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.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
i ni ke!
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
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Happy New Years everybody!
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.
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.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Coup d'etats and things like that
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!
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!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Back for more
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!
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!
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Happy Thanksgiving!
Here's a little something I wrote for Thanksgiving - you have probably read a lot of these bits and pieces already, but why not read it just one more time?
After a year of sitting in front of a computer eight hours a day, browsing patents at a mind-numbing rate of a few thousand an hour, enough was enough. It was time for a change.
What kind of change, though? I wanted something where I'd be outside more, something where there'd be a sense of adventure. I wanted to go somewhere new, see new cultures and learn new languages. More than anything, I wanted to help people. The Peace Corps fit the bill.
So I filled out the application, had the interview, passed the medical screenings, and a year later found myself standing in west Africa's intense July heat on the tarmac of the Conakry airport in Guinea, ready for whatever the country wanted to throw at me — or so I thought.
In anticipation of my service as a volunteer in Guinea, a lot of time was spent contemplating the difficulties of life in a mud hut, survival without electricity and running water. As it turns out, life in a mud hut is, in fact, pretty great, and who needs electricity? Writing by candlelight is so much cooler. Besides, there are other, deeper issues with which I struggle while making my life in the bush.
Almost 78 miles to the next volunteer, 10 miles to a tree on a hill where there might be cell phone reception, and a constant battle with the local language, Yalunka: all elements of an equation adding up to a life in isolation. It's a life where, along with the homesickness and nostalgia, I also find myself dealing with other challenges like staying healthy — a week with malaria was one week too many — and trying to figure out how to teach math to ninth- and 10th-graders who have spent the past 10 years laying their educational foundation in a concrete of rote memorization, a concept foreign to me.
As these hindrances build, I often find myself growing increasingly frustrated, asking the inevitable question, "Why am I here?!"
In the beginning, all problems were solved by solo screaming bouts in the hut where I live, but more and more, I find myself brushing the bad things aside, knocking the dirt off my shoulders, celebrating the small victories, making the most of each new experience.
Every night, I duck out of my hut and gaze skyward, just for a few moments, becoming lost in the heavens above, the Milky Way so thick and close you can taste it, the moon so bright the children play outside until well past my bedtime.
At that moment, I've found my reward for making it through another day.
But that makes each day sound like a chore, like a 9-to-5 desk job, and, though it is tough work, I can't imagine any desk job where I'd get to see 200 students saluting a boy as he clings atop the flagpole, waiting for his classmates to toss up the Guinean colors. Never during my time as a patent examiner did I get to help stuff a half-ton, live bull into the trunk of a dilapidated bush taxi after being told, "We have to pick up some beef."
Heck, on my third day I had my dinner stolen by a sweet, old lady.
On a walk through town I had been ecstatic to find bread for sale, as it's sometimes hard to come by in the bush. I scooped up a loaf and went off in search of some peanut butter. A woman sold me a lump (that's how they sell it here) and I was headed home to a delicious dinner. I figured I'd eat half the loaf tonight and the other half in the morning for breakfast. A nice little sandwich was made with peanut butter, honey and even a few pieces of chocolate I'd gotten in a care package (insert joke about me being in second grade right here).
Sandwich in hand, I sat in front of my hut, taking the first bite as I wrote in my journal. Just as I was about to take the second bite, an elderly woman walked by on the path that passes just a few feet from my front door. She greeted me in Yalunka, I greeted back, and, in an attempt at integrating, said, "Invitation?" — meaning, "Do you want some?" Guineans love this and always say, "Merci, bon appétit!" and go on their way. But she took me up on the offer. She took the sandwich and sat down next to me.
We sat together in silence for at least a minute, her staring off into the distance, me wondering when she was going to take a bite and hand back my dinner. And then suddenly she stood up, said, "Thank you," and walked off, my entire sandwich in tow.
Thank goodness for second halves.
I went back into my hut and made another sandwich, although this time I was sure to eat it behind the cover of a book. About a hundred yards away, I could see the old woman watching me inquisitively, probably wondering what in the world kind of sandwich I had given her.
While each day here presents new challenges, there are so many things for which I'm thankful and make me grateful for this experience. Loving family and friends back home supporting my journey (and sending great care packages); the compassionate missionary family only an hour down the road, ready and happy to share their home and American food; waking up and saying, "Wow! Africa!"; learning new languages; sharing with others; and growing intellectually, culturally and spiritually.
These are the things I remember "when the dog bites, when the bee stings ..."
