. I didn’t stop shaking until the next day. Even then, I was scared – the child never cried – what if he’d been in shock? What if he’d had a concussion? Did Toure check for these things? What if he died??

All I wanted to do was go call someone, but that meant getting back on the bike and riding back past all the people that had poured out their wrath just hours before, so I stayed put and waited. For what? I don’t know. But, by the next day, I’d started to feel a bit better. That is, until I started to hear a “THUMP! BANG! THUMP!” on my roof. I ran outside, having to immediately dodge a huge rock headed right towards my head as I came out the front door. People were stoning my hut!!!

But then I heard them shout, “Mamadou! Mamadou! Serpant!” At once, I realized the rocks weren’t aimed at me, and my hut was simply the unfortunate innocent recipient of the rocks intended for the green snake coiled in the tree overhanging my hut. Guineans hate snakes, and understandably so, because most of them, including the one in the tree, are extremely deadly.

Before long, one of the rocks struck its target and knocked the snake free of the tree, sending it flying onto the roof of my hut (can you imagine how happy I would have been if I were still sitting in my hut and this sucker came in seeking refuge?!). The snake slithered off the roof and into a large patch of tall grass, but the neighbors weren’t deterred. They immediately set to work, lighting the grass on fire, trying to smoke out the snake or burn it to death trying.

About five minutes later, the snake emerged, only to have its head beaten in by a stick. The snake, as it turns out, was a green mamba – or, as they call it here, a three step snake. Three step snake? That means, once it’s bitten you, you can take three more steps before you’ll never take any more. Yeah, the only snake around here that’s more deadly is the black mamba. Although it was a little frightening that this snake was so close to the door of my hut, the entire situation was quite exciting and I capped it off by taking several photos of the boys with their kill.

The next day, as I prepared to leave for the Anderson’s, another snake was killed just outside of my front door. This one was a belt snake, aka a five step snake, so no big deal, right? Actually, the more I thought about it, it WAS a big deal!

Only two days before, I’d hit one of the local children and messed him up badly, resulting in what may have been a mass cursing by the thirty or forty locals who’d been yelling at me. Maybe somebody was trying to send a message? Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that the first snakes I’d seen in the village came in the two days succeeding the accident! A big part of me thought the boy must have died and somebody wanted me to pay the price.

So I got out of town. Kind of. I went and visited the Andersons a few miles away. Upon my return, I was expecting to be stoned, or worse, so you can imagine my relief when I spotted the boy sitting on a bench by one of the boutiques. I went over to check on him. Aside from cuts on his nose, forehead and cheek, and the stitches on his head, he seemed okay. Talk about your sighs of relief! Buying him some candy and oranges, I considered the case closed. I guess my fear of sorcerers and snake charmers coming for me must’ve all just been my imagination.

There is, however, a lesson to be learned from all of this: children here do not know how to cross a street. It could not be more evident that they have never seen “The Micky Mouse Club” and therefore never learned the valuable lesson on stopping, looking, and listening. What does this mean for me? It means I’ve found a secondary project to pursue! Somehow, I’m going to set up a system to educate children about safely crossing the road and to educate parents about the importance of watching their children. After all, as guilty as I felt about my accident, it wasn’t my fault; if the boy had looked first, he never would’ve run out into the street (or so I like to think), and if the father had been paying attention, he would’ve told his son to look out BEFORE he was already in the middle of the road.

Does anybody know how to say “Stop, look and listen” in Dialonke?

Chapter 2
To Move or Not to Move

As I’ve mentioned several times before, teaching in my village has not exactly gone as planned. About 80 percent of the time, I’m the only teacher in the school (sometimes even the only PERSON); the principal hasn’t shown up in over a month. Basically, my school doesn’t function. As such, I’ve made the decision, with the guidance of my PC supervisor, to make the move to another town, one where the school actually functions but which is badly in need of a math teacher. It was a tough decision to make, but after returning to the village after Thanksgiving, I realized that, were I to stay put, my story of life in Guinea would simply be one of survival, and that’s not why I came here. I came here to help people, to do some good, and it looks like that just isn’t going to happen with the current state of affairs.

The new town is exactly that – a town! It has electricity (some of the time), phone service, internet, eggs and potatoes (neither of which are available in my current locale), and, most importantly, PCV friends only about 25 kilometers away (which puts them about 100 kilometers closer than my current neighbor). I suppose the decision to move should’ve been a no-brainer, but I couldn’t help remembering how tough those first few weeks in the village were, and that’s something I have no desire to repeat. However, I’m fairly certain this move will be quite different – I’ll pretty much have everything around me that I don’t have right now.

The only thing I won’t have is the Anderson’s (the missionary family), and that will be tough. They really have been my African angels, but I’ve also come to realize that allowing that comfort to keep me in my current village would be going against my justifications for joining the Peace Corps in the first place. As great as it is to have this family, I have to remember that I didn’t travel thousands of miles across the world to make American friends. By no means am I trying to downplay the importance of the Anderson’s role in my service thus far – were it not for them, I would have terminated my service long ago. They have been the helping hand I’ve needed, and now I feel like, given all the pros of moving to the other town, I’m ready to try riding without the training wheels. And I’ll really only be sacrificing a few months of their company, because they’re going back stateside for three months starting in April and, once they return, they’ll actually be moving to a new village which is, believe it or not, closer to my new town than my current village.

So, in early December, I gave Dioulde, my program director, the go-ahead to get the wheels rolling on the move. The only thing we really needed was for the new community to come up with a house for me, and then I’d be ready to go. Unfortunately, they had not come up with the housing as of December 20 when Dioulde left for a month of vacation. Now, it looks like it’s going to February before he can continue talking with the new town to discuss my move.

This poses several problems. First, by not moving until February, I’m already missing about half the school year – what good would I do showing up a year late? I know I can’t teach a year of material in four months! Also, what am I supposed to do in my current village? Keep leading my students on by teaching them until February, and then pull out the rug by telling them I’m outta there? Lastly, upon returning to my village the other day, I learned that all the former teachers who’d left my school after last year have been ordered to return – so, supposedly, my school now has teachers. Is there still justification for me to leave? I don’t know.
My plan? I’m going to give Dioulde the pieces of the puzzle and let him put it all together. If it’s up to me, I’m still in favor of the move; I don’t think a school of teachers forced there against their will is a great environment for me to get things done. But who knows?

Chapter 3
Coup du Jour

In case you’ve been sleeping under a rock (or you just didn’t read the Africa section of bbc.com or my blog in the last week…), Guinean President Lansana Conte is dead. We were awaked by a phone call on Tuesday, the 23rd, at about 3 in the morning. Talk about news that’ll wake you up! Actually, I was back asleep within about a minute of hearing – what was I going to do at 3 in the morning??

Anyway, starting the next morning, we were on lockdown in the compound in Conakry and those volunteers who hadn’t yet made the trip in were stuck spending Christmas in their sites or regional capitals. Our New Years trip to Freetown was immediately cancelled; luckily, we were able to get our passports AND 131 bucks back from the Sierra Leone embassy without a problem. Really, being on lockdown wasn’t a big deal. We were able to send people out for food, and the fact that there were only about 20 of us made the house much more livable than trying to cram 50 or 60 people in there (actually, the place was still a wreck with only 20 of us...).

Although I had fully expected the country to collapse after Conte’s death, the pursuing coup d’état went so smoothly I was certain I wasn’t in West Africa anymore. I suppose being in support of a coup is frowned upon, but those guys deserve credit – no blood was shed, not a single death, and the Guinean people could not have been happier.

There’s really not a lot for me to report that wasn’t already on the news, except for my fun puzzle experience on Christmas Eve. Around 10 pm on the 24th, I was up on the roof of the volunteer house working on a puzzle alone; after being cooped up with the others for a few days, I needed a little while alone to recharge my social batteries. In the distance, I heard what sounded like fire crackers. And then they were closer. And louder. The noise kept growing until I was no longer certain I was hearing firecrackers. Suddenly I heard blasts which sounded as though they’d come from right next to me. BANG!! So I dropped to the floor. Seriously, my reaction was so quick and unconscious it probably would have made a great youtube video. On the ground, I couldn’t stop laughing at myself as I crawled towards the door and sought refuge inside.

It turns out it was not firecrackers. The military was driving through the streets, firing into the air as a warning to anyone thinking about breaking the curfew. Well! They sure scared me off the streets!

We were kicked out of the compound on Monday and sent back to our sites to spend New Years alone. I don’t know about you guys, but I rang in the New Year playing Freecell on my laptop (I’m currently riding a win streak of 26 straight – believe it!). I forgot to watch the clock and looked down when it was 12:01. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Honestly, I’m not terribly bitter about having to leave Conakry – the house was starting to get pretty gross, and I wanted to start exercising regularly again. Besides, this New Years will make all future New Years, no matter how lame, about 100 times better. Also, a mouse took over my hut and there was poop EVERYWHERE; I can only imagine the kind of damage he may have been done if I’d been gone a whole extra week.

Going back to the coup – I’m actually really excited about the new leader, Captain Camara. This guy has the potential to either turn into a notorious kleptocrat or, as all Guineans are hoping, the savior of the country and West Africans everywhere. If he can restore some sort of order in this country, schedule elections by 2010, and step down from power after the elections, he’ll go down in history as one of the great heroes of Guinea. In any case, I’m hopeful. Guinea deserves a break.

Coup d'etats and things like that

2008-12-28T23:53:00.000-08:00

Due to the unforeseen coup d'etat, I'll be heading back to my site in just a few minutes, and, alas, my post for this month is not yet finished. Being here during this exciting, historical time in Guinea has generated a lot of new stories including, but not limited to, dodging bullets (not really, but that sounds exciting, doesn't it??), beach volleyball tournaments (naturally), and a completely different demeanor of the Guinean people. While I was hoping to ring in the new year with my fellow PCV's, it looks like it will actually be spent alone in my hut with a candle and a good book. But no worries! This New Years Eve will make all the future New Years Eves that much better :-p

Okay, so I'm going to finish the post on my laptop in my village tonight and hopefully pass it on to my mom via e-mail on Wednesday and you guys will be reading to your hearts' content. (Sadly, though, due to the lockdown and a really slow internet connection, additional photos will have to wait until at least the end of January). I hope you're all well and that you all have a wonderful New Year!

Back for more

2008-12-21T03:54:00.000-08:00

Hey, everybody! I'm back in Conakry, here to spend a hot Christmas with my friends from training. This is a short post, but I want to let everyone know things are going well - the acid fly burn is gone and I've been feeling great since the last time you heard from me. I'm going to work on finishing a long entry today and plan on posting it, along with a bunch of new pictures on Picasa, tomorrow when I go en ville to the internet cafe (the connection is much better there).

I have some pretty good stories involving deadly snakes, almost deadly bikes, cow hooves, and devils living in the hills, so get excited!

I'll be in Conakry until the morning of the 27th, when I'll be going down to Freetown, Sierra Leone for New Years on the beach. Whoomp! There it is!

Oh, and here's a joke from my new jokebook:

Why do bears wear fur coats?
Because they'd look silly in rain coats!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T02:19:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-11-26T03:56:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-06T16:27:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

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!

New Posts!

2008-10-31T04:43:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody! I'm back in Conakry for an extended weekend. It looks like I'll be here until Wednesday morning, when I'll catch the free PAM flight to Kissidougou and taxi home from there.

I have so much to tell you, which I'll try to put on here through the course of the weekend. Hopefully I'll even be able to upload all of my pictures to Picasa!

In the meantime, below are posted three entries I typed up at site (the one from the 16th is my favorite). Please excuse typos and such - I only had so much battery to work with and for now don't feel like going back to edit all of it!

I hope you enjoy the posts and pictures, and there will be much more to come over the next few days. Since I'll be in town, please call if you'd like to chat; I have a new number - 011-224-66-51-86-03.

Much love,
Hunter

Le 16 Octobre 2008

2008-10-31T04:42:00.000-07:00

You can’t buy anything for a buck anymore… remember those old commercials? Well, maybe it’s true, but in Guinea, two bucks will buy you more than you could ever dream. Two bucks, which converts to roughly 10,000 Guinean francs, can buy 20 cucumbers, 50 bananas, or even 150 grapefruit. Or, in the case of travel, it’ll get you about 30 miles in a bush taxi.

Oh! but you’re buying so much more than just a ride in a taxi. On a good day, those two dollars will also ensure you make at least a dozen new friends, in the form of other passengers. It also means you’ll probably get to spend an extra two or three hours at the taxi gare people watching or head shopping, the Guinean answer to QVC – instead of actually having to stand up and walk around, you just sit there while women and children solicit you with anything from clothes to food to radio-flashlights from the piles on their heads. And, just in case you were worried you’d be making it to your destination too early, your two dollars guarantees at least one layover of 30 minutes or more in a village of the driver’s choice.

In an effort of frugality, I generally forego these steals of deals by riding my bike to and from Faranah, a 60-mile round trip journey which takes about two hours each way. In other words, biking is about twice as fast as taking a taxi, once you consider the amount of time waiting for the taxi to fill with passengers and all the stops made along the way. This past weekend, though, I wanted to buy eggs, enough of them that I didn’t trust the suspension on my bike enough to keep them from breaking over 30 miles of the local paving. So, I broke down and decided to shell out my two bucks for the taxi.

Sunday morning, I arrived at the Faranah taxi gare around 8am, ready to get back to my site after an impromptu overnight in “the city.” Finding the right taxi was easy; the first guy I asked was headed in my direction. Unfortunately, I was the first passenger to arrive, so we’d have to wait for more to show up before it would be economically feasible for him to leave. That wasn’t a problem, as I still had to find eggs and some hinges for the screen doors I’d commissioned to be made for my hut, so I set off in search of the goods.

About thirty minutes later, I arrived back at the taxi, eggs and hinges in hand, along with some cheese and a knock-off Caprisun (they’re Capri-Sonne here) for the road. After thirty minutes, I was still the only passenger, so I left to find a snack. I felt like I’d discovered the City of Gold when I stumbled upon a guy on a side street operating a frozen yogurt machine. It may have only been 9:30 in the morning, but my motto is, “When you find ice cream in Africa, you buy it!” Not one to go against my own motto, I bought some, happily eating the frozen deliciousness as I made my way back to the taxi, again.

11:30 rolled around and there I sat, now accompanied by two older women waiting for the same taxi. I’d already finished the book I’d brought with me and had spent the last of my money on the ice cream, so all I could do was sit and wait patiently. Finally, around noon, another taxi pulled up and we were told to get in. I took the front seat, as always – apparently Africans think Americans smell really bad because of the dairy in our diet, so they try to sit as far from us as possible. As a result I always get the front to myself (I’m not complaining..). The two women took the back, all three of us wondering where the other four or five passengers were – surely we wouldn’t leave with such an empty car?? When I asked the driver, he explained he didn’t need the extra passengers’ fare because we’d be picking up some beef to transport along the way. Okay, I’ve seen taxis with slabs of meat strapped to the top a hundred times before. No big deal.

Well, when we pulled into the village with the beef 20 minutes later, I realized the “beef” was, in fact, still alive. The driver fully intended to place what must have amounted to 1000 pounds of live steer directly into the trunk of his 1970 Peugot sedan. Instructed to wait in the shade, I watched as 9 men tied and attempted to hoist the beast into the car. After their second failure, I left my roost to give them a hand – I wanted to get home at some point (I also thought hands-on experience would add some validity to this story). With both of my hands placed firmly under its rump – thank goodness for travel hand sanitizer – we finally managed to get the job done.

Cow in place, the driver remarked that there was still some space in between its legs. As everybody knows, the best way to fill an empty space is with two live, bleating sheep. As much as they protested against their predicament, I really didn’t have much sympathy for them. After all, they weren’t hog-tied and were certainly much more comfortable than the cow who hadn’t as much as mooed since the beginning of his quandary.

Having exhausted the requisite hour stowing the animals, we continued on towards our destination, the rest of the trip seeming slightly pedestrian in comparison, in spite of the fact that at one point there were 10 people packed into the car (drivers will pick up anyone, so long as they have a few francs to spare), and the six or seven near-death experiences we all shared as we blindly passed cargo trucks around dangerous bends. So, you see, one really can do quite a bit with two bucks here, so long as you’re not in a hurry and you don’t mind dealing with all the “bull” that comes with riding in a bush taxi.

Le 10 Octobre 2008

2008-10-31T04:38:00.000-07:00

Thunderstorms – at once both the most mesmerizing and the most terrifying spectacles I’ve beheld in Africa. They come at you like a tiger pounces as you turn your cart into the cereal aisle at the supermarket – quickly, ferociously, and most unexpectedly. Clouds black, winds howling, the storm is upon you before you can say, “Man! I’ve never had a storm come upon me this fast! Is it for REAL?”

The other day, shortly after lunch, the sun was shining brightly, fit to bake the earth and any American crazy enough to be here. So, I went into my backyard to set out my solar charger. Leaning over to set it on the ground, I was pushed violently from behind. As I turned around to confront my assaulter, I found nothing; nothing but about 90 miles an hour of wind! The sky turned black, though it wasn’t dotted with the stars and radiant moon which usually accompany such darkness.

Why was it so dark? Maybe it was much later than I’d thought – I’d just finished my regular lunch of bread, fruit, and peanuts, so it could only be about 1:30, right? Then again, I eat the same thing for dinner (and breakfast, too, for that matter), so maybe the hours were all beginning to melt together on me like a Dali painting. I went back into the hut to fetch my watch and verify that I was either a) an incredible keeper of time and the darkness was actually a harbinger of an enormous storm to come, or b) still on American time after three months in Africa.

In the time it took to find my watch, I heard “Bang! Pow! Crash! Pour! Whoosh! Krack!” – all at once. I emerged from my hut to stunning blue skies, two shattered trees clinging to my fence in final attempts to remain vertical, and about a foot of rain as far as the eye could see. Such is the way of storms in Guinea.

Okay, so that was a bit of an embellishment. But that’s what it seems like to me every time I wake up, only fifteen minutes after going to sleep under starry skies, to the sounds and vibrations of a freight train driving straight through my hut.

You see, in Forecariah, I relished the moments when storms raged and I could sit back and enjoy it, pulling the covers a little closer to ward off the breeze. In Forecariah, though, I was protected by a solid roof, concrete walls, and a door free of cracks and holes for fit mice and lizards to seek refuge.

Things are a little different in a mud hut. You wake up to the howling of the gale force wind and the pummeling rain, wondering how much longer it will be before the grass roof gives up the ghost. It’s obvious at least some of the roof already bought a non-refundable, one-way ticket to the neighbor’s yard, as evidenced by the numerous leaks and muddy pools covering the floor of the hut. That’s probably the only drawback to living in a mud hut (cough cough) – when the roof springs a leak, it doesn’t come in the form of rain, but a nice, dark mud. Delicious.

