“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

~Mark Twain

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! We were able to have a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at our country director’s house who supplied us with a delicious turkey. With our powers combined, volunteers were able to scrape together stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes , green beans and even rolls with butter! For the first time in my life, I did not roll my eyes at the traditional lets go around the table and say what we are thankful for activity. Living in Guinea, I realize how much I have to be grateful for. Here is an abbreviated list.

1.       I am thankful that I won the nationality lottery. Being born as an American citizen opens up so many doors.
2.       I am thankful for watching the sunsets over the ocean from the roof of the volunteer house in conakary.
3.       I’m thankful to friends and family who have sent me letters and packages.
4.       I am thankful for mangos, pineapples, avocados and other delicious things that grow in Kindia.
5.       I am thankful to have a host family that has really taken me in as a member of the family. I am thankful that I have a real family who has supported me on this adventure.
6.       I am thankful that the people of Kindia are motivated and engaged and ready to work with me towards a better future.
7.       I am thankful that I have had success in my projects and that I find my work so fulfilling.
8.       I am thankful to my stage mates and to our “flotte” that makes all of them just a free phone call away (if only Orange could get their act together)
9.       I am thankful for waterfalls that let me escape the heat and go for a swim.
10.   I am thankful that in 8 days, I will be getting on a plane to go to American for the Holidays and thankful that I am loving life enough here that I can say for certain that I will get back on that plane at the end of vacation and continue my work.
Things I am not thankful for…BICIGUI. If you have been following the saga, we still don’t have our credit card so my BiblioTech is still on hold. You expect the small local organization to make development work challenging, not the multinational bank, but alas AGUIDEP has their stuff together 1000x more than BICIGUI.

Friday, November 2, 2012

Baa Baa Black Sheep


It’s November. Last November I was saying my final goodbyes, packing up, and getting on plane to fly over here. In the past 11 months, Guinea has transformed itself from a wild an inexplicable adventure to my new normal. As a result, the blog posts have dropped off. Doing laundry by hand, at a point in the past, was out of the ordinary, worthy of a blog post. Now, on laundry day, I haul some buckets of water, turn on my ipod speakers, and get it done. I will do my best to keep posting and keep it interesting.

Last Friday was Tabaski, the Muslim holiday to commemorate when God to Abraham to kill his first born and at the last minute decided that the test was enough of a sacrifice and a sheep would suffice. In Guinea, they often call it “La Fête de Mouton” because every Muslim with the mean to is supposed to sacrifice a sheep and share the meat with friends, family, and the less fortunate. In the days leading up to Tabaski, I saw sheep everywhere. Sheep in cars, sheep on cars, sheep on motorcycles, on boys’ shoulders, tied to a tree. Literally everywhere you looked there was a sheep enjoying its last few days on earth. As an on-again-off-again vegetarian, I was not thrilled about the prospect of seeing sheep slaughtered all over the place. When I close my eyes, I can still picture the slaughtered cow that I saw during Ramadan. I got up early and went for a run. I put on a baseball cap, yoga pants, a t-shirt popped in my ipod and off I went. I did not realize that my normal run took me by the main mosque in my neighborhood. I turned a corner and there were people everywhere and more streaming up the road coming for the morning prayer. The women were in complets, shawls, and head scarves and here I was dressed like a 21st century American. I decided to stop running out of respect, turned off my music and greeted my neighbors as I passed by them. The rest of the day was spent going around and saying hello to people and giving little presents to kids. It was strange after seeing hundreds of live sheep everywhere for days, I did not see a single one get slaughtered. Sheep are very expensive and I live in one of the poorer neighborhoods so I guess nobody could afford it. I am sorry that they did not get to sacrifice a sheep because it is important to their religion, but I am thrilled that I did not spend the day seeing puddles of blood and entrails.

All dressed up for the fete!
For those of you interested in my work, things have been moving along really well. No, I still do not have a credit card to buy the Kindles for BiblioTech, but I have been assured that the request has been sent to France for processing, so one day soon. I am also developing a conference on social entrepreneurship with 7 other volunteers. The conference will introduce 20 youth to social entrepreneurship, take them through the process of dreaming up a social enterprise, doing feasibility studies writing a business plan and then pitching it with the winner getting their start up costs as prize money. It is very exciting and we have started a blog where we and eventually our participants will be posting articles on their experiences. Check it out at osezinnover.wordpress.com. Follow it and send it to other people you think may be interested. If you work in the field of social entrepreneurship and want to contribute an article, we would be thrilled. Osez Innover means Dare to Innovate in French and the blog will soon be up in French as well. 

