Life in Forecariah – 28.07.2008

(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!