Each time I wake up to a storm, I get out of bed to inspect the damage and make sure everything that needs covering is covered. Assured that nothing will be ruined with the current leaks, I climb back under my mosquito net to settle in and wait for the storm to run its course. This way I can monitor any new leaks in case the rain gets even worse.

The other night, I climbed back into bed only to find a nice, fat mouse had nestled his way under my pillow while I had been making my inspections. As I went to the door to shoo him out, his lizard friend was trying to make an entrance of his own through the gap between the door and the floor. No such luck, my man! Turns out brooms can sweep more than just dirt..

Back in bed, I relax as the pounding of the rain slackens. The thunder, though – man alive! Once the rain has been gone for a while you begin to wonder if that’s actually thunder you feel pulsing through your veins or if maybe rebel invaders have launched a blitzkrieg on the village; although, I doubt any rebel invaders possess any firepower to rival this cacophony.

Growing up in the countryside, my sisters and I used to like riding out the big storms in the comfort of our basement. I remember being petrified by the powerful thunderclaps. Erin and Hilary would comfort me by saying it was just God up in Heaven, bowling. Well, when you’re living in a mud hut in Africa, God doesn’t bowl – he drives a dump truck through a nitroglycerin plant… or something like that; ask Ryan, he knows the quote.

Le 30 Septembre 2008

2008-10-31T04:24:00.000-07:00

(Warning! this post is super long and is about the last days in Forecariah, Affectation in Conakry, and the first few days at site. Save this for a day when you're really bored and don't mind reading lots of really poor writing!)

And so the adventure begins! Yesterday (Monday), around 11am, I waved goodbye to Ben and Alison, the last volunteers I will see for at least a month, maybe even two or three. You read about volunteers wanting to run after the Peace Corps truck, yelling “Wait! I’m not ready!” In no way was that the case for me; I’ve been ready for this moment for what seems like years. Although my French isn’t quite where I’d like it to be, and my Susu, Yalunke, and Malinke are virtually non-existant, the language barrier does not scare me – hell, I’ve been living lost in translation for three months already, haven’t I? And the prospect of teaching does not scare me, either; the three weeks of practice school took care of that. The only other factor that seems like it may play a role in the “Wait, come back!” scenario must be loneliness. This is something one must take into great consideration even when applying to the Peace Corps. All of us know how lonely this life will be, but I’ve decided to take these last few months to focus on the positive aspects of this loneliness, on how productive I can be over the course of the next two years, of how much I can improve myself.

No, I wasn’t afraid when that truck pulled away, but I won’t deny that the farewell was indeed bittersweet. To reflect on this, I’m going to flash back to my last few days in Forecariah and the ensuing weekend spent in Conakry for affectation.

Going back to Tuesday of last week, I find myself returning to the Doumbwaya’s house for the last time. On this night, the quarter is blessed with electricity, which means the small living room is filled with thirty people, all trying to get a view of the Susu movie playing on a television akin to the I stayed up late watching in my college dorm room. The room is filled with the smell of people have put in an honest day’s work every day of their life, but have never stopped to put on deodorant on any one of those days. Cigarette smoke wafts through the air as babies cry and cell phones ring.

I could easily walk right through this crowd and go straight to my room, as I do most other nights, but on this night I took my seat right next to Nba, the pride in his eyes telling me I’d made the right move. Never mind the fact that I couldn’t understand a moment of the Susu film, the important thing was that I was there, sharing it with them.

As we sat there, I couldn’t help but worry about what I’d wear at the closing ceremony the next morning (you know, because I’m such a diva!). The previous week, Nba came into my room accompanied by the tailor to take my measurements for what they told me would be a boubou to wear to the final ceremony. Trusting this outfit would be ready in time, I’d already packed up the rest of my clothes and sent them off in one of the Peace Corps trucks. At this point, the only clothes I had to wear were the shorts and t-shirt I was currently sporting. As much as I like shorts and t-shirts, this outfit hardly seemed appropriate for giving my farewell speech the next day.

Dieu merci, the tailor arrived Chez Doumbwaya at about 10:15 pm, just as I was about to give up hope and go to bed. Upon seeing my new boubou, I couldn’t help but fall in love with it! It was classy, yet, to steal a line from America’s favorite family restaurant, unrefined. Wearing the boubou made me feel about a foot taller and as though I could carry myself as a true Guinean. The film crowd proved an admirable audience for my fashion show as I paraded about in my new attire, clapping and hooting as I stopped to do a turn here, a little dance step there. Suffice to say, everyone was happy and, boubou in tow, I was able to sleep easy.

Wednesday morning, I awoke with a good three hours to spare before the ceremony began. After my final bucket bath in Forecariah, I donned my new outfit and sat down to do some writing. On my way home the day before, I had stopped to take some photos of my favorite café and of Aissatou, the 12 year old girl who runs the place with her father. As I snapped the photos, a man came up and introduced himself as Makslope, a travelling singer/dancer from Liberia who was in Forecariah to perform at the end of Ramadan. He explained that, being from Liberia, a country colonized by America, he was also American and he and I were, in fact, brothers. According to him, this meant we must exchange gifts so as to always remember one another. Although I agreed, saying I’d bring his present the next day, I thought he was just trying to get me to give him money from my bottomless American pocket. Naturally, I was a surprised when he immediately changed the direction of the conversation and asked that I take a picture of him jumping over the motorcycle which had been standing next to us. I obliged and wound up with a pretty decent souvenir of Makslope, which he then explained was his gift to me. As we parted for the evening, he expressed his regret in my impending departure, wishing that we had more time to discuss our ideas, to talk about changes that needed to be made in the world.

This brings me back to Wednesday morning, where I sat at my desk writing – my gift to Makslope. I wrote three pages on the status of women in West Africa, about how few girls make it to high school and even fewer to university. I wrote about the people who ask me every day for money and the people who ask how to become rich like me and why Americans are so much better off than Guineans. While there are many answers to these questions (one may even wish to argue that, although Americans have more money, they aren’t necessarily happier than Guineans..), I chose to address the issue of women in society. Imagine trying to tackle some sort of task, but only being able to use half of your intellect to do so – you would never finish. Isn’t a society where only half of the population is contributing basically the same thing?

Please don’t think I’m trying to cast a negative shadow on the men of Guinea. Although, at first glance, this may seem to be a society driven by male chauvinists, the women are just as much to blame, that is to say if anybody is really “to blame”. Generation after generation of this lifestyle has made it the cultural norm – one doesn’t see the women fighting or complaining about the fact that they must stay home from school to do the cooking and cleaning while the boys go to class and get their education. In order for a real change to occur, there has to be some sort of great cultural shift, and such was my charge to Makslope. I explained that, as a travelling performer, he had the opportunity to reach the right audiences and to spread the right messages. This may not be the sort of gift he was hoping for, but I was happy with it, and he we very happy when I handed it to him as we drove off, telling me he loved me and he would never forget me. That said, everything I wrote could be totally wrong and I really hope that, 10 years from now, I don’t find out I was the catalyst to the greatest cultural meltdown in West Africa!

With my writing finished, I went outside to meet my homonym, the person for whom I was given the name Ablo. It turns out he’s an old neighbor of the Doumbwayas who is now studying at the university in Conakry. I took this as a compliment because it meant I’d been named after one of the smartest people they knew. To my surprise, he presented me with yet another outfit – a complet from the Forest Region. After taking several pictures with him, the Doumbwayas, and my friend Sekouba, we set off for the Maison de la Jeunesse, where the farewell ceremony was to be held.

We all sat – wait, did I say sat? what I meant to say was we all melted in the Maison for the next two hours awaiting the Peace Corps director from Conakry and the local dignitaries. Perhaps melted is a strong word, but I’m sure we all lost five or ten pounds as we sat in what amounted to a 95 degree barn, dressed to the 9’s in our boubous, complets, and fancy African hats. In spite of the heat, everyone looked magnificent – Joe looked ready to take over the world in his tall maroon outfit and matching mouchoir; John’s family had set him up with a fancy gold lace-lined outfit, complete with close-toed Guinean sandals; Tiffany, in her indigo complet from the Fouta Region, had a wonderful radiance about her.

At long last, the country director arrived and we were able to get started. Apparently, on their way out of Conakry, a riot had erupted, resulting in police-fired teargas. Needless to say, the Peace Corps truck was forced to turn around and take a different route.

As a whole, this ceremony was not terribly different from the opening ceremony, save for a few things:
1) This time, PCT’s gave 4 speeches, instead of just the one given in French by Valentin at the opening ceremony. Rachel gave the Pular speech, Tiffany the Susu speech, Carolina the Malinke speech, and I ended it with the French speech.
2) Although the DJ was back, this time he wasn’t playing the same lively dance music. Rather, he was playing much more subdued, almost mournful, Muslim music. I imagine this was die to the ceremony falling during Ramadan, which also probably explains why there wasn’t any dancing this time.
3) There was no feast following the ceremony, which was most definitely due to Ramadan and the associated fasting.

I was really excited about giving the speech. Although I’d like to say people voted for me to give it, that would be far from the truth. Basically, I wanted to give it and nobody else did, so it was mine. It probably sounds silly that this would be something I’d want so badly, but I’ve never really given a speech before. Sure, I’ve played my violin and viola in front of large audiences before, and I’ve read at church and things like that, but I’d never really had the chance to present my own thoughts and words to a group like this. With Valentin’s help I put together my speech, of which I’d hoped to post a video. Unfortunately, you can’t really hear anything I’m saying in the video because the sound system left a bit to be desired. For those of you who are interested, here’s the speech I gave (it’s short and simple, but I like to think it’s also kind of sweet :) ):

De la part de tous les stagiaires, je voudrais vous remercier pour votre hospitalite, votre gentillesse, et votre patience. Quand nous sommes arrives ici en Juillet, il y avait vingt-cinq stagiaire. Aujourd’hui, nous partons avec le meme groupe de vingt-cinq stagiaires. Ceci est, sans doutes, grace a votre hospitalite et votre gentillesse.

Pendant ces trois mois, vous nous avez appris comment vivre comme les Guineens. Vous nous avez aide apprendre le francais. Vous nous avez prepare les plats Guineens, comme le riz et sauce, et vous nous avez meme montre comment s’habiller comme les Guineens, par exemple comment nous sommes habille aujourd’hui.

Ce que vous nous avez appris sera, sans doutes, indisposable pendant les deux prochaines annees. Par exemple, pour trois semaines, nous avons enseignes vos enfants, mais en realite, en enseignant nous avons appris comment devenir de meilleurs professeurs.

Tous les moments n’etaient pas faciles, mais vous nous avez aide a surmonter les moments difficiles comme nous etions malades ou comme nos familles nous manqeouns.

Je me souvendrai toujours de mes trois mois passé a Forecariah. Cette ville est benie d’une beaute naturelle exemple par ses montagnes ou sa riviere. J’espere que le Corps de la Paix continue a envoyer de future generation de volontaires pourqu’ils puissant beneficier de cette ville comme nous l’avons puis.

Maintenant que nous allons franchir un nouveau palier en quittant Forecariah nous nous sentions prêt, grace a vous, de commencer notre aventure en Guinee pour les deux prochaines annees. Merci encore pour tout que vous avez fait et nous esperons vous revoir dans le futur. Merci a touse.

Or, in English:

On behalf of all the trainees, I would like to thank you for your hospitality, your kindness, and your patience. When we arrived here in July, there were 25 trainees. Today, we leave with that same group of 25 trainees. This is, without doubt, thanks to your hospitality and your kindness.

During these three months, you have taught us how to live like Guineans. You helped us learn French; you cooked us Guinean food, like the rice and sauce; and you showed us how to dress like Guineans, for example, how we’re dressed today.

That which you taught us will be, without doubt, indispensible during the next two years. For example, for three weeks we taught your children, but in reality, in teaching we were learning to become better teachers.

All the moments were not easy, but you helped us to overcome those difficult times when we were sick or when we missed our families.

I will always remember my three months spent in Forecariah. This town is blessed with a natural beauty exemplified by its mountains and its river. I hope that the Peace Corps will continue to send future generations of volunteers here so they can benefit from this town the way we were able to.

Now that we are going to cross over to a new stage in leaving Forecariah, we will be ready, thanks to you, to begin our adventure in Guinea for the next two years. Thanks again for all that you did and we hope to see you again in the future! Thank you, everyone.

Surely you can imagine everyone standing up, clapping before I had even finished, the men giving each other high-fives, the women in tears of joy and sadness. Well, that’s how I like to remember it.. although that really wasn’t the case, because, due to the sound system and my inability to hold the microphone the perfect distance from my mouth, I don’t think anyone understood a word I said. Oh well – at least they didn’t boo!

And for all those people in Forecariah right now, sipping your cappuccinos as you browse my blog at the internet café on Main Street, or to my neighbors, the Toures, who are probably reading this via wifi on their laptop as they watch the Georgia Tech football team pummel Georgia on their wall-mounted flat screen – now you finally know what I was trying to say that day as I gave my speech at the closing ceremony!

That, of course, was just a joke. Everyone knows Guineans really don’t care much for American football.

With the speech and ceremony over, it was finally time to say goodbye to our families. Just how do you say goodbye to the people who raised you from a drooling toddler, through that awkward teenage phase, and into full-grown, Guinean adults? Honestly, I still don’t have the answer. I would have liked to have given them all hugs, but I’d read somewhere that Africans don’t give hugs at departures – that means you won’t be coming back.

Things were easy enough with Nga – she lagged behind and just sat on the ground in the shade; she had been fairly sick the last few days (although I later heard she had gone through the same symptoms with the three previous trainees). I walked over, took her hand, and thanked her many times in Susu. I finished with my favorite Susu phrase, “n bara sewa,” which means, “I’m happy,” smiled, and returned to the others.

My heart was at once broken and warmed when I walked back and saw Nba close to tears. It was obvious they didn’t know how to say goodbye, either. It’s so strange that, three months ago, I was experiencing some of the unhappiest moments of my life, most of which I attributed to this family, but there I was at the end of training, a changed person, at one of the happiest moments of my life, and it was all thanks to these same people. It’s safe to say I’ve developed an admiration and love for this family as though I really was one of their own, and I will never forget it.

Not knowing what to say and not wanting to prolong the farewell, I thanked them again, told them I would miss them but would return again someday, shook hands, and left. When I turned back around a few seconds later, they had already disappeared through the crowd of well-wishing families and other trainees. In a way, this farewell was almost harder on me than when I left my real family behind at Bluegrass Airport in July; I managed not to cry either time (hey, I’m a man. I save my crying for those first nights alone in a foreign country for two years, or when I’m curled up on the floor vomiting with malaria…), but this time around I couldn’t deny the fact that I may never see the Doumbwayas again.

No matter what happens, I know my mom, Tom, Erin, and Hilary will always be there; I know, God willing, that I’ll see them many, many more times over the years. The Doumbwayas, though – that’s a different matter. Peace Corps could get evacuated again or I could get sick and sent home, never to see them again. Another possibility is that one of them could get sick or hurt – Mama and Torres are still at ages where they are very vulnerable to diseases like malaria and pneumonia. Heck, two days before we left, a boy from the high school was struck by a car and killed in the market just up the street. I know this all sounds morbid, pessimistic, and maybe just a little scary, but now you also have a better idea of what it’s like to say goodbye to people you love in Africa.

(And as for our safety here, we’re always the first ones pulled off the street by a helpful petit when an approaching vehicle is still 100m distant)

To wrap up on the Doumbwayas, I’ll miss them while I’m here at site, but I know I haven’t heard the last of them, either. Nba called me three days in a row in Conakry, just to check up on me, to say hi, just like a parent should. :)

I often think back to the summer before my senior year of high school, probably one of the greatest summers ever. It started with a week of all-male mock legislation at the American Legion run Boys’ State. Okay, so it doesn’t sound great, but my friends and I had a blast getting under the skin of the super serious, I-want-to-win-the-scholarship-to-Boys’-Nation kids by trying to enact laws like the requirement to rotate your tires every day – boy, did that one grind some gears! Then, I got to spend a month at the Governor’s School for the Arts, where I played my viola all day with some great musicians and spent the rest of the time living, learning, and creating with other, like-minded artists – not a bad way to spend a month, no matter how old you are. One of my fondest memories of that summer, though, comes from the two week backpacking trip in the southern Rockies with my scout troop right after the arts school finished.

On this particular day we had a 12-mile hike, up and down several ridges, ending in what was affectionately known as “the seven switchbacks from Hell”. The campsite for the night was Apache Springs, and we soon found out that up by the springs we could set up an authentic Indian sweat lodge. After building a giant fire and heating up the rocks, we stripped down to our underwear and crawled through the tiny opening into the animal hide covered dome. Pouring water over the hot rocks to make it steam and feel even hotter, we timed ourselves to see how long we could last, how tough we all were. About twenty minutes later, the five of us burst out of the lodge, dumping buckets of ice cold spring water over our heads. It was, easily, the most refreshing moment of my life.

Arriving back in Conakry was kind of like that; except, instead of twenty minutes, we were in that sweat lodge for two months. Stepping through that door to the volunteer house was such a wonderful sensation, and I still can’t really put my finger on why.

My first explanation would be immediate access to air conditioning, television, and the internet, but that wasn’t it. I’m not a big TV junkie and I’ve got a bunch of shows and movies on my iPod anyways; air conditioning is nice, but after a few months you get used to the sweating and stickiness; and the internet – well, I don’t really get that many e-mails anymore and I only have enough good material to be able to post on this sucker every once a month or so, anyway.

No, that great feeling when I crossed the threshold was not a result of material products. I guess it must have has something to do with a freedom associated with the visit. The last time we visited the Peace Corps compound in Conakry was during our first few days in the country, when PCV’s and staff held our hands everywhere we went. Then, over the next eleven weeks in Forecariah, we always had classes to attend, classes to teach, and homework to do or grade. When we had spare time, we had to report our every move to our families. For the first time in almost three months, we were able to do what we wanted, when we wanted, without the stress of languages, passing the cross-culture exam, or simply fretting over what our families would feed us next.

For me, getting to spend time with the other G-16ers without those stresses was like getting to know them all over again, in a good way. Towards the end of our time in Forecariah, I was getting tired of always hanging out in the same places, for the same limited periods of time, always talking about the classes of that day or the next. For once, we were able to shed those restrictive shackles and just be ourselves. I got chances to really get to know some people I really hadn’t “met” during training, and the friendships I already had only became stronger.

On Thursday morning, we piled into the Peace Corps bus and made our way en ville to get some money from the bank and subsequently spend it all, gorging ourselves on “American” food. Peace Corps had already deposited our move-in allowance and the next three months’ living allowance, resulting in a whopping 4.3 million francs; we’d finally struck it rich! I withdrew three million, not sure of the next time I’d be in Conakry and wanting to make sure I had enough for the next few months. Since Guineans don’t have any bills larger than ten thousand francs, this resulted in quite a few bills, enough to need a backpack, but not so many that I wasn’t able to refute the lyrics of the great V.I.C./Soulja Boy song “Get Silly”, where they say “but forget a rubber band, cuz you can’t put a rubber band around a milli-ann!” Sorry Soulja Boy, but you CAN put a rubber band around a milli-ann!

