Holy Smokes! Look at all 'em pictures!

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!

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.

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.