Well, except the dog probably has rabies, so I'll need to get more shots.
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.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
The roof doesn't leak anymore - it's dry season!
Three things that scare me: bush taxis, black cobras and angry students.
On my last trip back to the village from Conakry, I was lucky enough to be able to ride all the way to Mamou in a Peace Corps vehicle. Unfortunately, the rest of the ride involved me sharing the front seat of a bush taxi with four other men. As horrifying as the nighttime taxi ride into Conakry was, this may have been even worse: this time we could see the things we barely hit… and the things we hit.
The driver was a maniac. When we’d pass through villages, he’d accelerate; when there were four foot potholes, he’d try to jump them at full speed… and bush taxis can’t jump. There were at least three times when I was certain we were going to kill somebody. We’d be speeding through a village, around a blind bend, when a little boy or girl on their way home from school would try to scoot across the road just in front of the taxi. I can’t express to you how terrified I was the one time the little girl actually had to jump out of the way.
At one point, we came across a bunch of sheep in the road. Animals in the road are fairly common – sheep, goats, cows, monkeys, you name it – and, generally speaking, people slow down, you know, so they don’t hit the animals. But not our driver. For the first time (and sadly, surely not the last), I felt and heard the sickening crunch of bush taxi bumper against sheep ribs. The sheep was down for the count, but not the driver – he just kept going, ready to tackle whatever obstacle got in his way! In spite of his maniacal driving, it still took us about four hours to cover the 135 kilometers between Mamou and my village, thanks to stops about every ten minutes to do who knows what. Needless to say, I made a note of the taxi and driver and will not ride with him again.
The other day, I was over at the Andersons when the two sons came running inside, excited about the snake they had heard in the bottom of the garbage pit. They grabbed their guns and hurried back outside. Yet to see a snake in country, I didn’t want to miss this one, so I hustled after them. As we walked up to the trash pit – a 4ft diameter, 20 ft deep hole in the ground, not unlike a well – there came a ferocious “Hsssssss!” It sounded to me like it was much closer than the bottom of the pit and, upon further inspection, there didn’t seem to be anything slithering around down there; meaning the snake must have been much closer, somewhere in the grass right by our feet… the next day, some of the local boys came over and said they saw the snake – a black cobra. Brrr – the thought of being so close to a snake like that gives me the chills. I’ll think twice the next time I go running after a snake!
Last Monday, I was sitting at my desk around 9am when I heard lots of shouting coming from the road about 150 feet from my hut. The students, angry that no teachers or administration had shown up (I teach Tuesday through Thursday), were marching into town, where they proceeded to pagaille – meaning they blocked traffic for about an hour until somebody was able to disperse them. There must have been about 200 of them when I saw them marching down the road, fists in the air, yelling out their frustrations at an administration who still, more than a month into the school year, is yet to provide them with more than two regular teachers. I didn’t necessarily feel unsafe that day, but it did get me to thinking that someday those students may finally decide they really want somebody to answer them, and that day I may be the only one there. For now I’ll just hope it doesn’t come to that.
So, that may sum up, just a little, how things are going at school so far, haha. Actually, I’ve been teaching for quite a while, holding all my classes, minus a few when all the students got up and left to go to the market (I still haven’t figured that one out!). The first few weeks were incredibly frustrating – these students have been educated for the last ten years on sheer rote memorization, and it hasn’t worked. I’ll ask my tenth graders what one minus one is, and they’ll say zero. Then I’ll ask how much negative one plus one makes, and they say/guess, in this order, minus one, two, minus two, one, one half, zero. A lack of fundamental arithmetic such as this has proved to be the great impediment to my tutelage. Hopefully, little by little, I’ll be able to fix these problems and move onto the actual coursework of equations, Thales’ Property, and autres choses comme ca.
The students, while they aren’t angels, seem to at last have been scared into submission. There have been a few times when I’ve really had to flex my disciplinary muscles – doing things like throwing students’ notebooks into the courtyard and telling them to leave and come back tomorrow, or slamming a cahier down on the floor and making the student sit on the floor until he finally writes what I’m telling him. Okay, that makes me sound pretty extreme, but these students are used to being beaten as punishment, so a little tsk-tsk isn’t going to get the job done. I’m not doing anything to physically harm the students and, since those episodes, I’ve had no problems at all! I guess it’s not really cool to sit on the floor doing a problem while the rest of the students watch from their desks. This is certainly far different from the states, but, then again, so is everything else!