With our money stowed safely away in our bags, a group of us made our way over to La Gondole, where I filled up on a large, fried egg (what the..?) pizza and a chocolate-banana milkshake. While it wasn’t a bad lunch, I’m not sure it was worth the 60 mille I had to fork over at the end. The cravings for American food, while they’re certainly still there, aren’t at the forefront of my mind anymore, which I suppose is actually quite a good thing, n’est-ce pas?

After leaving the restaurant, the plan was to go to the Leb store (run by Lebanese people) to pick up food and cooking supplies to take to site. The local authorities, however, had a different plan for us. When we got to the corner where we were going to turn towards the store, a police officer stepped in my path and saluted me. Confused, I half-saluted him and said “bonjour” as I tried to move around him. Staring me down with a look of incredulity, he stuck his arm out across my chest and demanded everyone’s documents. We obliged, passing over our Peace Corps ID cards and our cartes d’experts – our official Guinean documentation of our work here in the country. He claimed this wasn’t good enough, asking why we weren’t giving him our passports. We explained that our passports were held in the safe at the Peace Corps compound, resulting in him marching of down the street, taking our IDs with him and barking for us to follow.

I’m sure everybody has seen the movie or read the book where the unsuspecting foreigner falls prey to the crooked cop and winds up locked away in a dark prison cell for years, forgotten. Well, I wasn’t about to be that guy! I took about ten stops before I stopped, letting the police officer disappear into the crowd of people down the street; it would be much easier to get myself a new Peace Corps ID than get myself out of the back of some locked, windowless van… but just then our hero arrived in the form of Sam, the chief of the Peace Corps motor pool. We explained the problem and he immediately chased down the police officer, eventually returning with our IDs and an explanation. Apparently, security has been raised in Conakry such that all foreigners must now constantly prove they have not illegally entered the country. Why a bunch of Americans would try to sneak into Guinea, I don’t know.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully – olive oil, baking soda, and popcorn kernels were bought at the Leb store, then the afternoon was spent watching “Out of Africa” with Conor, Luke and Tiffany. The movie was alright, but I won’t be in a hurry to watch it again; it was quite slow-moving, and if I really want to re-watch a Robert Redford movie, it would probably be “The Sting.”

Friday – the day to which we’d all been looking forward for months, the day we could finally shed that nasty title of “trainee” and toast one another as “volunteers”! The swearing-in ceremony was held at the U.S. embassy, and oh! how good it felt to be back on U.S. soil, in a sense. The swearing-in ceremony was similar to the farewell ceremony in that four volunteers gave speeches, along with the some speeches by the Peace Corps administration. It differed in the fact that some more important Guinean officials spoke, the ambassador spoke, and, of course, at the end of THIS ceremony, we were all volunteers.

Understandably, we were all a bit disappointed when we’d been told there would be no food following the ceremony – it would be rude to eat in front of the fasting Guineans. So, you can imagine our delight when the last speech ended and we turned around to find tables of delicious finger foods and pastries. Not only were we on American soil, but we were eating bologna, mini-pizzas, cake, and drinking soda – can you get any more patriotic than that?

Dan, the Peace Corps country director, and his wife, Julia, had planned a pool party and barbeque for us at their house starting at four. Seeing as we had a few hours between our time at the embassy and the impending bash, we couldn’t think of a better way to get ready than with a few cold beverages, so a group of us headed down to the beach bar, my first visit since July. Showing up to the beach on a Friday (the Muslim holy day) during Ramadan was like landing on the moon – it was completely empty. Well, empty of people; there was still plenty of trash to go around! Needless to say, we had the bar to ourselves.

A few beverages later, the time was right to dive into the pool party. had one thing on my mind – swimming in that cool, clear water!

The food was ready a few hours later and we enjoyed some of the most delicious, and I must add, bone-free, hamburgers I’ve ever had, along with beans, potato salad and some fantastic dirty rice. To top it all off, we had fruit salad and brownies! for dessert. Throughout the barbeque, various embassy staff dropped in to eat and say hello, including the ambassador herself, who had arrived at her post in Guinea only a few days before.

Towards the end of the night, I made my way up to the roof, where I could watch the storm roll in from the Atlantic. A nice breeze blowing in across the ocean kept things cool the lighting closed the distance between us. I must have been up there for about two hours, just watching. Every now and then somebody else would pop up and we’d talk for a bit. All in all, it was a pretty cool end to a marvelous day.

Saturday was a day meant for shopping and preparing for site. A large group of volunteers hustled off in the morning to fight the crowds (and pickpockets) en ville at Medina. I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of being with such a large group, and I figured I could probably find most of what I needed at the nearby Towya market, so I stayed behind. A few hours later, Conor, Valentin, Tiffany, and I decided to splurge on one last meal, so we deplaced a taxi (meaning we were the only occupants) to Le Damier – one of the nicest restaurants in Conakry. When I say nicest, don’t go conjuring up images of the Mayflower Hotel or the 1796 restaurant in Georgetown. Instead, imagine a quaint, clean, little French café. While the waiter was appropriately snooty, the food was appropriately good. I ordered a croquet madame, a slice of chicken/tomato pizza, and a cappuccino. My bill came out to 78 mille, only about 40 mille shy of what we’ve all decided will be our next great Conakry adventure – Le Damier’s Saturday buffet! I could talk about it now, just based on what I saw, but I think I’ll wait until I’ve actually had the chance to enjoy it and can do it justice – perhaps I’ll treat myself to the buffet for Christmas?

Later in the day, I made my way down to Towya and picked up a few of the essentials – bed sheets, pots, dishes and utensils, and some screen to make screen doors for my hut. The hard thing about buying stuff in Guinea is that you always have to haggle over the prices and, being Americans, we have to haggle that much more. Due to this, no matter how much I pay in the end, I always walk away with the suspicion that I’ve been ripped off. That said, I was very pleased to later find out that I’d paid less for my goods than everyone else.

With the shopping finished, Ashley, Tiffany, Valentin, and I walked down to the beach bar to join Ben and Luke, who had spent the entire day at the beach in lieu of shopping. As the sun began to set, the sand-soccer games began to thin out and once again we had the beach mostly to ourselves. The two hours we spent there that evening were some of the happiest, most euphoric hours I’ve had in country. I was in great company, watching the sun set over the ocean with islands off in the distance, the day before we all set off on our great adventures. It was like fitting that last piece into the jigsaw puzzle – everything was finally in its right place, and the picture it made was beautiful. Oh, and having a few beers didn’t hurt, either.

That night, we feasted on a pig Ian had killed and roasted, along with coleslaw, deviled eggs, and a crème brule to die for. Caron had organized a rooftop carnival involving twister, flip cup, and beer pong. Tiffany and I exercised total domination in beer pong, clinching the championship title… okay, let’s be honest – the last game was taking so long we had to declare it a tie and move on… Added on to the victory list was G-16’s triumph over G-15 in a best two-out-of-three flip cup challenge. What were the prizes? Bear beer! (See the picture above)

The perfect weekend in Conakry came to an abrupt end Sunday morning when Ben, Alison and I hugged everybody goodbye, climbed into the Land Cruiser, and left. While I will see a few other volunteers in the next month or two, it will be at least Christmas before I see the rest of them, which is what made my farewell to Ben and Alison so bittersweet on Monday. As ready as I had been to set off on my own when we left Forecariah, the time spent in Conakry reminded me of the good friends I’d made and how much I would miss them over the next few months. Of course, all you friends back home reading this shouldn’t feel bad – it was much harder leaving you guys! But I think you already knew that :)

So, that brings me (quasi-)up-to-date. After the Peace Corps truck pulled away, I got to work settling in. One of my first moves was to commission screen doors from the carpenter, who’s ‘shop’ is only about 100 meters from my hut. It’s Friday as I write (this entry started on Monday – little by little, a bird builds its nest, right?), and the doors aren’t ready yet; I’m hoping they’ll be waiting for me when I get back from Faranah tomorrow evening.

When we first pulled up to my hut Monday, there must have been about 50 people waiting to greet me. At first, I was really stressed – how would I be able to get anything done with all those people around?? Within an hour of the truck leaving, though, everyone else had also left, the crowd having lost interest pretty quickly. It’s been wonderful having the last few days carefree and to myself. I’ll wake up around 7:30, roll out of bed, step into my backyard (which is now enclosed and private), where I’ll relax into my hammock. There, I’ll pick up my book of the moment (I’m on my third already), read for an hour or so, and doze back off. I’ll typically only sleep 20 or 30 minutes at a time in the hammock, but there have certainly been a few afternoons when I’ve put away a good hour or two…

At some point, around 9 or 10, I’ll pull myself out of the hammock and take off for a run or bike ride. I’ve not run terribly far yet – only six miles yesterday – I’ll have to get up a lot earlier for the distance runs, because by 9 am it’s already terrifically hot and humid, and there’s not beaucoup de shade on my road. I was curious as to how the locals would react to my running and was pleased with the result: although there were a few puzzled looks, there were plenty more smiles and cheers.

On Wednesday, I took off on my bike to Laya, a village about ten miles distant which I passed through on that 26 mile tour de force during site visit. When I passed through last time, a young man walked with me for a bit, explaining Laya had a tree where you could go for cell phone reception, so I thought I’d see if it was true. When I arrived, a petit named Haround, maybe around 14 or 15 years old, and three of his friends took me to the tree. I stood under the tree, staring at my phone, waiting for a signal, oh, and feeling just a little silly, too – the signal never came. When Harouna saw this, he said there was one other spot, pointing to the top of a large hill off in the distance. It seemed a long way, but I’d already come ten miles, and what else was I going to do? Go home and take another nap?

So we went. Halfway up the hill, he told me I’d have to leave my bike, and I could see way – from there on, the trail was barely visible through the jungle dense with trees and 8-foot tall grass. Although it wasn’t far, it wasn’t the easiest of hikes. The view from the top, signal or not, made the whole trip worthwhile. You could see the entire village of Laya laid out in the distance and then for miles past it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera – but now that gives you a reason to tune back into my next post!

So, aside from reading, napping, exercising, and writing endlessly in my journal, what else am I doing? Becoming bien integre, of course! On Tuesday, I spent a few hours walking around with the principal of my school, Monsieur Camara. Our first stop was the market, which is only held on Tuesdays. Wanting some fruit, I was shocked to find out how expensive it was.. or, should I say.. inexpensive! I bought twelve grapefruit for 800 francs (about 16 cents), 11 oranges for 1200 frances (about 24 cents) and 10 bananas for 2000 francs (about 40 cents). In all, I bought more fruit than I could carry for less than a dollar. You can bet your bottom dollar that I used that last 20 cents to buy a bag!

Afterwards, we went about the village, greeting all the local big-men. The imam presented me with two mille to buy myself kola nuts as the customary welcome gift, as did the president of the quartier marche. It didn’t feel quite right just mixing that money with the rest of my money, so it’s sitting in an honorary spot at the corner of my desk/table/counter, kind of like how people frame the first dollar they make, until I figure out something better to do with it.

Each day at site, I make an effort to spend at least a few hours integrating into the community, which basically means a walk through town, in my Sunday best, to the café, where I’ll drink tea with the older men who can only speak a little French. Most of the people here speak a language called Yalonke, which it either the basis for Susu or is based off Susu, depending who you ask. Nevertheless, I am the only volunteer in a Yalonke village (I think there are only about 10,000 people who speak it in the world, and most of them are in my village), so I just studied Susu with the others. I can pick up words here and there, but it is a very subtle language and it will be quite a while before I am comfortable with it.

My only real setback in moving into my hut was the realization that two of my bags had not made it onto the truck in Conakry. It’s not a big deal, hopefully they will arrive when the mail-run comes. It is, however, a little inconvenient because those two bags were the bags with all the stuff I’d bought in Conakry for site – i.e. my sheets and my cooking gear. Like I said, it’s not a big deal – I have a sleeping bag until the sheets come, and my neighbors will cook for me until my cooking stuff arrives… or so I thought!

When I walked through town during my site visit about a month and a half ago, I must have received 20 invitations to eat with various people. Naturally, I figured the same thing would happen when I moved here.. only, that wasn’t the case. My first night I ended up eating some care package snacks for dinner. The second night, though, I did receive a delicious chicken dinner from my principal’s wife, as well as some rice for Wednesday’s lunch, but other than that, I’ve been on my own. Luckily, I have that care package food and the fruit I bought the other day, so I’ve actually been eating quite well. On this day, though, I spotted some bread for sale on my walk through town. 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 before the 50km bike ride into Faranah.

I fixed myself a nice little sandwich with peanut butter, honey I’d bought in Conakry, and even went a bit overboard by adding a few pieces of some fancy bittersweet chocolate my friend had been so kind as to send. Sandwich in hand, I sat in front of my hut, taking the first bite as I continued to write in my journal. Just as I was about to take the second bite, an old woman walked by on the path which crosses just 20 feet from my front door. She greeted me in Yalonke and I greeted back, and, in an attempt to be vrai Guinean, said “invitation?” Guineans love this and always say, “Merci, bon appétit!” and go on their way. Well! I’ll be damned if that old woman didn’t take me up on it! She took the sandwich and sat next to me. Expecting her to take a bite and hand it back to me, I was rather surprised when she stood up, said thanks, and walked off, my whole sandwich (and dinner), minus a bit, in tow!

Thank goodness for second halves, right? I just went right back into my hut and made up the sandwich I was going to have for breakfast, although this time I was sure to eat it behind the cover of a book whenever somebody walked by… I guess the moral of the story is that whenever you invitation someone on a sandwich, unless you want them to take the whole dang thing, break off how much you really want to share…

33 pounds.

2008-09-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

That's how much I've lost since I came to Guinea. I was 220 pounds the day we left for Forecariah; 187 the day we finished in Forecariah and come back to Conakry.

Sorry there's not a new, large post on leaving Forecariah and swearing in at the embassy, but there's a lot to swallow in the process, and I'd like to do it justice. Hopefully I will be back on here before Halloween with a decent wrap-up.

Until then, please know that I am incredibly happy right now; the last few days in Conakry have been some of my happiest, most euphoric moments. The friendships I have made here are great and will only become stronger. And, I am very proud of everyone in our group - all 25 of the people who started that first day in Philly have made it all the way here, a rarity for Peace Corps.

I'd like to give special shout-outs to the parents of Tiffany, Alison, and Valentin, and of course to all those other G-16 parents out there reading this right now. Your kids are all wonderful people and I consider myself very lucky to have them in my life. Except for Jesse, of course. We could all really do without him...

Joking. I love Jesse; there are none better than said guy.

Lastly, for those of you who would like to leave a comment but don't have a google account, I've updated the settings so that anonymous comments can be made. So go ahead then, make 'em!

On killing chickens, pigs and men

2008-09-24T19:01:00.000-07:00

(This post was finished late Wednesday, early Thursday, the 24th and 25th of September. At this point I have finished training in Forecariah and am in Conakry through Sunday, at which point I’ll travel to Kankan for a day or two before setting off for my site. This post will mostly be limited to things which happened before Wednesday – hopefully I will have a new post ready Saturday night to reflect on things like leaving Forecariah, swearing in at the US embassy, and my hopes and fears of being the only white person for 120 km. If you want to catch me in the next few days while I still have good phone service, my number is 224-65805011)

After sharing my last set of adventures with you, I was worried I might run dry on material and return to the blog empty-handed. But then I remembered I’m in Africa and all I have to do is get out of bed in order for something crazy to happen. In this entry, I’ll be regaling you with accounts of mistaken identity, evil sorcery, and gruesome beheadings, among other niceties.

Let’s start with the case of mistaken identity and the evil sorcery.

The story begins a few weeks ago, in my afternoon Susu class. For those of you who have never been in or seen a Guinean school (what’s that, like 90% of you?), I’ve gone to the trouble of providing a few pictures to lend some visuals to the story.

As you can see, there is not much to the school – basically just a bunch of rooms with open windows. These windows can prove to be a problem when teaching, because passersby don’t seem to have any problem stopping and watching your class for ten minutes. They also have no qualms with verbally greeting the occupants of the classroom, generally sticking around and speaking up until they get some sort of response. Most teachers will just shoo away the spectators, but Dr. Diané, being the friendliest person you’ll ever meet, does not hesitate to greet every single person who stops by our class.

On the particular day of this story, a man dropped by just as we were taking a break, with Federico, Tiffany and I stepping outside to stretch and walk around. Dr. Diané talked to his visitor for the duration of the break, handing the man some money as he bade him ‘Bonne chance!’ and turned his attention to us. He could tell we were curious why he gave the man money and provided us with this explanation, ‘That man is in a little bit of trouble. He was out hunting this weekend when he accidentally shot a man. It looks like he might be going to jail.’ We didn’t have much with which to respond, so the subject died away… until a few weeks later.

Now it’s a few a weeks later and, once again, Federico, Tiffany and I are sitting in Susu class. This time, a woman stops by and talks to the doctor for a good five minutes. Afterward, he turned around and explained she was the wife of the man who had been shot. Naturally, we asked how he was, and we found out he’d only been shot in the shoulder and would be okay. The next question, though, was to yield a much more interesting answer. What about the man who shot the guy? Is he in jail? ‘Well,’ the doctor responded (in French, this has been translated for your benefit!), ‘during the day, he stays in the prison across the street, but they let him walk home for meals and at night to sleep. You see, it’s a tricky situation, because it turns out the man he shot is a sorcerer. At the time when he shot him, the man/sorcerer was actually in the form of a pig. However, after being shot, the sorcerer/pig turned back into the man/sorcerer who consequently bore the bullet wound of his former pig/sorcerer-self. Since the man being charged was basically only guilty of shooting pig, since he didn’t know it was actually a man, the authorities don’t know how to justly try him.’

The entire time the doctor was telling the story, I had been recopying some notes, not watching him. Looking up at the end of the story, I was expecting to see a large grin and to hear a loud ‘GOTCHA!’, but I didn’t. He was dead serious. This is Guinea, and in Guinea, if you’re a sorcerer, you can turn into a pig. I guess, seeing as this is a Muslim country, that must generally be a fairly safe transition, what with Muslims not eating pigs ever since the time a pig led a thirsty Mohamed to a water source ages ago (is this really why Muslims don’t eat pork? This is just the explanation I’ve been given over and over here, so don’t hold me to it). Unfortunately, this man/sorcerer/pig picked the wrong time to transform, seeing as one of the very few non-Muslims in the country happened to be hunting right by him. I guess this is just one of the risks you take when you choose the path of pig sorcery.

At the end of all of this, Federico tried to connect to the story by adding that he’d heard ducks can turn into snakes. The doctor replied that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard – how could a duck possibly turn into a snake??

