Le Grand Depart

I get on the plane tonight in just a couple hours, to leave Africa until…! Eep! I wrote this a few days ago:

It’s my last week at post, I leave little Dabola in five days. More so than the goodbyes, it’s the return to America that has me mildly intimidated. In the two times that I’ve been back to the States during these last three and a half years, it’s always just been a quick trip, and then back overseas. But this is it now: the American Big Time. Time to get a big-girl job with a real salary and wear some respectable clothing. And buy a hairbrush! (Yessss, I just use my fingers here.)

I’m nervous as to how people are going to react to me when I can’t stop starting every sentence with, “When I was in Africa…” or the funny looks people will give me when I insist on wearing my African moomoos in public, and am generally clueless about things currently American. And job hunting??! Enough said!

But I’m excited at the same time. Mostly to be close to the comforts of my family and friends, which is the number one reason I am coming home. :)

I’ve found myself extra sentimental these last few days. Little things Guineans say or do just really touch me and break my heart a little. (I know, that’s sappy.) But the idea that I get to go back to big shiny America, where things mostly work the way people say they are going to work, where rampant corruption and extreme poverty are not a daily way of life. So many people here have been kind to me, generous, thoughtful, and funny, even in the face of poverty and a world of inconveniences, and I sometimes wonder what I have done to deserve their kindness and good humor, or how I could thank them. And I’m at a loss. I just hope that one day, in my turn I can be as giving and hospitable to others as Guineans and Cameroonians have been to me.

One last image comes to mind. I was whizzing down the road on my bike earlier today. It’s a road I’ve been down many times, but I’m looking at everything a little harder now, trying to soak it all up and not forget anything. I passed a little boy who was walking from a nearby well, carrying a bucket of water on his head. He was small enough that his arms were completely extended upward to grasp the rim of the bucket. He caught me looking, smiling at him and shyly smiled back and hesitated a moment, making the water splash out of his bucket and all over him, which made us both smile even more. Little moments like that—how easy it can be to connect with someone here, and how incredibly much people appreciate the simplest gestures. I'm not sure I have the capacity to give such joy so easily in the States—that’s what I’ll miss. In fact, I’m already missing it, and I’m not even gone…

Busted flat in Dabola

Or, ruins everywhere...

Just because I think this is fascinating, I wanted to share one other thing I’ve noticed about Guinea, unique little country that this is, from my travels. Ruins are everywhere, in ways I have not seen in any other country—French houses dating from before independence, depots, and train stations. Most impressive is the colonial-era railway, running like a backbone, the spine of this country’s skeleton that has not yet decayed. I mentioned Camara Laye in my last blog entry, and one of the most evocative descriptions in his book L’Enfant Noir is of taking the train from Kouroussa in Upper Guinea across the country to Conakry, on the coast.

Well, that train is certainly no more. The ties have been ripped up and sold for metal. The remains of the stations stand out because they are surrounded by old mango trees, planted by French colonialists who liked shade (I don’t blame ‘em!) It seems almost any time you spot tall, aged mango trees, you know the French were lurking there in the past. The decaying train station in Dabola, my town, is my favorite. A few photos, courtesy of my friend David.

On the platform.



“Busted flat in Dabola, waitin’ for a train, and I’m feeling just as faded as my gray pants…”



You just keeping waiting for that train to come, David.



Remaining colonial-era houses and depots surrounding the train station. You can even see the mangoes, like little green Christmas ornaments, hanging in the trees in this one.











Cartwheels on the platform, just cause :)

















One big-ass tree, a silk cotton. (That’s me in the roots!)



Since the train station faces away from town and the main market, all you see is fields. It’s calm and quiet, and for a minute you’d think you are somewhere else—maybe rural France fifty years ago—as it seems so different from anything else I’ve seen in Guinea.