Monday, October 1, 2012

The Banking Crisis


Every year the World Bank publishes their “Doing Business” survey. It ranks countries on how easy it is the start, register, and run a business within its borders. In 2010, Guinea ranked 173rd. On of the indicators is how easy it is to open a bank account. Based on my experiences here, I am surprised we are not ranked last. In June, I started helping an NGO open a new joint bank account. They were already account holders at this bank. First of all you need to go get ID photos taken. There are few places to do this, they are expensive, and the hours of operation are at best unpredictable and at worst, non-existent. You need to photo copy all your documents (the bank does not do this to create yours dossier). After you run around town collecting all the requisites, you wait for hours at the bank for a meeting and then (in my case), months for the account to be open. After 2 months, we stopped the process. We never succeeded in opening the account.

For my current project, BiblioTech, we need a credit card both to purchase the initial stock of Kindles and to put new books on in the future. I asked my NGO is we could get a credit card from a Guinean bank that would work internationally. The response was an instant no. That does not exist. In trying to find alternative solutions, I went to Conakry and I ended up talking to a PC staff member whose husband works for the largest Guinean bank. She told me that she was fairly confident that such a thing did exist, called him and got the product name. She told me go back to the Kindia branch and ask for a “Carte Bleue”. They should know what I am talking about and be able to open it up for me there. So back to Kindia and the waiting room to meet with the bank director. I could taste victory. After a few hours of waiting I got called in. He had no idea what I was talking about. He told me he was going to e-mail someone in Conakry and to come back in three days. So I waited the three days and came back. I was informed that a card existed but he did not know if it would work for international purchases. I had to go to Conakry HQ and meet with a Mr. Diallo to find out and to apply for it. One problem, he would not give me Mr. Diallo’s contact information. So I called my PC contact who found out his number for me. I explained what I wanted and that I was PC and he told me to come in. So it was back to Conakry. Amidst rumors riots and protests, I headed downtown to the HQ. I found Mr. Diallo. I again explained what I wanted and how I got his contact information. His response was, “Ok. I have two problems. One, I don’t know how you got my phone number. And two, I do not do credit cards.” After many apologies for wasting his valuable time, he gave me the name of the person I had to see. I went to his office. His response was shock that the Kindia branch had sent me in the first place since all we needed was to fill out a simple form that had to be submitted to the HQ in Paris by the branch where the account was opened. I could not do anything in Conakry. I took his card and the form and headed back to Kindia. In Kindia, I met with the director, handed him the form and asked him to apply for us. He still had no idea how to do this so I gave him the contact for the helpful man in Conakry. Unfortunately, cell phone service has been terrible of late and he could not reach him. He told me he would send this an e-mail and to come back in a few days. Right now I am waiting for “a few days” to pass. My first visit to the bank to ask about this was August 25th. It is now Oct 1st and still no credit card is in site. I will go back tomorrow and will hopefully have good news. How can businesses be expected to function and grow if they cannot even get a large bank to understand the basic products available and know how to support their clients in the use of something as simple as a credit card?

Sick as a fish


I was pretty sick the past couple of days. In Guinean you develop a “new normal” for what is sick and what is healthy. So while I would have been alarmed and shocked with what was going in the US, in Guinea, I come to expect something like this every once in a while. I even had a friend going through the same thing about 20 hours ahead of me so I could check in and see what the future had in hold for me. My community was very concerned since they thought I had malaria. I would not be shocked if a broken wrist was misdiagnosed as malaria in this country. So I had many visitors. My counterpart (PC assigns you an official work partner) came three times on Friday and was alarmed that I was not eating. I promised him that on Saturday I would eat some bread and to not worry. Well worry he did and he and his wife decided to bring me a meal on Saturday. They came by around 5 with a plate covering another plate dropped it off, said hello, and left. I wondered what could be inside. Bread? Bananas? Plain rice? Maybe bouille (it’s rice or corn or millet pounded into a flour, reformed into balls and then boiled until it has a stew consistency)? I opened the plate and what did I find? A whole fish that looked both terrifying and terrified. Somehow it looked sharp and the mouth was open bearing teeth. The eye socket, a black abyss. It was on the plate with a huge pile of greasy potatoes, onions and spices and topped with a huge dollop of mayonnaise. This is something I would not be able to stomach even if I had not been throwing up. I threw the lid back on, and once I realized that the smell would not make me sick, I had to laugh at the situation. It was incredibly sweet of them to prepare me such a feast, but another case of culture clash. As I was told many times, in Guinea if you don’t keep eating hearty meals while your sick you will never recover and never get your strength back, where as in the US we look at the stomach flu as a reason to eat nothing but broth and saltines. Anyway, I’m much better now and was able to sneak the food to my cat and neighbors without anyone knowing so at least somebody ate like a king.