Please don’t misinterpret this as a knock on Dr. Diané – he is one of the most intelligent people I’ve met here: he earned his doctorate in linguistics while studying in Russia, speaks French, Russian, English, Susu, Malinke, and Pular, and now does linguistics research at the university in Conakry; basically, a pretty sharp dude. Rather, let this serve as an example of cross-cultural learning and understanding. I don’t (or at least I try not to) think less of a person because they believe a person can turn into a pig, just like I would try not to think less of a person in India for believing the cow in the middle of the road is his or her reincarnated grandfather, just like I would hope some foreigner doesn’t come to my house in the States someday and laugh at me for saying I believe in Jesus. All that said, I still think that story is really funny, and I hope you enjoyed it.

Moving on to killing chickens.

The classic Guinean method of killing a chicken comprises 8 magic steps:

1) Pick up the (now living) chicken by the feet. Preferably the feet were already bound when you bought it at the market, otherwise you may need to throw in a pre-step-1 step: catch the chicken.

2) For those of you who have read The Power of One, the next step should be obvious (and if you haven’t read it read, you should probably get on that). Lay the chicken (should we give it a name? How about Montgomery? I just came up with it and think it’s a brilliant name for a chicken with whom we don’t want an over-stayed friendship), Montgomery, down on the ground, beak first. Since the chicken has been hanging upside-down, the blood flows to the head and results in a docile, sleepy chicken. I think that’s how it works.

3) With Montgomery on the ground, spread out his wings behind it and pin them to the ground with a knee.

4) Hold his head with your left hand, being sure to cover his eyes so he doesn’t see the knife – for some reason that really freaks him out.

5) With his head in your left hand, move your right elbow down to pin the legs down, while your right hand reaches for the knife.

6) Use your left hand to spread the neck kind of thin, giving yourself something easy to cut into.

7) Now you have two choices:

7a) Use the vrai-Guinean method and just slice the neck a little, letting the chicken bleed out to death. This will take five to ten minutes.

7b) As an alternative to waiting ten minutes for Montgomery to die, you can keep sawing through after that initial slice, straight on through the neck until suddenly Montgomery is in two pieces.

8) This is the last numbered step because at this point, you just wait for the body to stop moving. The head will move around for a little while – just involuntary nerve-twitching for ten or twenty seconds, but the body is the real champ. That sucker will keep rocking for the next five minutes, as though he’s really got something to fight for. Anyways, I suppose I could go on in a little more graphic detail about what Montgomery is doing at this point, but I think I’ll spare you.

I will, however, tell you the next few steps in preparing the chicken. First, you have to break the legs midway down, so you can cut off the feet. We won’t be eating those. Next, you pour boiling water on it. This will make the feathers easy to remove, which also happens to be the next step. Pluck the feathers. Once you’ve taken care of this, you can hold our friend over a light fire for just a few seconds, charring off any remaining feathers. At this point, you have the same basic whole chicken you might see in the grocery or on a rotisserie spit.

Now that you are equipped with the knowledge of chicken killing, I suppose I’ll give you the actual story. One Sunday, a bunch of the PCTs and a few of the PCVs decided to experiment with cooking over an open fire and make a good meal at the same time. About 15 of us threw money and work to secure a nice meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and chocolate cake. We got 9 chickens from the market (if you’re curious, a live chicken costs between 15000 and 2000 GF, or between $3 and $4). Naturally, the chickens had to be killed. Honestly, I wasn’t terribly enthused by the prospect of killing – once as a child, while I was backing out of the pen, I accidently stepped on and killed one of the seven baby ducklings my parents had gotten for my sisters and me as an Easter gift. Needless to say, I was scarred for a long, long time. Well, Sunday was the day to build a bridge and I got over it. I was able to justify it by the fact that chickens will never be my friends so long as they continue to cluck, crow, and buh-gok! outside my bedroom window from 5am to 7pm every day, even after I throw rocks at them.

Some of the chickens barely bled, but not mine; he was a bleeder. To be honest, though, the whole thing really didn’t bother me; it actually all seemed pretty natural. And I love chicken. The fried result was delicious – we breaded it in flour, lemon pepper, pimont, salt, and many other tasty choses. There’s a good chance you’re also wondering how we had chocolate cake, considering there are no ovens here. Well! We made one! You take a giant pot, put three similar sized rocks on the bottom, but your (covered) cake dish on the rocks, for the pot with water about halfway up the rocks, cover the pot, and let it bake. It takes a while, but it does a pretty good job.

Here are the pictures of the ordeal - please be aware they include me cutting off the head.. and holding it, so if you don't want to see it, just skip ahead.

Practical jokes.

I’m been living with a family of clowns, and, naturally, I love it. Nba loves to prank call me. Some nights I’ll be reading on the front porch surrounded by the family and about 600 others. Just when I’ve really become engrossed in my book, my phone will start to ring. You can only imagine how excited I get when my phone rings – there’s a chance somebody might be calling me from the States! But then I pull the phone from my pocket only to see “Nba Calling”. I let out a defeated “Ohhh! Nba!!!” and they go nuts laughing. Pretending the joke is over, I put the phone back in my pocket, Nba puts his phone back into the bottom of the plastic bag he carries around. Little does he know, I’ve got his number queued and ready to go. A few minutes later --- BAM! His phone rings and he starts digging madly through his bag to answer the call.. but alas, it’s just me, hahaha! ‘Ayyyyy Ablo!!’ is the cry resounding throughout the front porch. They love it, and through this exchange I know I have become a part of the family.

As impressed as you may already be by my family’s sense of humor, I promise it gets even better. The first package I received (from my awesome mom – thanks Mom!) contained some ready to eat bacon, which is a pretty amazing thing in a country where they don’t eat pork. Figuring that my family was Muslim and would not eat the bacon, I had put off the idea of eating until installation at site. However, this all took a turn for the better one night when I ventured into the gray realm of religious discussion with Nba. It would something like this:

Me: “Nba, are you Muslim?”
Nba: “Haha, no!”
Me: “Are you Christian?”
Nba: “Haha, no!”
Me: “Do you practice any religion at all?”
Nba: “No way!”

This came as quite a shock, considering his brother, who lives across the dirt path, awakens the neighborhood nearly every morning with his 5am prayer obligations. Also, seeing that everyone else in the country is Muslim, it would have made sense for my family to follow suit.

I saw this discovery as a window of opportunity and jumped at the attempt to please my family and enjoy a tasty ‘American’ meal all at the same time – I would cook them breakfast! Seeing as I thought ahead and had packed my non-stick frying pan and matching spatula, cooking eggs and bacon over a fire would not be a problem. The morning of the breakfast, I woke up and walked down to the market, hoping to find potatoes, garlic, eggs, fruit, and all sorts of other delicious breakfast accoutrements. Unfortunately, 7am on a rainy Sunday morning is not the best time to go to the market; I ended up going home with a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, and some (expensive) bananas.

Apparently, Fote cooking causes quite a scene, such that approximately two thousand people watched as I cooked. Surprisingly, the eggs I fried over the open fire were the prettiest I’ve ever made and the breakfast turned out to be a great success. The family took after my lead in making bacon and egg sandwiches, followed by some of the bananas. Probably one of my better meals in Guinea.

Now we flash forward a few weeks to the first day of Ramadan… For those of you who aren’t familiar with this Muslim holiday, Ramadan is a month of reflection and prayer during which the followers fast during the day (they don’t eat between 5:20am and 7pm – pretty much sunup to sundown), and pray more consistently, in larger groups, and much louder. The fasting includes abstaining from water, and, in the more devout cases, even the swallowing of spit is denied.

I was curious what it was like for a non-Muslim living in a Muslim society during this time, so I decided to broach the topic with Nba. This conversation went something like this:

Me: “So, Ramadan starts tomorrow.”
Nba: “Actually, it started today. I’m already fasting.”
Me: “Fasting? What do you mean? You’re not Muslim.”
Nba: “Of course I am!”

And that night I even saw Nba pray for the first time. The son-of-a-gun pulled a fast one on me! So, it turns out, I was living with a Muslim family after all… or so I thought!! Because two days ago, I came home from school early, only to find Nba fist-deep in a bowl of rice. Our conversation?
Me: “Nba, you’re eating!”
Nba: “Well, of course I am!”

I don’t know. She gets kicked in the head by a mule – eyes go crossed; she falls in a well – eyes go back. I don’t know!

(Ten points to you if you know that quote)

On Sickness.

Last Wednesday, all 25 of us piled into the Peace Corps bus and made our way into Mamou, located in the center of Guinea. The six hour ride through windy, bumpy roads could not have been better. Oh yeah, except for the fact that about 40 minutes into the ride I got really hot and began vomiting violently. This happened six more times over the next two hours, resulting in one of the most unpleasant voyages ever, even worse than the bumpy ferry ride to Vieques the morning after Ryan and I kept drinking those hurricane glasses of Bacardi. Seeing as I haven’t been motion sick since my childhood trips to Hilton Head, I figured the vomiting must have been due to something I ate that morning (hardboiled eggs, potatoes, cucumbers, a vegetable I’ve never seen before which I hated, and peanut butter on Guinean bread). The doctor was in Mamou when we got there, so I told him about it, just sort of brushing it off as a bad case of food poisoning.

Two days later, after a few bad headaches and some dizziness which I’d attributed to poor sleep, I got a phone call from the doctor. Looks like the nausea and fever were caused by… Malaria! Yep. I became the first volunteer in Guinea to test positive for Malaria this year. You see, we had (sort of luckily) done sample blood slides the week before in a session with the doctor, and they’d happened to examine these right as I was getting sick. Pretty lucky, really. Don’t worry, you can rest easy, because I’m okay. I started the medication right away, and in spite of a miserable (and I mean REALLY miserable – vomiting seven times in forty minutes, curling up on the floor in the corner of my room, and crying) Sunday, I am feeling great now. Some blood was taken today and I should know later tomorrow whether or not I’ve got the all-clear. So, for all you parents out there reading this and worrying about your kids getting malaria, don’t worry! Just like Calvin’s dad always said – it builds character!

On another, slightly related note, I am getting paler by the day. In order to ward off malaria, I am taking Mefloquine weekly. This drug does two things: 1) not prevent malaria, apparently (just kidding! But no, really) and 2) prevent tanning. I can still get sunburned, but the medicine does something to the melanin in your skin and prevents it from coming out and making me pretty. If there’s a dermatologist somewhere out there reading this, please feel free to chime in with a comment on this. All I’m trying to say is, as you look at my pictures, month after month, this is the reason why, in spite of spending day in and day out under the African sun, I’ll be as pale as an snowman (see, that’s funny, because there are NO snowmen in Guinea).

High Culture.

Last night was my last night in Forecariah and, as such, I deemed it prudent to spend time with my family. We happened to have power, so the evening’s activities involved cramming about 40 people into our living room to watch a Susu film. I have no idea what the movie was about, but I can aver to its cultural validity. The movie seemed about one step up from me following two Guineans around with a camera, watching them greet their friends (this movie had no shortage of saluations), eating, and walking home. At one point, as I tried to find something to pay attention to in the movie, I thought about what kind of clothes the actors were wearing. “If this film is vrai Guineen, the actors would be wearing clothes from the dead white people’s market.” Sure enough, the very moment this thought crossed my mind, I looked up and saw the character on screen was wearing a University of Kentucky t-shirt. Booya!! It just so happens Nba was wearing the UK hat I’d brought for him. When I pointed out he and the actor wore the clothes of the same dead white person, the living lost it, with a few more “Ayyy, Ablo!”’s.

Practice School.

I realize teaching is the reason I’m here, so I should dedicate at least a small section of the post to it. Granted, I’ll be teaching full-time once I move to site and will have many more stories to share, so this section won’t be too long. As trainees, we spent three weeks teaching Guinean students in a sort of honorary summer school – only students who registered themselves were allowed to come. During the first week, I taught 7th and 8th grade each day, one hour for each class. During the second and third weeks, I taught 9th and 10th grade on alternating days, one two hour class each day.

Believe it or not, getting in front of a class of Guinean students and speaking French for two hours was no problem at all. I find that the first few minutes are kind of like waking up in the morning – you’re not exactly sure what you’re saying – but after a few minutes you’ve gathered yourself and are ready for the day. One of the great challenges came during tests, when every student, even the smart ones, tried to cheat. It must be in their blood. This subject really deserves its own post, so I’ll hold off on its elaboration until I’m at site.

Buff.

During the first month of training, I avoided my training in the other sense, that is, running, lifting and just fitness in general. I was worried that by leaving the family to run, I would be alienating myself and not becoming “bien integre”. As I may have already said once or twice, it’s really hot here. When I run, my body becomes very hot, so it takes a LONG time to cool down afterwards. If I go straight from the run to the bucket bath, I’ll end up spending the remainder of the evening sitting on the porch in a second bath – a bath of sweat. In an effort to prevent said sweat bath, each run/exercise session is followed up by thirty or forty minutes of laying, quite still, on a pagne of cloth on my floor as I listen to music. I’m pretty sure this ritual has convinced the family I’m nuts, but to me, it’s a moment of pure euphoria, one of the reasons I’m here. Unfortunately, it eats up a good chunk of the evening, which would have been a bit too anti-social for the premier month of stage.

During the second month, though, I hopped out of my funk. I was tired of feeling homesick, out of shape, and generally not myself. Although I don’t currently have a specific training plan to follow, this is what I mapped out:

Monday: 4 miles run, pull-ups and chin-ups at the stade 1 mile from the end of the run, core stability once I get home

Tuesday: 6 miles run, 10 sets of 25 pushups (wide grip, close grip, narrow/tricep, incline, and decline), and Basedow abs 1 (laugh if you want, but it works)

Wednesday: same as Monday

Thursday: 10 sets of 25 pushups (wide grip, close grip, narrow/tricep, incline, and decline), and Basedow abs 2

Friday : 7 miles run, pull-ups and chin-ups at the stade 1 mile from the end of the run, core stability once I get home

Saturday: 10 miles run, 10 sets of 25 pushups (wide grip, close grip, narrow/tricep, incline, and decline), and Basedow abs 3

Sunday: Off

The miles have varied as the weeks have progressed, and I’ve taken off of working out since the malaria hit, but the result is the same – I am happier and healthier now that fitness is a part of my life again. I can’t wait to get to site and put in some serious Hunter time on the road! This will probably play a big role in my future posts.

Some might be interested to know that I weighed myself today. However! I’m not going to tell you my new, African weight… yet. I want people to guess, and the winner will get a prize. Post your guesses as comments to this blog post, and I’ll put the answer and winner on the next post, Wednesday.

Hunter. What are you going to do after Peace Corps? Do you have any awesome ideas?

Of course I do! I’ve been planning on starting a snail farm for years, and now I think I’ll finally be able to realize that dream. Okay, no. Realistically, I am planning on taking the GRE and LSAT next summer, with the possibility of enrolling in graduate or law school in the fall of 2010, after I’ve finished over here. Right now, though, I’m looking at that as a backup plan. Here’s my grand Plan A:

Upon finishing my service in Guinea, I’ll travel to South Africa, where I’ll run the Comrades Ultramarathon (56 miles) with Noah, kicking off a year-long tour around the world of all the world’s great sporting events. In June of 2010, I’ll watch the World Cup in South Africa. From there, I’ll scoot up to France to see the Tour de France. Ensuite, I’ll catch the Henley Royal Regatta in England. Ultimately, I’ll see the whole world: ping pong in China; cricket in India; sumo wrestling in Japan; rugby in Australia; the Superbowl and World Series in the States. Naturally, I’d finish up the tour with the Kentucky Derby in May of 2011, at which point I’d write a book about the experiences around the world, documenting the different cultures, atmospheres around the events, and the crazy tailgating/after-parties.

Now you’re thinking, ‘Hunter, what an awesome idea! But how will you pay for it??’ Ah-hah! That’s where you come in, kind of. If you enjoy reading this blog, and especially if you don’t even know me, tell your friends and family about it and spread the word. More people reading it means I might actually work a little harder at providing you with something readable and entertaining, and maybe, with some absurd amount of luck, become a decent enough writer to pen a book. Hopefully that absurd amount of luck will also carry with it a wonderful benefactor who will know how to help me fulfill this dream! Or, if you have any ideas, feel free to share them.

Another idea, and possibly a better one, is to get some legitimate publishing credit – perhaps I could submit an article about running in Africa to a magazine like Runners’ World or Outside (thanks, Noah) and get something published (this is something I actually need to review with Peace Corps, because I’m fairly sure we can’t be paid, during service, for any writing done involving our service, a conflict of interest of sorts. However, if I refuse pay, maybe I can get around this. If, by some miracle, I can get a few things published, maybe I can convince a published to front me the money to write the book. It’s a work in progress, but I’ve got two years to try to flesh it out, so why the hell not??

And now for my shameless plug on sending me stuff.

Thanks! To everyone who’s sent me stuff. Granted, I’ve only received a handful of letters, but I’m sure the others will get here at some point. There has been a slight change to the address, such that PCT has been amended to read PCV (whoomp! there it is!), so the new address is:

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

Once again, I think drawing crosses and writing ‘Dieu Regarde!’ on the boxes/letters helps; I’ve seen that some people go as far as pasting religious images on the packages – hey, it can’t hurt.

Lots of people have been asking what to send, so here are some (okay, a lot of) ideas of things I can’t get here but love:

Twizzlers
Snickers (bite size)
Laffy Taffy
Chex Mix
Pepperoni
Jerky
Granola Bars
Camping meals (add hot water)
Fruit cups
Trail mix
Little Debbies
Sparks
Cold Beer
Woodford Reserve
Magazines (The Economist, Sports Illustrated, People – any news!)
DVDs
Good books you think I should read
Music! Mixed CDs are great, or CDs with mp3s.
NY Times/Washington Post crossword puzzles
Photos

This is just stuff I’m thinking of late at night – but I will love anything that you take the time to send. Keep in mind I only get mail once a month once I’m at site, so it may take as many as two months for your stuff to get to me. If it does get to me, though, I PROMISE you will get a response in the mail. Who doesn’t love snail mail??

Oh, and for the DVD’s – if you’re a computer buff and want to rip the movies into iPod format and just throw a bunch on one disc, that would be awesome as well (since that’s most of what I’ll be watching at site). I use DVD Decrypter to pull the movies onto the computer and Videora iPod Converter to convert the movies – if you google it there’s a great walkthrough.

Of course, a nice handwritten letter is just as good as any box packed full of candy, so write away!

If you've read this far, how about some pictures as a reward?

This is to show the giant, diagonal tree behind the house on my walk home. I love this tree.
Me and Tim, one of the Physics trainers.
This is the path I walk to my house, which is in the upper, left corner.

The Catholic church in Forecariah
Some guys playing the balafone at the maison de la jaunesse. I hope to upload a video of this soon.
Guinea's answer to Sparks Plus (although without alcohol).

The cafe I frequented before Ramadan.

And now, it is getting very late here, so I must bid you adieu. Until Saturday!