Aside from school, I have been quite healthy and have been able to exercise a lot at site. I’m back to running five times a week and doing all of my other exercises as well, the result of which is a very happy Hunter. It got cold for a few days, during which I wrote a little essay called “Fall”, which I’ll post below, but since then it’s really heated back up – it got up to 119 the other day! The heat isn’t helped much by the addition of brush fires, which the neighbors have recently started. I’ve started teaching English to the doctor at the clinic behind my hut, and am helping out at the clinic some, too. Hopefully in January I’ll be able to get rolling on some nice secondary projects within the village, and maybe then I’ll be able to recruit the help of some of you readers in getting some things done – I know everybody wants to get involved! ;)
Okay, I think that’s all for today – but I’ll be back tomorrow to post a little on Thanksgiving. Here’s the “Fall” piece, and I’ll “Fall”ow it up with some new photos.
It’s November and fall is in the air. The leaves are changing; smoke wafts lazily about as it drifts from the neighbor’s fire; and there is no mistaking the chill of the crisp, autumn breeze. Okay, so only about half of that statement is true, but let’s be fair – I’m in Africa, and half is good enough for me. Today, for the first time since arriving here in July, I found myself actually feeling a shift in the season, as if summer had snuck out in the middle of the night without even saying goodbye.
The leaves haven’t changed color, but something else has: having not tasted the sweetness of rain in a good two weeks, the grass has evolved from its former verdant self into the most beautiful shade of deepest violet. Riding my bike through the fields outside the village, I’m spellbound as this transformation brings to life the landscape about me, the grass swaying in whichever direction the wind decides to push it.
There is smoke in the air, but it’s not coming from the fireplace of a cozy den. Rather, it’s the product of controlled brushfires, started by farmers as a preemptive measure before the brush becomes too dry and a single lightning strike could ignite a fire capable of devastating the entire village. The smoke lends to the already present haze of the dry season and brings with it an acrid aroma, lingering long after the fires have licked their last flame. While the smoke saddens me in the sense that the dancing fields I love to watch will soon be no more, I welcome it as a precursor to a time when the humidity will be all but gone and I’ll once again be able to breathe easy.
The crisp, cool air is by no means the stuff of a chilly Saturday in October, awakening hats and jackets from their hibernation in the hall closet, but, to an American living in Africa, the fresh air blown in by the Harmattan winds from the Sahel is a welcome change to the normally stifling heat. 95 degree nights are now a thing of the past as the thermometer dips into the 70’s, forcing me under the covers wondering where one buys a blanket around here! I’m happy the cold air has finally come, and it can stay as long as it likes, but I’ll tell you this much – bucket baths just got a lot colder!
Of course, the ‘fall’ I’ve conjured up here could just be the product of my active imagination and my homesickness for a day back home where I could zip up my fleece and hear the crunch of leaves under my feet; perhaps the pure want of a cool night has simply made it so. After all, the Guineans only have two seasons in their culture – the wet one and the dry one. At the end of my fall, there will be no snowy night to which I can look forward. In January and February, there will surely be a ‘light dusting’ on the ground, but it will be exactly that – dust. I suppose for now I’ll just have to take this feeling of autumn I’ve conjured up and run with it while I can, and… who knows? Maybe a few months from now I’ll be writing about the sharp bite of winter in the air, how the African dirt can actually be rolled into balls and stacked up Frosty-style, but I’ll be darned if I can find a top hat and scarf around here!
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Some volunteers have students or petites come hang out on the porch. I have sheep:
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The most amazing hut dinner ever - the Andersons brought over a chicken pot pie, cookies, and COLD sweet tea. They are angels.
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The next two photos are the starts of brush fires. The fires are yet to become terribly intense, but they sure are loud.
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This is the village where I go to get cell phone, reception - Krimbisinde. The hill I have to climb is behind me.
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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...
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This is the sunset as seen from my shower. The hills in the background are in Sierra Leone, as is the antenna.
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The sunrise, as seen from my bathroom on Monday.
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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.
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Some volunteers have students or petites come hang out on the porch. I have sheep:.JPG)
The most amazing hut dinner ever - the Andersons brought over a chicken pot pie, cookies, and COLD sweet tea. They are angels..JPG)
The next two photos are the starts of brush fires. The fires are yet to become terribly intense, but they sure are loud..JPG)
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This is the village where I go to get cell phone, reception - Krimbisinde. The hill I have to climb is behind me.
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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....JPG)
This is the sunset as seen from my shower. The hills in the background are in Sierra Leone, as is the antenna..JPG)
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The sunrise, as seen from my bathroom on Monday.
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