Monday, September 3, 2012

What Do I Want to Hear?


Other volunteers are probably sick of hearing about how much I love my site and my partner organization. People are motivated. They want better lives for themselves and for the people in their community. They embrace change. They follow through. Even in Kindia, though, you still run into some of the most frustrating aspects of Guinean culture. The number one frustrating cultural practice is telling people what you think they want to hear instead of the truth.

I am trying to start a savings and loans association in my neighborhood. About two months ago, we had an introductory meeting that was well and enthusiastically attended. I gave people a two week deadline to present their groups to me. Two weeks has come and gone at least 4 times. There is one group of young women who say they are prepared to start. The issue is my counterpart (the only French speaking member of the group) has been hard to pin down. Each Sunday that a meeting is scheduled, I go to find her and she is at a wedding, funeral, or baptism. Then she said we needed to wait for Ramadan to end to start up. So this week we had a meeting scheduled for 1pm. I had a good feeling about it. I went over to here house at 9:30 to remind her. I was told,  “Fatime? A bara siga walide, taqui, a fafe”. Fatime is in town working but she’s coming. I went to town to teach my entrepreneurship course and got back around 12. I was told the same thing. I asked her sister to send her to my house as soon as she got back. 1pm came and went at 2, I went back over. “Where is Fatime?”, I asked, “We had a meeting.” Fatime went to Conakry for a sacrifice. I asked when she left. “Horo” or yesterday. When was she coming back? “Tina”. Why did nobody tell me this originally? Instead of lying to me all day, I could have known the truth and not spent my afternoon waiting around for a meeting that was never going to happen. They knew I did not want to hear that she was out of town (again) so they did not tell me. I’m trying again for Wednesday, so keep your fingers crossed for me.

Even more frustrating is my neighbor who is a candidate for Mercy Ships. Mercy Ships is an ONG that gives free surgery on this converted cruise ship. They are in Guinea for 9 months and today was the day that everyone who wanted surgery needed to go to “Palais de Peuple”, a kind of Guinean conference center. My neighbor has a tumor on her face about the size of a football. The kind of tumor you would see on a primetime hospital drama and ask yourself, “How did they let it get this bad.” In Guinea, there is no choice but to let it grow (our hospital does not have electricity most of the time), unless and NGO comes in with their own hospital and offers to help you out for free. We have been talking about her going for four months. I talked to her in Susu, I talked to a family member in French, my host dad talked to everyone at their house multiple times. It was settled. Two days ago I stopped by to remind her the date was coming. She assured me that in two days she would be in Conakry. I went yesterday and said you need to leave today. “Ok”, she said. I went by this morning and she was there. I told her if she did not leave right now, she was going to miss her chance. Did she want to go? She said she was not ready yet. Four months and she was not ready yet. So many people want to help Guineans, but if they don’t want to help themselves it’s not going to work. On one hand, it frustrates the hell out of me, on the other hand, it reaffirms the grass roots development approach. Solutions need to come from the community and development workers need to seize presented opportunities instead of pushing their own agenda. 

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Because we can



My sister trying to do crowd control. See the huge speaker?
What happens if you take a camera out
As I said in my last post, I have been très occupé. I have been in the office or around town for meetings from 8-5:30 which is a long work day when life is also so time consuming and you walk 30 minutes each way to work and daylight ends at 7:30 and you have no electricity. Today I got home around 6 and was planning to skip dinner, get into bed and watch a movie on my laptop. As I approached my house, I heard loud music. A wedding in the neighborhood? Now that Ramadan is over, weddings will start up again. Nope. My host dad owns giant speakers, like professional DJ speakers, that he let people borrow for weddings, baptisms, ect. For no reason other than Ramadan’s over so we can listen to music, so boys rented a generator and borrowed the speakers to have a dance party. I can home to 50+ children dancing to LOUD Guinean music and chanting my name. So instead of a nap, I had to dance solo for the crowd for 15 minutes to Guinean music while they shouted Salématou! Salématou! At least I can’t complain that my life is boring.