Love to all,

Hunter

26.2 in Guinea

2008-08-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

(You can enlarge any picture by clicking on it)

The last time I left you, I was battling with the French keyboard and slow internet café trying to get out short e-mails and a few blog posts up before I ran out of time and had to hand over another 5000 francs for more minutes. Now, site visit is over and I’ve successfully recharged my laptop, on which I am now happily typing away, making sweet, sweet music with the familiar keys of the good old American keyboard.

After leaving the café, I scoured the market looking for a killer outfit to wear to our Friday night party, themed ‘Hunters and Prey’ (ah! Now you’re laughing at the funny pun about the ‘killer’ outfit, right??). I’m pretty sure the PCV’s in Haute Guinean saw pictures of me prior to my arrival and just wanted a whole army of me’s –you know, because I’m so good-looking. P.S. – if you think I’m cocky now, please read my post titled ‘Good Looks, Model Physique’… and then read then read the post right after it that explains I’m just joking. :)

Anyway, I went to a booth with fabric and came away with two meters of fantastic animal print, which I proceeded to cut into the shape of a lion (or tiger, or other big cat), and drape over my shoulder, like you might see in the great movie, Coming to America. Except mine was better, because it really didn’t look anything like a cat at all. And then I used the scraps to make a loin cloth of sorts. Unfortunately, or fortunately,no pictures were taken of me before I changed out of the loin cloth for fear of splinters, but I’m sure some pictures of the rest of the costume will show up on facebook at some point.

The party ended up being a pretty good time, good enough that I was a little hungover for the bumpy ride out of Kankan the next day. Seeing as my site is the furthest from the regional capital, I was lucky enough to be the one PCT travelling with the Peace Corps truck, while all the rest took their chances in bush taxis. We drove down through lower Haute and into Kissidougou, one of the big cities of the Forest Region in the bottom part of the country. From there, we fixed a flat we’d encountered in some terrific off-roading, then made our way up out of the Forest, through some more lower Haute, and onto my site.

The road between Kissi and my site is excellent, and the landscape is nothing short of breathtaking. The last 50km or so, which I’ll probably be biking a few times a week, is probably my favorite stretch of road in the country. If I were to compare it to something most of you may know, I’d say it looks just the Shire in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, what with the small houses/huts, short doors, and verdant surroundings.

When we finally arrived at my site, 8 hours later, we were greeted by one of my neighbors, who explained that the man with the key to my hut was out of town. Oops! Mais ca, c’est pas un problem. He was very friendly and said Sarah (the PCV doing my site visit with me) and I could stay in his house (which in Guinean means we’d take his bed and he’d sleep on the floor). I’m not terribly comfortable displacing people like that, and we’d talked about a cool hotel back in Faranah with a pool and monkeys, and I just happened to have enough money to afford it for a night. The decision was made to drive back to Faranah, stay the night, then catch a cab the next morning back to my site, where we would hopefully find the man with my key.

The hotel, Hotel Del Niger, was awesome; in fact, I think they have a website – google it, baby. I don’t want to dwell on it too much, but the pool was nice and cold, as was the night air, which was a wonderful treat. I dined on steak et frites – a steak which would probably fail by American standards but which was one of the top culinary moments of my experience thus far in Guinea. The hotel, complete with flushing toilets and electricity after dark, was a welcome change. The cost was 100,000 francs, which is really expensive by my pay (about 10 days pay right now), but really cheap by your standards – about $20 a night. If you come visit we can stay there for a night or two! Here are some pictures of the two monkeys and the hotel (you stay in the huts; as Sarah put it, it’s kind of like the Disney interpretation of Africa living):

After leaving the hotel, we made our way down to the gare, where we arranged for a taxi back to my site. While we waited for the taxi to fill with other passengers, Sarah and I went off in search of egg sandwiches. As we mange’d away, a tall man in a suit came and sat with us; a minute into talking he let on that he was my principal and the man with my key. Imagine that, of all the people in the Faranah market that morning, he was able to single me out! Of course, it probably helped that I was the only white guy for miles and miles…

Anyway, we made it back to my site and into my hut at last. I know you’re dying to see the hut, so I’ll just show you some pictures:

It’s quite small and needs work, but I think it will serve me wonderfully over the next two years. The ‘wrap-around’ porch is something unique to me; none of the other volunteers have one. I’ll also have a ‘cloture’ (or closed fence) installed around the back half of the hut, giving me a private outdoor space. I think I’ll probably suspend my hammock under the roof overhang behind the hut, giving me a nice place to chill out, out of the way of passers-by.

My Principal (school principal) is probably one of the friendliest people I’ve met in country; he’s also the largest Guinean I’ve met. No shorter than 6’5 and probably a healthy 240 pounds, he’s the first person I’ve met in country larger than me. When he opened my hut, it was pretty filthy, so once again Sarah and I were offered somebody’s room – this time in his house. We ended up resting there for a while during a rainstorm, but I told him I thought if we cleaned the hut a little it would be fine to sleep in for a few nights. He thought that was a great idea, told us he’d get some students to clean it, and told us to go back to our naps. I love Guinea! Sure enough, an hour later it was clean enough to do for a few days and we made our transfer.

The next morning, Sarah had to catch a taxi back to her town, but he insisted we have breakfast at his house first. I’ve found that when a Guinean invites an American to a meal, it’s nothing like you’d expect. Generally, an invitation to eat with them is actually an invitation to eat their food, at their house, by yourself. This time was no different. He gave us a pot of hot water, tea bags, a can of condensed milk, a bag of sugar (seriously, about 5 pounds of sugar), a loaf of bread, and THE MOST DELICIOUS chicken and pasta I’ve had in country, something like a Chinese pasta (still very greasy). Generally, the chicken here is small and not very meaty, but this breakfast chicken was on par with Mr. Day’s Friday night wings, although with a different flavor, of course. And if you don’t know the wings I’m talking about, please do me a favor and make a trip over to Clarendon and eat some, then tell me how wonderful it was, and then I’ll proceed to live vicariously through you for a few days…

Moving on, literally, Sarah caught a taxi and I embarked on my…… journey.

As I said before, one of the PCV’s who has been in country for two years told me about a missionary family living in my village. Seeing as I had an entire day with nothing to do but explore, I decided it would be a great idea to find them and make some new friends. At breakfast the previous morning, I had asked the principal if there were any Americans in our village; his immediate answer was ‘no’, but about a minute into another conversation, he said ‘oh, but there are some missionaries in Neyla, about 12km down the road.’ 12km isn’t far, right? It’s only about 7.5 miles, and that’s nothing more than a nice two-hour walk. I figured once I got to the village of the missionaries we’d hang out for a while, then they’d scoop me on back to my village. If not, I could at least catch a bush taxi en route. I also figured this would be an excellent opportunity to snap some photos of the beautiful environs to show you guys. Along with the camera, I packed a book, two small, lunch-size boxes of raisins, the book I’m reading on JFK, toilet paper, my knife, cough drops, an iPod shuffle, sunglasses, and a hat – all into my Nike string bag.

I set off on the walk, more enthusiastic than you could imagine. Everything I saw was so beautiful I only wished one of you could be there with me to see it, or that I could at least call someone to describe it. I started taking pictures right off the bat, stopping many times just to observe the scenery. There wasn’t much wildlife to be seen, but there were some crow-sized birds with bright red wings flying about, although I failed to capture them on my camera. I walked along so happily listening to music on my iPod and just enjoying the fact that I was there, in the middle-of-nowhere Africa, the only white person for a hundred miles.

I reached the 5k mark a little less than an hour in, and at this point I encountered a tiny village, nothing more than just a few huts on the side of the road, along with a sign labled ‘Niaya’, pointing down a dirt path. Now, Niaya looks like Neyla might sound, considering sometimes you don’t always understand people perfectly, so I thought this would be a good place to ask about the missionaries. Unfortunately, even though every person within a mile came to see the tubabu, none of them spoke French, so asking about missionaries was not a success. Figuring that if there were missionaries, the people might at least have a clue to take me to them, and that I was only 5k into my walk, not 12, I moved on.

5k further down the road, I ran into another small village, where the people seemed to get by through bundling and selling wood for cooking fires. This time around, there was an old man around, who, through broken French, informed me that there were, in fact, missionaries. There were in a town called Yatia, and it was either five or ten kilometers further down the road. Knowing that people who travel very little don’t always have an excellent gauge of distances, I figured he actually meant the town was just 2k down the road, and that the principal had been wrong about the name of the village. Well, 5k later I knew, at the very least, that the old man had not been wrong; it would be at least 5k before I found Yatia. 15k in, I encountered a town, probably the largest before Faranah, called Laya, were there were more French speakers, and I received a definitive answer that Yatia was indeed the village of the missionaries, and that it was 6k further down the road. I also received assurance that I was crazy for already having walked so far.

If you know me, you’ll know that I didn’t turn around and go home. Another 6k? That’s nothing! Besides, the missionaries could just drive me home and I could rest for the remainder of the day. Sure enough, the people in Laya had raison – Yatia was exactly 6k further down the road. I knew right away that I was in the right place, because pigs were running all around. What does that have to do with anything? Well, the majority of the country (I think 85%) is Muslim, which means the majority of the country does not eat pork. A town with pigs is sure to have outside influence. Along with the pigs, I sited a building with ‘L’Ecole Evangelique’ painted on the side. Knowing I’d reached my destination, I sought out somebody to take me to the other Americans. Finding a young girl left in charge of making lunch, I asked in French and Susu where I could find the missionaries. Seeing that the girl was either clueless or scared, I grabbed my cheek, shook it, shouted ‘Fotes! Fotes!’ and jumped around, trying to symbolize multiple (crazy) people like me. This got the message through. She took my hand and led me up the hill to the house of the Fotes, where she left me.

After knocking for several minutes to no avail, I looked around and realized the whole area was bien locked – locked well enough for somebody going out of town for a while. I trudged back down the hill (although not before noticing the LARGEST baobab/tree/living organism I’ve ever seen, at the very top of the hill, of which I’ll take a picture next time around), trying to find out more about the missionaries. I found a nice man who invited me to sit on the porch with him and his wife, who had just finished breast-feeding and was reclining, topless. He explained that the missionaries were out of town and wouldn’t be back for at least a week. Great! He was kind enough to supply me with pen and a small piece of paper, on which I wrote a note, hoping they will eventually receive it. After, I said my goodbyes and sadly trudged off down the road.

At this point, I was almost out of water, tired, blisters were commencing to form on my feet around the straps of the oh-so-comfortable-but-not-for-13-miles Chaco sandals. Over the next 6k, one bush taxi passed me, and it didn’t even slow down. I arrived back in Laya, now 27k into my little walkabout. Luckily, we had stopped there in the taxi the day before, so I knew back in the village, away from the road, was a road with drinks and, hopefully, a new bottle of water. I found the boutique, complete with the proprietor sleeping on the bench in front of it. He was OUT. For five minutes, I repeated phrases like ‘bonjour, monsieur!, ‘ ca va?’ and ‘tana mu fenie!’ in escalating volumes, becoming thirstier with every syllable. Eventually, I poked him. He woke up, about as confused as I probably sound if you call me in the middle of the night (that’s ok, though, call me any time!!), and I commissioned him to give me a soda, a new bottle of water, and a caramel sucker. I downed the soda, which is something you have to do at the boutiques here, because they need to keep the bottles for their deposits. After, I once again set off on the road.

It was starting to get hot, and my neck was starting to feel burnt. Although I hadn’t brought sunscreen on site visit with me, I was at least smart enough to wear a long-sleeve shirt and hat the entire way. Between 15k from home and 5k from home, a few more taxis passed, but none stopped, in spite of my desperate flagging maneuvers. In the last mile, as I painfully walked step-by-step, a taxi stopped, this time without even being signaled. Everybody in the truck insisted that I get in, but at this point I was a bit delirious from the sun and was determined to finish the entire damned thing on my own. To their dismay, I said no thanks and trudged on. At long last, I made it back to my village, dead tired. There was still a picture I really wanted to take (you’ll see it below, with two huts and a scraggly baobab behind). Unfortunately, when I took out my camera, about 20 kids on the other side of the street saw and insisted on an impromptu photo session. I obliged and snapped a few, one of which is below.

Finalement, I arrived at the tiny café on my side of town, where I ordered a tea, an energy drink (warm), and three bottles of water. After resting there long enough to gain adequate energy to cross the street, I made my way over to search for bread. My town doesn’t have a baker, so bread is difficult to come by. I asked one of the boutique-men, who explained he had two loaves he’d bought in Faranah, but they were for his dinner. He (with a little regret in his voice) said he’d sell me a loaf for 1500gf, which was a good price considering it was his and he’d bought it 50k down the road. I explained I only had 1000gf, but that I only needed half the loaf. He took the mille francs and insisted I take the entire loaf; people in my village are so nice! Just the day before a Sierra Leonian gave me the last of his bucket of peanuts, for free!

Bread in hand, I made it back to my hut, where I made a DELICIOUS sandwich with some pepperoni sent by my AMAZING mom, put my feet in a bucket of water, and lay on my bed without moving for about an hour. As I was about to drift off, my principal dropped by. What did he want? Oh, just to see if I was interested in taking a walk around town. After explaining my adventure, to which he was incredulous, he was very sympathetic and said I needed to rest. I did. I took a bucket bath and tended to my poor, poor feet. See, in the course of the walk, I covered at least 42k, which is the same distance as a marathon (26.2 miles to you non-metric folk). In my opinion, this definitely counts as my third marathon. It was just as hard as New York City in the carrot, and I was probably even more sore and certainly more sunburnt. I also had a pretty extreme heat rash covering my torso when I took off my shirt, although it’s all gone now. Anyway, that’s pretty much the entire marathon story, so here’s some pictures of the walkabout:

In other news:

*The day before site-visit, we had something called Free University, where we had to make presentations in French on subjects we knew well and could teach to the other PCTs. My friend, Valentine, and I decided to show everyone how to carry a baby on your back like Guinean women. If you saw my picture of Mama in the last post, this is the same thing, except Valentine is a grown man. As you can imagine, it went over pretty well. Even Monsieur Diallo, who we’ve never seen smile, was forced to cover his mouth to prevent an audible laugh. Here are some pictures:

*COMMANDO BEAR. Could you possibly think of a cooler name for an energy drink? I saw the new poster at my café and knew I had to have it at least once. (If you haven’t seen the powerthirst videos, now is an excellent time to get on youtube and search powerthirst, powerthirst 2, and brawndo). I can definitely see myself going crazy enough in my isolation at site to make an awesome solo advert for this tasty beverage on my camera. It takes like Redbull, but with no carbonation, in case you were wondering, and is made in Thailand. The can:

*Communication when I move to site. When I finish my training and move to the middle of nowhere, you won’t be able to contact me. Very much. There is no cell phone reception in my village. However, a man on the road during my walk told me there’s a tree near Laya where you can get reception on the Areeba network, although I don’t know how often I’ll go there to use it, since I can’t use it to talk to most of you anyways, as I have to be home before dark (travelling on Guinean roads after dark is forbidden by PC, as it is little more than a death wish. Most cars don’t have working lights and won’t stop for anything). That said, Faranah has reception, as well as internet and food. Right now, my plan is to bike into Faranah every Saturday or Sunday (I’ll let you know the week before which day it will be), where I’ll hang out on the internet, sipping cold drinks, and hopefully taking your calls before I head home around 4:30pm my time (12:30 eastern time). So, if you want to chat, you know when your window is! And please call, I will really need that in order to make it through this isolation. Fingers crossed, there will be a volunteer posted in Faranah beginning in February, which means I can probably crash with them on weekends and have phone service from Friday to Monday, but that’s still a ways off. In the meantime, letters are still great, and send a few of the same one, so maybe one of them will get through. I get mail the second Tuesday of every month.

*Driving back from site visit, I finally got that feeling of PC contentment where I knew I would be okay here for the duration of my service. Somehow I got over an emotional hump during site visit where I knew I would be really happy the next 22 months or so. I think the prayer ‘God, please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the ability to know the difference’ has helped a lot. Let’s just hope I can recognize which things are and aren’t changeable! Here’s a picture taken from the taxi of the beautiful Basse Cote region:

*The beard. Is gone. I needed a change, so now I look like a twelve-year-old again.

Alors! I think this is enough for now. I’m in Conakry now and for the next few hours, which should mean GREAT cell phone reception if you want to call, otherwise call anyway, because it’s not that bad in Forecariah anyway. Much love to all my loyal friends and family who are still reading this, some seven weeks into my journey. I love and miss you all and couldn’t do this without your support.

I Ate Four Avocadoes Today

2008-08-15T03:52:00.000-07:00

(So this post is going up the same day as the previous one, but I felt like I needed to break off the old post and start a new one… I was having to backtrack too much to see what I had and had not said, and felt like the post was getting a little out of control.)

As I type, it is 7pm on the 12th of August. We only had about 30 minutes of good rain today, so the air is still sticky and hot. The sun has tucked itself in for bed behind the mountains; shadows are growing longer by the minute. When I finish typing, I’ll turn off the computer, light my kerosene lantern, and go to work preparing a lesson plan for tomorrow.

Physically, I am once again sick, but all is not lost – my spirits are still high and I’m on medication to help kick the cold. I’ll spare you the long story and give you the symptoms: vomiting last week, turning into a swollen throat, chest sore from coughing, dizziness, constant fatigue, achy muscles, this disconcerting freezing of my neck muscles when I sleep. Fingers crossed, I’ll be better by Thursday, when I depart Forecariah for my site visit.

On Thursday, 8 of us will pile into one of the Peace Corps Land Cruisers for an 11-18hour trip to Kankan, the regional capital of Haute Guinea. We’ll spend the night in Kankan, where I’ll be posting this guy, on espere. Friday, I’ll be getting into a bush taxi with a volunteer who has been here since December, and we’ll beat our way back across Haute, on another 12-18 hour journey, to my site. Today I was the recipient of some OUTSTANDING news. One of the trainers told me she’s friends with a missionary family living in my town. Apparently there are a husband, wife, and twin 13-year-old sons. If they’re still there when I move, I’ll probably be about the happiest guy in Guinea. Why? For one thing, instead of having to go 100 miles for the next person from the same side of the world as me, I’ll only have to go as far as across town. Supposedly, missionaries live a pretty decent life, by PC Guinea standards, so they’ll probably have good food and maybe even their own electricity! I’ll post more on this after the fact.

Training has been going well. My French has continued to improve and next week we begin teaching Guinean students, instead of just our peers. Teaching math in French is a fairly intense experience, but I feel like it will only take a few months to really get acclimated to the system and in the flow of things. I hope. When I return from my site visit, I’ll interview for my language proficiency again, which should be around intermediate high or advanced low. If that’s the case, my French classes will be traded for Malinka, the local language of Haute Guinea.

