Warmer than the Sun

Through my pre-service training I am getting to know some pretty terrible facts about Guinea. About 10% of the babies here die before age 5. 99% of girls are victims of female genital mutilation. 85% of the population lives on less than a dollar a day. Despite all of this, the people in Guinea are the most friendly in the world. It takes a while to get anywhere here because you have to say hello to everyone. Hello is not just hi. It is did you sleep well last night? Was the night without evil? How is your health? How is your family? That is what you say to a stranger as you walk by. In case you want to know what that is in local language, the closest I can get on an American keyboard is… “Tana Mu xi? Xeri xi? A nere fe? Denbayago?”

Some examples of how amazing the people are here…

My host brother is 15. He knows only a little bit about me. From the fact that I celebrated Christmas, he knows I am Christian. From the fact that I have shown him a ton of pictures of Louie he knows that I love dogs. He was in the capital this week and he brought me back a glow in the dark Rosary, a stack of puppy stickers, and made a sacrifice for my health and safety. The way the sacrifice works is you purchase a blessed object so for my sacrifice, I have a ring. I have not said the rosary since Holy Child, the ring has turned my finger green, and what am I going to do with 25 puppy stickers, but think about it, how many 15 year old boys that you know would be that thoughtful?

The other day, we ran a discussion session on volunteerism with local youth. We were talking about what you can personally gain from volunteerism. One girl said, You get a ‘merci’ and a merci is worth more than a dollar.

The people are also funny without realizing it. They all wear goodwill leftovers from the US but have no idea what their t-shirts say. DARE t-shirts are popular here and I saw a girl wearing “Irish Girls Have More Fun” and a boy wearing “I love my Brownie Troupe”. There is also a 8ish year old who always bathes at the time I walk home. He jumps up and down naked and soapy when I walk pass and yells “Hello Meg hat! Good bye!”

Unfortunately, they are also very open in their marriage proposals. I think I am in the lead for most prospective husbands. One guy was pretty serious about marrying me, but I eventually told him that I had a husband and since then he has not been waiting for me when I come home to tall me all the reasons why we should go dancing together…

It's a Wonderful Life

I’m afraid this post might be a bit corny. Maybe too sentimental or mushy for some, but I am going to write it anyway. So if you are more of a Grinch than a Cindy Loo Hou, skip it. For Christmas, all of the trainees (and a few current volunteers) went to the Conakry house to celebrate. Why get on an overcrowded bus for 2 hours each way just to celebrate for 24 hours? I’ll tell you why. The Conakry house has electricity, air conditioning, flush toilets, and REAL SHOWERS! We even had a Christmas tree- one volunteer helped a Guinean market pine-ish trees to expats in the capital as Christmas trees. We watched Elf, It's a Wonderful Life, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. We had a great white elephant gift exchange (the big hit was a bottle of ketchup and I am not saying that sarcastically). It was hard missing out on the Christmas season and especially hard being away from friends and family, but this Christmas was also really refreshing. This morning I opened a framed picture from my graduation, Via Coffee, a bar of nice soap, a letter from my family, and a USB drive with a video of the family and my dad reading ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. It was not much- the total value of the gifts was around $20, but I have never been so happy and moved by my gifts. They say the Peace Corps changes you. Don’t think I am swearing off Christmas gifts. When I get home, I will be going shopping and I will gladly accept any present you want to send to me, but this was a nice reminder that those things are not the real meaning of Christmas. When you are home, you are with the people you love, so the presents that you get can be material. When you are away, the presents become a manifestation of that warm fuzzy feeling. Good work family! You made the other volunteers jealous. The video on USB drive is now the bar that is set.

We also went to the head of the community economic development program’s house for Christmas lunch. I now understand why the SFS kids really want to go live the expat lifestyle. Her house is beautiful. Stepping into it felt (and smelled) like America. We had some American food and drinks as well as a stuffed goat. I almost ate a piece, but than I realized how much it still looked like a goat, how much it still looked like the really cute goats that live at my house, and I couldn’t do it. I think I am going to become a vegetarian again. When you have about as much language in common with the people around you as with the barnyard animals, the animals really start to take on human characteristics.

My host brother can say one phrase in English. It is “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” He has said this to me at least 5 times. Unfortunately, he is away this week so he is missing his opportunity to use it appropriately so I will say to for him since it’s all I really have wanted to say this whole post. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Being away from all of you reminds me how much I love my friends and family. 

Site Announcements!!

About 13 months ago, I was nominated to become a business development volunteer in Francophone West Africa. Last July, I found out that it would be community economic development in Guinea. Last Thursday I found out that I will be partnering with the Association Guineenne pour le developpement de L’enterprise Privee (AGUIDEP) in the city of Kindia. Kindia is a city in the Basse Cote of about 200,000 people. It supports a great deal of commerce especially related to agriculture and is conveniently located on the road from the Capital to the rest of Guinea. AGUIDEP works with local entrepreneurs and cooperatives on business trainings and is part of a consortium with a microfinance organization and an artisans cooperative. The way that the Peace Corps works is that a partner organization requests a volunteer. In Guinea, they also give you your housing to show a strong commitment. With this partner organization, you have a main project and are encouraged to work on various other projects both within the organization and the community. My main project is to work with AGUIDEP to identify the training needs of entrepreneurs in the community and to create educational films to fulfill this need. My goal will be to aid in the production of multiple short films, train local counterparts in filmmaking techniques (story line development, script writing, acting), create a manual to be used to support the creation of future films, create a strategy to distribute these films. I am very excited about this post because it will allow me to blend creativity and business skills and will hopefully have a large impact due to the portability of films.