It’s been really great hearing from those of you who have called and been able to get through – I understand some people have been having a lot of trouble getting through to Guinea. Apparently tel3advantage doesn’t get a great connection when I’m in my house, so some of the calls never even make it to my phone, and the ones that do are often dropped. If you want to talk to me and are willing to sit at your computer while you do, the connections people have had using skype (sp?) have been the best so far. That said, I’m near the antenna for my phone every Tuesday and Thursday from 12:30-2pm my time (8:30-10am EST), and the calls always seem to make it through there. I’m happy to call people, and while it’s only about 50 cents a minute for me to call you, that 50 cents actually represents a healthy portion of my day’s pay, so don’t be upset if I call just to say hi! Also, text messages don’t seem to be getting through to me, but that could be the region – I’ll post if that changes. At the moment, I have two phones using different networks. The first one you should try is my cellcom number:

011-224-65.80.50.11

(011 is the international dialing code; 224 is the Guinean country code)

If you can’t get through on my cellcom number, try the areeba phone:

011-224-66.51.86.03

Hopefully one of them will work! (Also, my number may change when I move to my site in October, as they may have different coverage)

About a week and a half ago, we took a Saturday field trip to Les Cascades de Soumbara, north of Conakry near the town of Dubreka. This took place of the internet trip to Conakry which I had been eagerly anticipating, but once we got there I was not disappointed. We turned off of a paved road to what basically qualified as a widened trail.

We followed this trail through the brush and into the forst for 6km until we arrived at a sign that said parking. Immediately upon exiting the car, you could hear the sounds of the waterfalls on the other side of the hill. We climbed the steps up the hill and we greeted with a lovely site on the other side. In the middle of nowhere, a Lebanese man, raised in Iowa, had managed to build a beautiful outdoor restaurant into the side of a waterfall. I don’t really think my words can do it much justice, because it’s hard for me to get the idea into your head of what we’d been living in the past few weeks, and this place seemed beyond luxurious. After swimming in the falls and the river, we bought some expensive but delicious Lebanese pizza and enjoyed it as we watched the water tumble over itself, again and again.

At one point, we all looked up to see monkeys leaping from tree to tree across the very top of the falls – an awesome site. There were three or four monkeys total and every time one made his leap was a nail-biting moment – there must having been about fifteen feet between branches, and when they’d land the branch would bend down to just above the water, nearly sending the monkey down the river to its early demise.
Coming back from the falls, the skies opened on us and we got nice and wet after being dropped off at the bureau, about a mile from my house. This is an excerpt from my journal that same night:

'Ben and I walked back in one of the heaviest downpours we’ve yet seen in Guinea, probably a harbinger of the storms to come in August, the wettest month of the year. While we’d normally pass 20 or 30 people on the road between the bureau and our neighborhood, this time we only passed two. Others watched us pass from the relative safety of their mud cooking huts.

The overflowing rainwater raced down the hill in deep, muddy ‘gutters’. Reluctantly, we trudged through puddle after puddle, trying not to think of all the awful things we knew were running over our feet and between our toes.
All this meant a long bucket bath when I got home, followed by some quality time with my feet, making sure they were clean. After finally emerging from my room, my family presented me with my most delicious, most American meal to date. Cucumber and avocado salad, and spaghetti with tomato sauce served over rice. A delicious meal like this meant I had to finish every bite; you can’t chance having your family think you turned your nose up to a meal you’d like to eat every night! But that wasn’t a problem, because I was famished.

Following the wonderful dinner, I dove back into The Sun Also Rises, a book I’ve read once a year since the 10th grade. The first three times I read it, I hated it. The next four times, I was indifferent. The last two times, I loved it. I know it doesn’t make any sense to reread a book so many times, especially when you didn’t enjoy the first seven, but Hemingway is one of my favorite authors, and I’ve always heard that this book is supposed to be one of the great pieces of 20th century literature. Obviously, I’m thankful I stuck with it so much, because now it’s one of my favorites and I look forward to each read like a reunion with an old friend.

Tonight, I was reading the chapter where Jake and Bill have reached the hotel for fishing, and Jake is describing how cold it is and how he has to bundle up to keep warm. As I was reading, I felt chills, as though I was really connecting with the book and actually feeling the cold of Jake in his hotel room. Turns out it was actually chilly in Forecariah and a nice breeze was going through! This was one of those moments when I felt perfectly content and at peace with myself, after a long, wonderful day. Sometimes, even in Africa, things can come together just right.'

Life in Forecariah – 28.07.2008

2008-08-15T03:20:00.000-07:00

(This post is being typed two-three weeks into my training in Forecariah, on my laptop sans internet, the long time span due to the fact that I haven’t been able to write the entire thing in one battery and have had to recharge the laptop at the bureau)

One of the things I thought I’d be most ready for and which I horribly underestimated is emotional roller coaster I boarded when I moved to Africa. Every day, I have those “Holy cow. This is Africa.” moments. But, there are two different kinds of “This is Africa.” The first one is the emotion I experienced my first day in Forecariah, to which I’ll take you right now:

Last time I left you, I wasn’t feeling well and was dreading the adoption ceremony the next day, not only out of nervous apprehension, but knowing that if I didn’t feel better, I’d be going off to the middle of nowhere with people I’ve never known, not only being scared, but feeling awful to boot. Dieu Merci! I was feeling a lot better that morning and was ready for the two hour bus ride. Somehow I lucked out and got the one solo seat on the minibus packed with 25 or 30 people and had a window seat. Driving out of Conakry was quite an adventure and I’ll die a happy man so long as I never have to drive in that city (if I did have to drive there, I’d, well, I’d probably just die).

We arrived in Forecariah around 11am, spent a few minutes at the local PC bureau, and then walked over to the Maison de Jeunesse (Youth House), where we would have our adoption ceremony. The youth house, easily the largest structure in the town of about 800, isn’t much different from a barn. When we arrived the Guineans were already seated and waiting, although the local notables were yet to arrive. We took our designated seats, thinking the ceremony would start since we had arrived. We were wrong – first we had to have a dance party!

There was a DJ blasting Guinean music out of some of the largest speakers I’ve ever seen, and an ‘emcee’ jabbering into a microphone. I say jabbering because, with the volume so high, nobody had a clue what he was saying (and he pretty much talked the entire time as he reclined in his plastic patio chair). We all got out of our seats and went to the front to share an awkward song with the locals. Guinean songs have a tendency to be much longer than you’d expect, so we were relieved when the song ended after about ten minutes and we were able to retreat to our seats for some respite from the heat. I would guess it was around 90 degrees outside and about 100 in the barn, and the fact that we were all dressed nicely meant we were that much sweatier. Somehow, we survived sweating through three or four more songs and the ceremony finally started. There were the obligatory speeches by the PC Country Director, the head of the prefect, and others, but none of them were very coherent, as the DJ had neglected to turn down the mic volume.

At last, we got to the adoption part. Monsieur Barry, the cultural director of our training and one of my personal Guinean heroes, called our names and the name of our corresponding families. My name was one of the last called, and I was matched with the Doumbwya family, with whom I went back and sat. Once all the names were called, we each shared a bowl of rice and meat with our new families, then grabbed our luggage and went our separate ways. Although one of the PC drivers offered dropping off my bags for me, the boys with my family insisted on rolling my bags all the way to the house for me, which turned out to be about a mile. The wheels lasted about a quarter of that. I’m not sure if it was the heat of the road or just the fact that those suitcases aren’t meant to be offroaded and taken to the extremes they were going to, but the wheels, simply put, exploded. I couldn’t stop laughing, but the boys didn’t seem to care much – they just picked up the bags and carried them on their heads the rest of the way.

Upon my arrival at the house, I was greeted by about 15 kids aging from 5 to 25 (that’s a guess, I have no idea how old most of the people here are; you just can’t tell), and most of whom spoke nothing but Susu. After setting my bags in my room, I went back to sit on the porch with my ‘family’, and I was really hit with that ‘HOLY SHIT, I’M IN AFRICA AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING’ sensation. While sitting there, my new mother (nga, pronounced oonga, in Susu), set a plate of food between my father (nba, pronounced oomba) and I. The dish consisted of a spicy, oily rice topped with a whole fish. I ate for a little while, but as I’d just had lunch at the adoption ceremony, I was relieved when she took at away and it was immediately devoured by five or six petits (kids). A very long two hours passed when I finally saw a familiar face – my friend Ben was on a walk with his new brother, and it turned out he lived a few dirt paths over from me. Talk about relief at seeing a familiar face, I had never felt so relieved in all my life. Then more relief came an hour later when an entire bus of trainers came by and they were able to explain to me how to work my toilet.

‘The toilet!’ you say. And you thought I wasn’t going to have running water! Well, I don’t. But I also don’t have to squat over a hole in the ground – for the next few months, anyway. In order to ‘flush’ the toilet, I have to pour about a half bucket of water straight down the toilet and hope I do it correctly so that the pressure difference will push everything through. If I don’t get it just right, there can be some very unwanted splashback… if you know what I mean.
Anyway, later that night, my new friend Sekouba (an 18 year old 9th grader, which is standard) took me on a walk with Ben to show us the market and the bridge. The town was bustling, even though it was close to 8 o’clock, and the sunset from the bridge was gorgeous. Right at the entrance to Forecariah is a giant, beautiful baobab tree. Apparently, though, Guineans aren’t too keen on the baobab and tend to cut them down because of the ‘jallos’ (sp?) in them – that is, they think there are evil spirits in the trees.

When we got back to the house, I spent a terrifying 10 or 15 minutes on the pitch black porch as 15 or 20 people barked at me in Susu or French. The day had been so long and stressful, my brain was fried and I just couldn’t process any more French. In between the interrogations, I managed to sneak a few bites, which were all I needed, of my cold fish spaghetti. Somehow I managed to slip away and get myself to bed, under the protection of my mosquito net.

Without a doubt, that night was the lowest night of my journey so far. I was scared stiff. I could only think about what a terrible decision I’d made and how I wanted to back out and go home. As sad as this sounds, that was one of the few nights I’ve ever cried myself to sleep. Hopefully you’re not sitting there thinking, ‘man, Hunter is a wimp’, and you’re able to pretend you’re in my shoes for a little bit. You’re living with people about whom you know nothing, you can only barely communicate with one person, you’re sleeping under a net to protect you from malaria, you’re only light comes from your headlamp and you’re only water comes from a bottle, and it’s 95 degrees as you lay sweating in bed. You’re not on a camping trip though; you’ll be living like this for two years. Yeah, it was a pretty high stress night. I took my only solace in the fact that surely the people with zero French background must be in a worse position than me (I turned out to be wrong on that one). Hopefully, after that night, I won’t have any quite as hard, although I’m sure my first few nights alone at site will probably come pretty close.

The next morning I woke up and was given a tasty avocado, onion, cucumber, mayonnaise, and oil. I’m not sure if that strikes you as something you’d like to eat, but it’s not bad. The problem, though, is that my family likes to get the day started around 5:15 or 5:30 or the morning, while I tend to try to sleep through the noises of the day until about five past seven, and I don’t take my breakfast until about 7:40. Although it’s not always the case, sometimes my breakfast has been ready for about two hours, so you might be able to imagine how the avocado would kind of melt with the mayo and oil into a nasty little slushy at the bottom of the dish. After having this dish a few times, I asked for une salade simple – sans mayo and oil – and since then I’ve gotten my wish. Lately, though, they’ve been putting lime juice on it, which starts to taste a little fishy after sitting for a few hours… I’ll have to work with them on that one.

I don’t want to bore you too much with the food I eat, but I think you might enjoy reading about a few of my culinary experiences here in Guinea. For example, on the second morning, I was presented with a half loaf of bread, which was sliced and appeared to have something spread on it. After taking a bite, I realized they’ve served me bread smothered with mayo. Although it wasn’t terrible, I didn’t want to make a habit of starting my days with mayo sandwiches, so I explained to my nba that, generally, in America, one doesn’t eat mayonnaise and bread for breakfast, but bread with peanut butter is wonderful. I’m pretty sure he understood because, since then, I’ve not received another mayo sandwich and I tend to get a half loaf with peanut butter, packed in a plastic sack no less!, two or three times a week. I love getting the peanut butter sandwich because it makes for a great snack in between classes. One morning I was running a few minutes late, so my nba took the liberty of preparing a sandwich to go for me. When he handed it to me I could feel it was hot and soggy and immediately went back to my room to put a few ‘backup’ granola bars in my pocket. That was a good move, because the sandwich was the remix of the cold fish spaghetti – this time it was the hot fish spaghetti sandwich. I handed it off to a very appreciative petit on the street.

While the salad has been the standard for my breakfasts, there’ve been a few other winners. Some mornings I’m treated with bread and laughing cow cheese; it tastes a lot like cheese whiz, and I love it. Twice I’ve enjoyed what must be the Guinean equivalent of oatmeal. The best way I can describe it is as some sort of puff rice in a fairly viscous watery ‘sauce’. The sauce is sort of sweet and I’m pretty sure I like the dish. A few times a week I get either hot tea or coffee. I say either because, in all honesty, I’m not sure which one it is. The fill the cup up about halfway with sugar and creamer, so it’s hard to tell what I’m drinking, but it’s sweet and I like it 

I’ve had some pretty rough dinners here; a lot of nights I’ll dread coming home from school because I just don’t want to eat my dinner. For the first two weeks, I always ate rice with a VERY spicy sauce, and some kind of fish, somewhere in the dish. There were only one or two variations to this theme, both of which rank in my top two of the worst things I’ve ever eaten, but only because I’m a close-minded picky eater…

The first alternative was a cold bean dish. The best I could tell was they mashed the beans with a fish and an onion and gave it to me about three days later. I felt really bad only eating a few bites, but every time I would swallow and feel the bone fragments tickle my throat, the same bite almost came back out. The other meal alternative is now my worst enemy. One day I came home and was greeted with a plate of rice and meatballs on top. Score! I was so happy to have something other than fish I immediately ate one of the meatballs. Well, I was wrong, it wasn’t a meatball. It was a fish ball, consisting of a quarter part mashed fish, a quarter part oil, and half part bones. It was probably the least satisfying thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. I think I got the message across when I gave them my plate at the end of the meal and it still had five of the six fishboneballs.

The rice with sauce isn’t too bad, but it’s really spicy for me, and finding the random bones is yet to become one of my favorite Guinean pastimes. Lately I’ve been trying to stress how hot the food is to me by saying things like ‘wow, this is really hot – it’s making me sweat!’ and ‘it’s like there is a fire in my mouth.’ I think the message must have gotten through, because my meals the last three or four nights have been AWESOME. (take that with a grain of salt – I’m speaking comparatively, and I have to celebrate the small victories). On Saturday night I ate what was probably the hottest sauce I’ve had since I came here, but it didn’t taste bad, and it had a small piece of meat on top. I was wary of the meat, due to my past experiences, so I saved it until the end and took a tentative nibble. The nibble was probably the greatest nibble in the history of nibbles – it turns out the meat was a super delicious melt-in-your-mouth, morsel of BEEF! There was very little of it, so I savored every bit of it and made sure to stress how much I liked it. I imagine, though, that beef here is hard to come by and it will probably be a while before I can enjoy it in my dinner again.

Monday night, I had red rice with fish on top. Although the fish usually isn’t bad, this one was pretty boney, so I just picked around it. That was okay, because the rice was out of this world. The best way I can describe it is as having rice with butter and a really light tomato taste – actually very similar to Spanish rice, if that helps the imagery. It was not in the least spicy, so I made sure they knew I liked it, and, sure enough, I got more of the same the next night. Tonight, I ate late and had what I was worried would be another bean disaster. Luckily, I was wrong, because it turned out to be like some sort of pasta hamburger helper served over rice and it tasted a lot like chili cheese Frito’s. The only drawback was the big rock I bit into on my first bite. That’s not terribly uncommon here – I usually get either sand or small rocks in every meal – because they dry the rice and beans on the road, it’s easy for foreign objects to get in the mix. In fact, it’s so common that at mid-service Peace Corps has us take new bitewing x-rays to check for fissures and cracks in our teeth, on account of the rocks and sand.

And now a little bit about my family. For the first week and a half, I assumed my family consisted of my father, my mother, a younger sister, and myself, even though on the first day my father told me he had three children. And then the others showed up. My whole world came crashing down on me as I cleaned my room one day; my father kan-kan’ed my door (since they usually just use curtains as a mark of privacy {so the breeze can come through}, they say kan-kan in lieu of knocking) and introduced me to my little brother, Torres, and my little sister, Mama. At this point I decided it was prudent to ask about the girl whom I thought to be my sister. Turns out she’s my aunt. Yeah, she’s ten years old, and yeah, she’s my aunt. She’s the sister of my mother and she does everything. My heart breaks for 8-10 year old girls in this country. They are probably the toughest (toughness/age ratio) people I have ever seen in my life. I wake up every morning at 5:30am to what sounds like somebody sweeping the yard; but, of course, that’s because she IS sweeping the yard. With the world’s smallest broom which doesn’t have a handle. I’d be annoyed at being woke up if it wasn’t so incredible. She also starts all the cooking fires, helps prepare all the food, fetches my water (which is no small task for a 10 year old girl), and helps me wash my clothes. Because the girls work so hard, they are really mature for their age and I was shocked to find out she wasn’t 15 or 16. By the way, her name is MmmMa (sp??). Maybe you’re wondering why I waited so long to throw in her name – well that’s because I didn’t know her name for the first week and a half, so I wanted you to wait, too ;-)

My mother, although she doesn’t speak French, seems pretty sweet. I’ve made few culinary requests, which she seems to have respected and taken into consideration for all the subsequent meals. Other than that, though, there isn’t a lot of communication between us other than saluations, me thanking her for her meals, and her standing there and saying “Ablo. Ablo Doumbwya.” This might be a good place for me to mention my family has given me a Guinean name – Ablo. And the last name is Doumbwya (pronounced Doom –bway-ah). People really like just hanging out on my porch and saying my name. I am yet to come up with a quickie comeback for that one.

Speaking of quickie comebacks, that leads me to my next story. Sometimes my family really surprises me with their intellectual capacity. One night I was showing my family some photos when I came across one that just had the heads of two female friends. My father asked if the one on the right was my dad and the one on the right was my mom. First of all, they were both attractive, young women. Second, the first girl looked nothing like a man. And third, the second girl looks nothing like me or my mom, and I’d already shown them about 20 pictures of my mom. In order to convince them otherwise, I showed them some other pictures of the same girls. They became convinced that the first girl was my girlfriend… that is, until the uncle came over and explained that they were wrong, she wasn’t in fact my girlfriend. Because she was my wife. I wasn’t able to convince them I wasn’t married, so I left it at that. After this episode, I was really wondering about my family, until my father did something really amazing.