Some great things about Kindia…There are currently 2 volunteers already in Kindia who will be there through the Spring/Summer. There will also be 2 volunteers from my training class working in public health and agroforestry not too far away. It is the fruit and vegetable capital of Guinea (think more pineapple and avocado, less fishy rice). Its’ electricity is more reliable than in other cities and I should be able to get internet multiple times a week. Anyone who wants to go to the capital has to pass through my city so I’ll get to see most of the other volunteers.

If you have any articles that you think would help me- especially on community based script development- please send them my way. In the body of an e-mail is better than attachments.

Fote! Fote!

So I may have mentioned this in an earlier post but everyone here calls us fote (pronounced fo-tay). Literally when you walk down the street, in the market, really anywhere at anytime you here Fote! Fote! It means they want you to look at them and say hi. It is mostly little kids and old ladies that do it, but it can be anywhere. It translates to white person, but since they call one of the African Americans in our group fote noir, I think it translates closer to foreigner. My host brother told me the correct response it to yell back foret! Foret! Which means forest in French but is used to describe black people. When I asked him if they would like to be called foret or if they would be insulted, he told me they would not like it but it is what you should say. I usually just say hello and ask them what their name is and tell them mine until they get to know my name and yell Mayghan or Maggot (they have trouble pronouncing my name) instead. As a fote you are the substitute for TV. You are always being watched and them talked about. If you speak Susu, then it is the funniest thing that has happened all day and the story of you speaking Susu is spread around. It’s been a bit strange being watched all the time. For example, I was talking to a little boy on my walk home one day and he pointed out his house and I said I lived down the road. He said, “Je sais, Chez Hadja Guirassy”. I had never talked to this boy before, I am not sure if I have ever seen him, but he knows exactly where I live. One day in the market I went hunting for cucumbers. Some days they are everywhere and some days there are nowhere and this seemed to be one of those nowhere days. Finally as I was about to leave I spotted two tiny cucumbers at the stall of a vendor I often say hello to. I walked over, greeted her in Susu and asked how much the cucumbers cost. I bought one and she gave me the second as a gift. This is common practice in Guinea, but for a foreigner to get a gift is a big deal and means that I have begun to integrate well. I was so happy about finding the cucumber (fresh veggies are rare here) and getting a sign that my efforts at integration were working, that when I saw my friend I told her in a sing-songy voice and danced a little bit to my diddy. It lasted all of 10 seconds, but as soon as I stopped about 15 people around me burst into applause. You are always being watched.

Une Sourie dans mon lit

So my living quarters, as I have said before are not bad. Yes there is the occasional large spider and yes on my first day I have to clean an actual pile of poop out of my room, but for the most part they are pretty nice. So far I have had only one truly bad experience…

After eating only a few bites of fish rice and some fruit all day, I was pretty hungry before bed. I decided to go into my stash and get a luna bar. I brought it into my bed with me to eat while doing my homework under my mosquito net. My mosquito net is tucked in under my mattress and it is a pain to do so after I come in it, I am in it for the night. Instead of untucking it and going out to the hall to throw my wrapper in the trash can I decided it would be safe to leave on top of my journal in the corner of my bed and went to sleep. At 1 am I was awoken by a sound familiar to me from late nights in Poulton, that is the sound of a mouse chewing on the plastic of a food wrapper. I curled up as small as I could I tried to convince myself that it was not a mouse, but rather a vivid dream caused by my malaria pills. Then I heard a telltale squeak just inches from my ear. I leaped out of bed, grabbed my flashlight, and shone it on my bed. There was nothing there. I took the wrapper out of my bed, I got back in, re-tucked my net, convinced myself it was a noise outside and not a mouse that my drug and sleep addled brain was confusing for a mouse. I started to fall back asleep. I was awoken again by real or imagined mouse noises. This went on for about 2 hours. Then I panicked and thought that I had trapped the mouse in my bed when I retucked my net and crawled to every corner of my bed to look over the edge and check. In the end I fall back asleep around 4 with my flashlight on to scare the mouse from my bed. The next morning I looked at the wrapper and it had indeed been chewed by a mouse. THERE WAS ACTUALLY A MOUSE IN MY BED! How did my mosquito net let a mouse in? That evening when I returned, I noticed the sunhat that I had filled with bandanas and other hair things. I thought to myself that this would be a perfect mouse house and I better move it into a suitcase before our amie colonizes it. As I picked it up, out darted the culprit. It is small and brown and a little cute, but I still hope our cat eats it. And so ends the story of La sourie dans mon lit.

p.s. Let me know if you want to hear about anything specifically or send me e-mails. Although the internet is intermittent, it is still great to get them when I can. Or if you are ambitious, real mails. My goal is to mail Christmas letters this week so if you want mail from Africa, e-mail me your address J