Okay. So do you remember when I wrote about my phone going in the toilet on the bus? Well, it happened again. But this time it wasn’t on the bus. And it wasn’t as funny… okay, this might actually be a little bit funnier… Anyway, one night it was dark and I decided I wanted a nice bucket bath before getting to bed. Getting a bucket bath is a process, and doing it at night only helps to magnify the efforts of said process. Before the bath commences, one must first don the headlamp. Then, one must place the lit lantern in the bathroom. Ensuite, one brings in the toiletries – in my case this includes a cup for pouring the water, my shampoo/conditioner, body wash, and face wash. Lastly, one must grab his towel, lock his door, and go to the bathroom. Well, on that fateful night, I only made it to the first step. See, when I hang out around the house, I wear my old Georgia Tech basketball shorts. Since they don’t have a pocket, I flip the elastic waistband over a few times and carry the cell phone in it. That USUALLY works pretty well, but then you have to consider my track record with toilets and phones. Sure enough, as soon as I set the lantern on the floor, I turned around and my cell phone shot off my hip and straight into the toilet. How? I don’t know! But I immediately reached for it, which may or may not have been a big mistake.
You may have already caught the fact that I said ‘toilet’, and not ‘hole in the floor’. My family seems to be pretty well off, which means we have electricity from 18:00-24:00 on lucky Sundays, and from midnight to four am on some other days, and which also means we have a sit-down toilet. This is a blessing and a curse. It means on days when I’m really sick I only have to kill my stomach and not my legs. But it also means that, without running water, you have the choice of either pouring a bucket of water down the toilet to flush, or leaving your problem for the next guy. On the night of the death of the cell phone, one family member had decided to make his or her problem mine. Right now a lot of you are thinking ‘what’s with Hunter and his shit stories?’ (for those of you who know about the ice truck), and I don’t really have an answer. All I know is that I pulled the [disgusting] phone out of the toilet after less than a second; the screen was already flooded and the phone was dead. I immediately set to taking the phone apart, bleaching it and my hands clean, and letting it dry off. As you might guess, that didn’t work; I needed a new phone.

When I told my father the next day, he was upset and said he would fix it. Lo and behold, I came home the next day and it was working. The only problem is that I had to get a new battery (they’re cheap), and the phone sucks the charge right out of it. I’m lucky if I get eight hours out of it. With that in mind, I’m setting my ‘phone on’ hours to Tuesday/Thursday 12:30pm-2:00pm my time (8:30am-10:00am EST), and after 5pm every day. If you want to call at night, feel free. In between the dreams from the mefloquine, the small bed, and the sweat, I never sleep very soundly. I would cherish a drunk dial or late night ‘hey’ from the states. If you don’t already have my number, it’s 011-224-65-80-50-11. 011 is the international code and 224 is the country code for Guinea. I can’t seem to get texts on my current phone, but I’ll let you know if that changes.

So, if you didn’t catch it from that last story, I have a lot of respect for my father and I like my family a lot. The majority of the people in Guinea are Muslim, and most of the rest are Christian. My family is the only non-religious family I’ve met or even heard of in country. While I have my own views about God and religion, I have a lot of respect for the family that isn’t afraid of not following the status quo. In spite of their religious status, they still seem to be well-respected, as the porch is always FULL of people. My mother, although we can’t communicate very well, is very sweet and has really started to catch on to what I do and don’t like to eat, which has helped make my life in Forecariah much more pleasant. Mama (remember, the little sister), is four and is absolutely gorgeous, and you can see her with a baby on her back at the end of the post.

Now’s a good time to thank some people. I’d like to thank everybody who called me on my birthday, and to all the people who tried but couldn’t get through. Apparently the calls don’t make it to me most of the time, so just keep trying! It make take five or ten tries to get a hold of me, but I promise it’s worth it. Special props go to my family (Erin was the first call of the day, and Hilary read me my e-mails: best sisters ever), Laura (first call of my friends), Snow, Katie, Aunt Deb and Uncle Warren, Jarren (who actually gets double props for calling Saturday AND Sunday! Thanks!), Kam, and Pat. I’m really sorry if you weren’t able to get through – I hope you know I would have loved to have talked to you. Also, today I received my first letter, from one Heather Leah Keil. Thanks Heather!! I know a few others have sent me letters or packages, but don’t despair. I will most likely get the packages, it will just take a while. The letters, though, seem to have a little bit of trouble. The problem with sending letters is (and Noah, I hope you read that in the appropriate voice), if a postal worker tries to dig through it like one might dig through a package, he or she can’t pretend a rat got into it, so they just toss it. Today I came up with an idea: if you are so kind as to pay the 94cents to send me a letter, why not pay 288 cents and send me three of them? Maybe you could photocopy the original and send them all separately, or together, and hopefully one of the three will make it through… and of course don’t forget to write things like ‘Dieu Regarde!’, ‘Pour education’, and ‘Produits Feminine’ (I know it’s a letter, but I’d still be afraid to open a letter labeled as feminine products…).

Now I’m going to break into some random topics:

*Bucket baths – how do they work?

Easy! Every morning, and most evenings, MmmMa fills my bucket with water and leaves it in the bathroom for me. The bathroom is about 5ft by 5ft, has the toilet on one wall, and the shower drain in the center of the floor. First, I take a cup of water and wet my hair, face, and upper body. Then I take another cup and wet my lower half. That part is pretty easy. Then, I set a cup of water aside and proceed to suds up my hair. When that’s done, I go to the cup of water to rinse off my shampooey hands (this is smart because I don’t want to get shampoo in the clean bucket). Then, I set aside another cup of water and apply the body wash. After I rinse the body wash off my hands, I set aside one more cup and apply the face wash. After rinsing my hands, I rinse off everything else, starting from the top. If I’m not hot, I can usually use one bucket for two baths, but if I’ve just finished working out, I’ll use the entire bucket and still continue to sweat for two hours after the bath.

*The heat – how bad is it?

When you guys have heatwaves going into the hundreds, you’re seeing higher temperatures than I’ll see until February or March, BUT, you guys have air conditioning. In everything. Buildings. Cars. Metros. There is no air conditioning here, no respite from the heat. As I type in bed right now, I am using my ‘top’ sheet to wipe the sweat from my face. I know it’s gross, but I guess it’s just part of the life. Some days it’s actually quite nice, but after a big rain the humidity is an absolute killer. The one upside is that, which I was worried the sweating would cause a lot of breakouts, that hasn’t happened. Like I said, I celebrate the small victories.

*Names – how do you remember them?

Alright, so maybe you weren’t asking that question, but I’m still going to answer it. Asking someone their name in Guinea is not a simple process. I suppose there is a lot of pride in a name here, so you get the whole package when you pop the question. Vraiment, people give you their ENTIRE name. For example, instead of just getting Amara, I’ll get Amara Abdullah Mohamed Ousman Cisse. Honestly, you really can’t blame someone for such detailed answer, because you asked them their name, not just the first name. A lot of the time I have trouble just catching the first name, so I’ve developed a system in which I make sure to catch the first letter of the name. Then, I take that letter and think of a corresponding American name. For example, the name above could become Alex. I explain that in America the name would be Alex, and generally they love when you connect them to something American. I don’t do this for adults, but since there are so many kids around it makes my life a lot easier. Of course, after the first few kids, I realized that even using regular American names would be a challenge to remember. So I took it up a notch. I decided that the kids in Forecariah would be easier to remember by corresponding Star Wars characters names. Sekouba, for example, because Chewbacca. Some might consider this insulting, but I disagree for a few reasons:

1) This really isn’t any different from a nickname, and so long as I’m just naming a kid based in the sound of the name and not the image, like naming the fat kid Jabba the Hutt (and no, there aren’t any fat kids. They all have six-packs; I’m pretty sure they spend all their time with electricity doing John Basedow videos), the name is completely harmless

2) Star Wars was written by an American. Therefore, even though the names SEEM intergalactic, they are actually American. It’s also really hard explaining aliens to Guineans.

3) If I didn’t call them by this name, I probably wouldn’t address them by name at all, so this helps me to individualize people and integrate at a greater level.

*Site – where will you be after Forecariah?

Thanks for asking! I just got my site announcement today! For security reasons, I can’t post the name of my town on the blog, but I can tell you a little about it. According to the map, it is the most isolated Peace Corps post in the country; almost all of the other sites are within about 40 kilometers of the next site. Mine looks to be close to 100 miles to the next volunteer, as far as I can tell right now. Although it looks like I won’t be biking to visit any friends, the road from my town to Kissidougou in the Forest Region is supposed to be okay, so hopefully I can take a taxi down there to visit some friends and it shouldn’t take more than 4 or 5 hours to get there. I’ll be in Haute Guinea, which is the interior, dry, hot region. My town, so I’ve heard, has fewer Muslims and more people who practice sorcery. I’m also only going to be a few miles from the border with Sierra Leone, so I definitely plan on forking over the $100 visa fee and spending a few weekends over there – New Years in Freetown, anyone? Haute is also supposed to be the most culturally rich region, with the best dance and music in Guinea. Given that I will probably only be travelling out of town one weekend a month, I think I’ll be getting in a lot of time on my violin, so maybe I can play something nice for you guys when I get back!

Oh, and another exciting thing about my site – one of the nearby towns has a national animal preserve where, on a good day, you can spot lions, crocodiles, bushbucks, and more. The only drawback is you have to have your own 4-wheel-drive to get in, so I’m going to have to buddy up with someone with a car in order to get in.

Alright, that’s probably enough for now… how about some pictures?

This first one is of some kids standing by the foosball table (here they call it barbiefoos). I don’t really know who these kids are, but the one in yellow has a great smile. Along with selling cigarettes and candy from our front porch, my father makes his living through the barbiefoos – kids put in a 50 franc piece (a little more than a penny), and the balls come out. Kind of like pool tables at bars back in the states.

Here’s a picture of Beth and me. Beth was a PCV/trainer who has finished up her service and should be back in the states sometime soon. The main purpose of this photo is to show you the AWESOME bear shirt I bought at the dead white people’s market for about a dollar.

A shot of the house. This is where I live. And this is a rare shot because the front porch is usually teeming with people.

Some kids who hang out at the house. From left to right are Alex (14), Mike (?), Nick (8, and one of my favorites), and Mmma (10).

Here I am doing laundry. One of the hardest things I’ve done in Guinea, although I only had to do a little before I looked pathetic enough for others to step in and help out ;)

I’m getting water from the well for my laundry. Any guesses what the kid is doing on that bucket??

The view, with a little help from the zoom lens, from my front porch. It’s raining more and more, though, so it’s not as visible right now. I’d say they’re about 20k away.

Nba, proudly sporting his hot new UK hat. Go Cats!

Some more kids on the porch.

They don’t have school during the rainy season, and this is why. Since the roofs are nothing but corrugated tin, you can’t hear a word the teacher says during a good rainstorm. And it’s pitch black in the rooms when a storm comes along.

I walked to the river one day with some friends and this is the progression of the shots I took. It reminds me a little of Jurassic Park.

My uncle, who lives across the street. This style of dress is very common on Friday’s, which is the day they go to the mosque.

This post wouldn’t be complete without a picture of a big spider, would it? I saw this guy during my first week, about the size of my hand, straight chillin’ on the ceiling. They’re not deadly, but they’ll still bite and you can get a nasty infection. I try to give them their distance, and so far they’ve given me mine!

A Long Day, and Some Other Things

2008-07-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-07-11T17:03:00.000-07:00

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..

2008-07-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-07T20:48:00.001-07:00

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!

2008-07-02T10:10:00.000-07:00

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 ;)

Where to send me nice things

2008-06-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

Here is my mailing address in Guinea:

Hunter Dreidame, PCT
Corps de la Paix
BP 1927, Conakry
Guinée (West Africa)

The mail system in Guinea is somewhat corrupt, so it's not uncommon for packages or letters to go missing. Here are some tips to help stuff get to me in one piece:

- In red ink, draw large crosses and things like "DIEU REGARDE" (God is watching you) on the box - they are very superstitious
- Write 'LIVRES" on boxes; it means books and the postal people won't have any interest in stealing books.
- Men in Guinea are terrified of tampons, so if you send something in a tampon box they won't touch it. That said, I don't really want a lot of tampon boxes lying around my hut either... I'm just sayin'.
- If you're sending a postcard, send it inside of an envelope because people handling it will see the nice picture, take it home, and hang it on their wall.
- When sending letters, number them (July 10, Letter 1; July 14, Letter 2; etc.), so that if I get letters 1 and 3 but not 2 (because it's been lost or stolen), I can acknowledge such in my reply and you won't think I was just ignoring your last letter.

My e-mail address in Guinea will be the same one I've been using the last few years:

hunter.dreidame@gmail.com

Once I am sworn in and dropped off in my village, I most likely will only have internet access once a month. During that time, I'll try to update this blog as best as I can in a most entertaining fashion, so that my life will sound really exciting and you will keep coming back for more. If you e-mail me, I will do my best to e-mail you back, but given that I may only be on the internet one or two hours a month, it's not a guarantee I will get back to you right away. HOWEVER, if you send me snail mail, I promise I will write you back my next free moment.

Ok, now for the most important part - my birthday!! My birthday is July 27th, about two and a half weeks after I get there. For those of you planning me a surprise party, now would be a good time to start looking at airfares, hotels, etc. ;-)

You can eat my air triscuit.

2008-06-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

After a long absence from the homefront, I always find the least exciting part of the house to be the kitchen pantry. Once upon a time, I was naive enough to open the door and let a smile grow across my face as I reached for a box of cookies or a tin of fancy crackers, only to be let down upon discovering an empty box (or maybe some crumbs if I was lucky).

Now I know better. Sometimes I'll still peer into the pantry out of habit, but not in expectation. This time, though, my sister and I discovered the motherload of empty boxes/containers. Not only was there an empty toffee box and an empty cookie tin, there were also two empty boxes of fiber crackers. These days even the stuff I don't want to eat is a fake! When confronted on this, my mother at first feigned ignorance, but later retracted her statement, saying "I like to keep a few teasers in there."

Moms are great.

PS - this isn't the great post you've been hearing about; it will be a few weeks in the works and will include the word 'Swift' in the Labels...

Get Ready

2008-06-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

Soon, very soon, there will be a post on here the likes of which have not been seen since 1729...

The hard days

2008-06-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

Saying goodbye never gets any easier.

As my time in DC drew to a close, I kept pushing the unavoidable to the back of my mind, hoping I could just cruise through without a tear or thought of regret. It was good having some of the farewells spread out - the ones before my last weekend were no problem at all; we'd finish dinner or drinks, shake hands, hug, and part ways. But I was still returning to my same apartment at the end of the day, and it didn't feel like I was really leaving.

Then last last days arrived, and it was really time to go. The reality of the departure hits you like a punch to the gut as you load the last boxes and return to the empty bedroom in an apartment still occupied by two of your closest friends, friends who aren't leaving. And then it's time to say goodbye. You give your hug or your kiss, and you turn to leave. This time, though, you're not going back to your apartment to watch TV and b.s. with some friends; this time you're going to a big truck, filled with everything you own, ready to leave everything you've worked so hard to know the last two years, ready to leave the ones you love thousands of miles behind.

So you pull out of the driveway, wipe the tears from your eyes, and think "I'm glad that's over, it'll all be easier now." But it's not.

Now I'm home in KY, sitting alone in the kitchen, waiting to be shipped off to the Lost Continent. There's so much to get done, yet still not enough to get my mind off of all the questions wandering through it: Am I making the right decision? Will my friendships still be the same after being gone two years? How many of those friends will I ever even see again?

In college, I spent eight months working in Connecticut as a co-op. When I returned, I felt like an outsider, looking in on a world that had left me behind eight months before and not looked back. But that was only for 8 months, only a $200 flight away, and with regular telephone and internet access. This time I'll be a thousand times less accessible and gone for two years. How could I possibly expect anything or anybody to wait for me? I guess these things are just the price I have to pay for wanting to take this path in my life. I pray every night that I'm making the right decision and that I'm not leaving this all behind for nothing.

I love you all, you've helped make me what I am today. Please, don't let me fade away..

Facebook Friends

2008-05-27T20:21:00.000-07:00

I just happened to notice that my current total of Facebook friends stands at 727. Of course, I'll be the first to tell you I don't have 727 friends - I probably can't even name 27 good friends who I talk to on a regular basis. Nonetheless, 727 is a great number, as it represents my July 27 birthday and a Boeing jet. Therefore, I now resolve to remove one 'friend' for every 'friend' gained in order to maintain the friendship equilibrium. If you think you might be in the outbox, now would be a good time to bake me brownies ;)

Favorite Laffy Taffy Jokes

2008-05-20T12:52:00.001-07:00

Q: What's green and pecks on trees all day?
A: Woody the Wood Pickle!

Q: How did the mule get into the locked barn?
A: With the Don-Key!

Q: What's underground and goes 80 miles an hour?
A: Mole on a motorbike.

Trivia, Coors, and a New Camera

2008-05-14T11:40:00.000-07:00

Trivia Champions. At last. Besting all the other teams, we outanswered the runners-up by a mere point - 276 against their 275 - after 4 rounds of grueling trivia. Questions like 'Who sang Cats in the Cradle?' and 'What French character married Celeste in an elaborate ceremony in 1931?' along with a movie bonus roundn in which we went a soul-crushing 10-out-of-10 boosted us to win our $55 in Rock Bottom money.

When we got home, Noah started talking about really wanting a Coors 24 ouncer, but that he couldn't find one anywhere. He said he just wanted to taste it. Seeing as it was only 10:45 on a Monday night (??), I suggested we try the 7-11 down the street. Sadly, they had no Coors. Not willing to settle for mediocrity in a Budweiser or Schlitz, we marched down Fairfax to the Giant in Virginia Square. Once again, no 6-packs. In fact, the only Coors they carried was a single 24-pack. Of course we bought it. Along with some Twizzlers. Now, I know you want this story to end with us killing the case after winning trivia, but I had been up since 3am, and Noah had worked all weekend, so we drank 2 or 3 a piece and called it a night.

We didn't however, call it a night without taking a few pictures with my new camera:

Here's a picture of a thirsty (Guinean) spider with good taste:

Lastly, my new camera is awesome. I snapped some photos of the George Washington Masonic Memorial Temple on my way home from work yesterday. Here's the temple with no zoom (click on the photos for a larger size):

Here's the temple at around 10x zoom:

18x zoom:

And lastly, after lowering the resolution from 8.1 megapixels to just 3, here's the temple at 28x optical zoom:

electro-synthomagnetic musical sounds

2008-05-11T20:06:00.000-07:00

On Friday morning, after only a few hours of sleep, I hopped on a two hour flight from DCA to Orlando to visit Aunt Elaine (my godmother) for the weekend. After doing a few crossword puzzles and giving up on reading a patent case about a connecting structure for log walls (Zzzzzzz), I decided it was time for some sleep. While many of you may be excellent sleep-anywhere'ers, I'm not. Sleeping on an airplane is especially challenging.

Generally, when sleeping in a horizontal bed, I fall asleep on my side, or, judging by the plurality of lines across my entire face in the morning, flat on my stomach. One can't sleep like that on an airplane. When I know I'm going to be attempting to procure some amount of sleep on a flight, I grab a window seat. Unfortunately, my flight on Friday was on a small plane, so instead of leaning against the window and sleeping, the window sort of curved into my sitting area, so I had to sleep straight up (I'm 6'2 - not that tall, but tall enough for the wall to hit my head in small aircraft).

Okay, hopefully that has established some sort of harbinger for poor sleep. Seeing as we were above 10,000 feet, I also chose to listen to my iPod, on which I had recently loaded a 5-disc box set of 60 Years of Disney Classics. What? You never get nostalgic?? Oh, okay, then I guess you CAN make fun of me. Anyway, as I drifted in and out of reverie, I was serenaded by songs ranging from When You Wish Upon a Star to One Jump Ahead.

The last song I listened to BLEW. MY. MIND. Before Friday, I had never listened to or even heard of the Disneyland Main Street Electrical Parade. Please listen to/watch this:

I woke to this song and had NO IDEA where I was. Hopefully you can imagine what this song might do to a sleep-deprived, trying-to-sleep-on-an-airplane-but-can't patent examiner. Even as I listen to it now, I feel like I'm on some sort of discount 80's drug.

That was a joke, and some other things

2008-05-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

For the four of you who read my blog, I'd like to point out that the last entry was a joke. The second paragraph was taken almost verbatim from one of Patrick Bateman's (played by Christian Bale) internal monologues from the movie American Psycho. I wrote the entry while I was in the Charlotte airport instead of doing work and couldn't stop laughing.

In other news, I spent all of my remaining money online yesterday. Ok, not all of it. But a lot. Thanks to a generous sister and amazon.com credit card rewards, I had acquired $370 in amazon gift certificates. Eager to start getting stuff ready for Africa, I purchased:

Apple iPod Classic 160 GB Black

Solio Solar Charger

Solar Powered Battery Charger

Rechargeable AA Batteries

Rechargeable AAA Batteries

Panasonic Lumix Camera, 8.1 Megapixel, 18x Optical/4x Digital Zoom with Optical Image Stabilization

Panasonic 4 GB SD Memory Card

The iPod will mainly act as a small portable hard drive. I'll keep all of my media on it, then use the laptop to transfer music from the large iPod to my smaller iPod Shuffles, which are easier to take with you on the go, and less of a big deal if stolen.

The Solio, hopefully, will be used to charge my iPods, as well as my cell phone (once I purchase it over there). The Solio cannot charge batteries, so I also got the solar battery charger as a backup - the batteries will power things like the speakers for my iPod, my backup camera, flashlights/lamps and maybe a small fan or something of that sort.

The camera. I'm really excited about this camera. 18x optical zoom with image stabilization? Awesome!!! That means I won't really have to be very close to the giant spiders in order to get giant pictures of them. I'm pumped.

In other news, I can now benchpress 275 pounds and lift 200 pounds directly over my head while seated (aka, seated shoulder press/military press). This is a big deal to me, because it means I am now strong enough to do handstand pushups, an essential exercise for someone in the middle of Africa with no weights. Now I just need to learn how to do handstands..

Good Looks, Model Physique

2008-04-25T06:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I meet people on the metro who think I'm a celebrity, or that maybe they've seen me in a magazine or something. When I tell them they're mistaken and I'm just a simple civil servant waiting to go to Africa, they ask how, being so normal, I can look so good and stay so fit. This is what I tell them:

I live in the Randolph Towers Building on North 9th Street on the 7th floor. My name is Hunter Dreidame. I'm 23 years old. I believe in taking care of myself and a balanced diet and rigorous exercise routine. In the morning if my face is a little puffy I'll put on an ice pack while doing stomach crunches. I can do 1000 now. After I remove the ice pack I use a deep pore cleanser lotion. In the shower I use a water activated gel cleanser, then a honey almond body scrub, and on the face an exfoliating gel scrub. Then I apply an herb-mint facial mask which I leave on for 10 minutes while I prepare the rest of my routine. I always use an after shave lotion with little or no alcohol, because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer, then an anti-aging eye balm followed by a final moisturizing protective lotion.

Peace Corps Aspiration Statement

2008-04-20T21:51:00.000-07:00

So the Peace Corps has asked me to prepare an 'Aspiration Statement' regarding my upcoming service. I have to include the following:

"A: The professional attributes that you plan to use, and what aspirations you hope to fulfill, during your Peace Corps service.

B: Your strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs.

C: Your strategies for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background.

D: The skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training to best serve your future community and project.

E: How you think Peace Corps service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends."

I've really struggled with this statement over the last month or so - everything I put down sounds so canned and not like myself, and I feel like it A) doesn't express what I'm trying to say, and B) doesn't give them the information they want. In the end, what's below is what I'm sending them. It's long overdue, and I feel like the format is too restricting to really let my ideas flow. I guess it's a good thing I'm not teaching writing over there :p Anyway, any feedback or questions are welcome; it would at least let me know someone's out there reading this stupid thing, ha!

"Ever since I received my nomination to be an education volunteer last fall, I’ve been trying to envision how my service with the Peace Corps is going to play out. Early musing had me thinking I’d be in a schoolhouse akin to that of ‘Little House on the Prairie’ where I’d have twenty students varying in age from 5 to 17 years old. As the date for my invitation grew near, I began eagerly anticipating my adventure, and in doing so starting to do some research. It was then that I realized how wrong I had originally been when I had slipped off to my daydreams during lunch break. I now realize my classes may have up to 100 or 150 students, and it won’t be anything like ‘Little House’.

For starters, I’m going to have to learn how to teach students who won’t have available to them the resources with which I am accustomed. No textbooks, most likely no pencils or notebooks, and definitely no calculators. I’ll be working in a classroom with no electricity, where the light is supplied through the open windows, and I’ll be teaching off of an old, cracked up chalkboard. Materialistically speaking, I’ve got a Mount Everest looming ahead of me. Luckily, I’ve never considered myself all too materialistic (although living in D.C. has taught me to dress nicer, on occasion), and I think I’ll be able to overcome this obstacle.

Professional Aspirations
Through my ‘research’, and having the luxury of naivety, I’ve been able to come up with a few, albeit vague, professional aspirations for my time spent in Guinea. First and foremost, I am going over there to teach math, and I want to teach it in a way that the students will enjoy it, appreciate it, and ultimately retain what I have taught them. Secondly, I aim to promote gender equality in schools, somehow elevating the status of female students. Lastly, using my background as an athlete and personal trainer, I aim to promote healthy nutrition.

Having taken many math classes myself, I realize that most students don’t have an inherent love for numbers. Generally, that love has to come from the teacher or through something fun or personally interesting to the student. In my experience, the most effective teachers and professors have been the ones who are able to relate to the students and engage them on their own level. I believe the general/stereotypical expectation of a teacher is that he or she will be a person who comes into the classroom simply to teach the subject and is viewed as intellectually superior to the students. When I begin teaching in Guinea, I want my students to appreciate that I’ve once been in their seat and know what it’s like to be on the learning end. As a young, athletic male, the students may not immediately recognize me as someone there to help them learn, but through the first few days and weeks I plan to win their respect by showing them fascinating ways math can be used to interpret the world around us. Using the combination of that respect for my intelligence and my age and personal interests, hopefully I’ll be able to get the students to take an earnest interest in their math studies.

One of the ways I’d like to further establish this interest is through some sort of math club. Deep down, everybody has some level of competitive spirit ready to come out, whether on the soccer field or in the classroom. Hopefully some of these students will have a desire to harness that spirit and turn it towards math. Another way to develop an appreciation for math across the board comes from a practice I learned from my high school Calculus teacher: it’s important for the teacher to realize that, sometimes, he or she simply may not be capable of visualizing the problems of a student. In this case, the best eyes usually come from another student; thus, some sort of peer tutoring could help to get students on similar levels.

As for promoting gender equality in education, I’m honestly not sure how I’m going to approach it. So far as I can understand, at a certain age females are pulled from school to work at home, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the family; education is taken off the list of priorities. Being so far removed from this situation before I’m actually there, it’s really hard to put my thumb on how I can address it, not knowing who or what I’ll have to work with, and what kind of opposition I may face. I certainly can’t just go in there shouting “Rights for women!” It’ll have to start as a whisper, with the volume turning up gradually as I proceed with my project.

Having spent four years as a collegiate athlete and earning my college pocket money as a personal trainer, a proper nutrition is something very close to my heart (and stomach). My understanding is that the Guinean diet consists mostly of rice and a sort of tomato sauce. Every American, although we certainly don’t all practice it, knows about the Food Pyramid guide to healthy eating. The basic idea is that people need certain amounts of different nutrients in their everyday diet. A diet of rice and tomato sauce doesn’t cover all of those nutrients. During the remainder of my time in the U.S. before departure, I plan to research what foods are available in the different regions of Guinea, and to consider different ways to incorporate all the necessary nutrients into the daily Guinean diet, without affecting a giant culture or economic shock. Reading back on this paragraph makes me realize what a huge goal this is, but if I can at least educate people on what a healthy diet is, they’ll be headed in the right direction.

Personal Aspirations
I don’t know if there is such a true altruist among us that would spend two years in Africa with the Peace Corps for the sole purpose of helping others. While I wish I could say that were my case, I must admit that I certainly have many personal reasons why I’m dedicating a slice of my life pie to Guinea.

The first reason is attaining fluency in another language. While I’ve taken many years of French, along with Italian, German, and Japanese, I would never pretend to be near fluent in any of them. It’s my understanding that fluency in French, and at least proficiency in the local language will be necessary for me to, one: do my job; and two, enjoy my time there. When I return home from this adventure, I’ll have an ability which will allow me to communicate in a larger part of the world, and, of course, will look good on any job application.

As an avid reader, I’ve found myself in the middle of many different cultures. However, that ‘middle’ happens to be between two pages. I’m ready for the real thing. Before I’m too old to have the chance, I want to learn another culture. I want to see things from a different point of few. While spending an evening in an Italian emergency room may have induced some culture shock, I don’t think it will be on the same level as eating my meals with my hand – my right hand – and being woken up by a giant spider crawling across me. I want to be somewhere people will do stuff which astounds me, and where I do things which astound them. Through this, I think we can all learn and make the world a little smaller, and a little friendlier.

Lastly, through this cultural exchange, I hope to walk away with a greater appreciation for the things I have, and for the people I have in my life. When I tell people I’m joining the Peace Corps and probably won’t have electricity or running water for a few years, they think I’m crazy. Maybe I am, but I also find that aspect of this adventure terribly exciting. I can’t wait to escape the grasp of the internet and to cherish the amount of time I save when I’m not taking an hour long, steaming hot shower (my showers aren’t really that long, but I’ll bet even with a bucket bath I’ll be saving some time). I’m pretty sure it’s a given that my time in Guinea will make me see me life differently and will aide me in simplifying things, but by adding it to this list, I’m allowing myself to be conscious of this effort and to appreciate it as it happens.

Co-Workers
Back to the school front, I’m sure I’m going to face many challenges when it comes to working with the native teachers and others involved in my projects. One of the hardest things may be biting my tongue when I want to tell them my way of doing things is the best way. While the methods I have been taught may be the best in America, they may not necessarily be best for my circumstances in Guinea. I’ll have to exercise patience to learn from the other teachers, and to allow them to learn from me.

I don’t know what kind of enthusiasm I can expect from my co-workers, but one can hope that there will be a few who will want to exchange ideas and theories on how best to motivate the students. If other teachers will let me, I’ll sit in on some of their classes, to see how a Guinean classroom is run. From there, I can translate that to my own methods so that my teaching doesn’t come across as entirely foreign. Perhaps some of the other teachers will also sit in on my classes. If their number one interest is helping the students learn and be happy, then we’ll be on the same page and can easily work together from there. However, there are always teachers who simply teach because it’s their job, and not because they have a real interest. Perhaps I will be able to act as the catalyst to reignite those teachers’ zeal for education. How? I don’t know, but smiling and taking an interest in the person never hurt.

Cultural Adaptation
When I’m dropped off in my village, I’ll be alone. My goal as an individual over the following weeks and months will be to integrate myself into the culture and shed that layer of loneliness. I won’t be able to do that by sitting in my room, reading American novels. Instead, I’ll have to talk to people. Luckily, that’s never been a problem for me; I’ve never had problems opening a conversation with a perfect stranger, and the strangers rarely seem to have a problem with it either.

Daily walks around town will help the people recognize me. Okay, recognizing the white guy won’t be hard, but it will let them get used to me. I’ll talk to the people in the market, learn about the local produce, and then I’ll talk to the neighbor about what she’s cooking. The easiest people to communicate with generally seem to be children, and to that end I’ve started dribbling around my soccer ball in preparation for a little foot action once I arrive.

Along with soccer, I plan on building a bridge between my culture and the Guinean culture through music and dance. While I would like to take a violin with me, I realize that may not be possible. However, I’ll definitely find some sort of substitute, because, after all, music is the universal language – no words are necessary. One fun project may involve collaborating with the local griot and his balaphone to put on some kind of public performance. Along with the music, I love to dance and learn new dances. While I’m sure I’ll be laughed at a lot, I look forward to learning the local dances and sharing that with my neighbors and others in my village.

Project Skills
In order to complete my project, I’m going to have to throw together everything I’ve already talked about. One of the most immediate skills I’ll need is a teaching proficiency in French. Once I attain that, I’ll begin to be able to acquire the other necessary skills. As I mentioned when I talked about working with other teachers, I’ll also have to learn patience when dealing with students. I’ll have to be able to accept that they may not be able to do homework because they don’t have the supplies, or they had to do work for the family the entire time they were away from school. This patience will help me develop compassion and understanding for the students which I hope will help me to see outside of myself. Walking into the classroom for the first time, I can’t expect every student to be on the mathematical level I would expect of someone their age. I’m sure, especially in the beginning, teaching will be a very frustrating process; developing that patience will be one of the key factors to my success.

I’ve read that Africa moves at its own pace, a pace much slower than in America. In order for me to be successful, I’ll have to find a middle ground where I’m not going at a breakneck teaching speed, but where the students are comfortable and I don’t feel we’re moving at a crawl. If we can learn to establish some sort of steady tempo where the students and I are both learning, I think we will all be successful.

Post-Peace Corps Aspirations
Personally and professionally, I expect my service in the Peace Corps to have a profound impact upon my life. Right now, I have no idea what I’m going to do when I return. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll have a clean slate to start on and can go anywhere. That anywhere may be going back to school; it may involve working in international development; or it may be a classroom where I’m teaching. One of my great goals for my service is to learn where I want to go with my life. Spending two years working as a patent examiner has given me the confidence to know that my future does not consist of sitting in front of a computer monitor behind a closed office door for eight hours a day, five days a week.

By harnessing the skills I acquire in Guinea, including the language skills, intercultural communication skills, and teaching skills, I’m hoping to find a career which will result in my happiness and the happiness of many, many other people. Ultimately, I think the only way I will be happy is by helping other people, enriching their lives in the best way I can, and in the end making them happy. Hopefully spending 27 months in Guinea working toward this goal will only add to my desire to make a difference."

Wounded Knee

2008-04-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

So it looks like my dreams of the Derby Half and the Vermont Marathon repeat are up and gone like a fart in the wind.

My knee has been pretty sore since the half in Virginia Beach last month. After a four-mile treadmill run and thirty minutes on the arc trainer on Tuesday, I sat in my office for about forty-five minutes doing work [sic]. When I tried to stand, I pretty much fell back down, as it felt like there was nothing in my right knee supporting me. I limped back to the metro and got home ok, but on Wednesday that knee didn't want anything to do with walking, let alone running.

Seeing as I'm leaving for Africa in a few months, the last thing I want right now is to really mess up my knee and not be able to go at all. Therefore, I'm going to cut the running short for now and do some low-stress cardio (arctrainer, bike, swim, etc.) until I start to feel better and will take it slow from there. In the long run (no pun intended), it's not a big deal that I miss these races -- I'm more concerned about being healthy in 2010 to throw down 56 miles at the Comrades Ultramarathon in South Africa :-D

Crispety, Cruchety, Peanut Buttery.... Cricket.

2008-04-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, I decided to leave work early and check out the Fashion Center to see if I could find some cool digs for this weekend's Vegas trip. At Express, I bought my first ever Graphic Tee's and a blue and black striped fitted dress shirt. At the register, everything cost less then I expected!

With that good news, I decided I should go over to Macy's and get some black undershirts (obviously). Since I'd saved so much money, I decided it wouldn't be a terrible idea to purchase, along with 2 black Alfani muscle shirts, some new boxer briefs, and a 3 pack of Emporio Armani tanks. When my total came to almost $90 and the cashier told me signing up for the Macy's card would save me 20% - today! - I jumped at it. Apparently, along with that discount, my final bill in the mail will be reduced by an additional 20%. Booya!

With that, I went home; it was time to check out the sweet new undershirts. Well, the first thing I did was open the Emporio Armani shirts and unfold them. As I unfolded them, I saw a black lump and withdrew my hand - I hate spiders, and it very well could have been spiders - but then I thought it was probably just a clump of thread (why there would be a clump of black thread in a package of all white shirts, I don't know). Lo and behold, upon further inspection I realized that not only had I gotten super discounts while shopping - I had also come home with a free cricket!

Being a first time Emporio buyer, I didn't realize that crickets are actually standard fare for E.A. Polo has the horse, Lacoste has the alligator, Emporio Armani has the crunchy, dead cricket. His leg snapped off as I pulled him from the shirt.

Here he is again, zoomed in on my phone:

It's only been 7 months..

2008-03-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

.. and it's already time for a new post!

Check out my new (and ever-evolving) mixtape, at muxtape.com:

ZooBar Harmonizes

Thanks for the discovery of muxtape goes to Magda, whose muxtape can be found here.

Some Haikus

2007-08-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

I realized I've not written anything on here since I opened it, so how about some haikus? Inspired from items on my desk:

little green palm tree
leaves turning brown and crispy
please don't die on me!

hip Beatles gift bag
bearer of the gift that brought
ten thousand nightmares

digital cam'ra
where are all your batteries??
not taking pictures...

crumpled, white tissue -
fresh and ready for my nose;
or maybe itsnot

lipitor notepad
ten honey babies' digits
waiting for calls. psyche!

Welcome to Zoo Bar!!

2007-06-16T13:58:00.000-07:00

Welcome, welcome! to Zoo Bar, the first restaurant where you can enjoy your dinner amongst lions, tigers, penguins, and other exotic animals. Picture this: you enter through a tunnel in the ground and walk underneath the animal refuge, where you will emerge up a flight of stairs into the restaurant which is lined with clear glass walls. Outside these walls is the animal refuge: lions and tigers confiscated from owners who purchased them illegally in places like Detroit, Camden, and Tampa Bay. Perhaps the animals were ill-treated in their first profession, but at Zoo Bar they'll receive the best care and will look glorious for the patrons. One of the features inside the restaurant is the ice counter behind the bar. Every hour a door will open up and one of the resident penguins will shoot across the ice counter, to the sheer delight of the on-lookers! The food inside will be second to none, but alas, no lion burgers here. You'll have to go to the Anti-Zoo Bar (not affiliated with Zoo Bar) for those.