The station masters’ huge house, dripping with dilapidated colonialism and wrap-around porches, is a surreal past-meets-present mix, where people have set up shop and an impromptu café, moved in, and are cooking meals under the trees. I’m glad to see that at least it’s being used!

During our travels to another town, Dalaba, we saw the old French governor’s house. It was beautiful and spacious, situated on the edge of the mountains of the Fouta Jallon. I could imagine long-ago soirees, pre-electricity; the magnificent huge room lit up by candles, women swishing around in ball gowns, and men talking about the colonial government. Windows stretch to the ceiling and give a view of the mountains fading into the distance. Now, paint is peeling and there’s a table with souvenir bracelets laid out for tourists’ perusal, but the view is still stunning. I like the lack of maintenance, it feels more authentic. It seems in most places, when a new group comes to power, they quickly take as their own the fancy buildings and relics of others who have come before them. Maybe it’s a statement of how Guinea felt about the French (and I can’t blame them!) that the Guineans have almost completely turned their backs on buildings/infrastructure/anything French. (Likewise, the French and all their architects, engineers and technicians completely abandoned Guinea after it took its independence.) Throughout Dalaba I saw other buildings that seemed once grand, and were now just shells, ever-present reminders of Guinea’s one-of-kind history.

You never know what you’ll find when you travel…

Or, hold on to your toes.

My time in Guinea is quickly coming to an end, so I decided to get out and see what all the fuss is about—because Guinea is supposedly a marvelously beautiful country. The fuss was right on—Guinea is pretty nice. Here’s a little summary, and a few photos.

Kankan
Is so hot. I do not know how people live there, actually, and am grateful that I do not. Wow. Guineans are tough! It’s the second or third largest city in Guinea and it has no electricity. Would that be like Los Angeles or Chicago with no lights? Any power comes from small privately-owned generators. And no electricity means no fans, means one does not fall asleep until about three in the morning!

I got to see a couple of fellow PCVs in Kankan, one of whom, Darline, does some amazing things with hibiscus. Did you know you can make a nice wine out of that? Darline did! You boil the hibiscus petals in water, throw the resulting juice in a bucket, add sugar and yeast, cover the bucket, and then serve all your friends who come to visit until they can barely walk straight. :) Navigating the city’s streets after a night of hibiscus wine with your equally intoxicated PCV friends and no lights to guide you—always a good time in Kankan! Bonus points for not landing in one of the ditches on the side of Kankan’s nice paved roads. My hat goes off to Darline!

Then, feeling inspired by weather that must have been under 95 degrees (woohoo!) a fellow PCV David and I decided to bike from Kankan to his village. Almost four hours of chit chat and biking later, we arrived chez lui, an awesome little village called Baro eight kilometers off the paved road, and hometown of our newly-elected president, Alpha Condé. (The town used to be on the national highway, but Condé’s nemesis, then-President Conté, did not like Condé so decided to say a big booyah by redirecting the national highway so that it no longer passed through Condé’s village. And that is what Guinea’s infrastructure dollars are used for, as opposed to say, electrifying Kankan.)

The biking.



Note that fancy paved road. It's a small part of the national highway, and about the only bit of road like it in the country. I am also aware that my 80-cent Guinean sunglasses make me look a little bug-eyed. Helpful for scaring off small children.

So anyway, David does a lot of work in agriculture, so I biked with him off to a neighboring village where he was demonstrating to some local ladies how to make natural insecticides. (For the curious, you mix the right combo of some certain ground-up leaves, water, peppers, and a little soap, which makes the whole mixture stick to the leaves of the crop that you are trying to protect.)

My friends are seemingly quite adept at preparing toxic brews.

Here, the ladies are grinding up the plants that are to be a part of the insecticide concoction.



At work in the garden.



One guy takes a momentary break in the wheelbarrow.



On the way home from David’s, I had to change bush taxis in Kouroussa. Kouroussa holds a bit of intrigue for me, being the hometown of Camara Laye, one of West Africa’s great authors. (If you want to read about pre-independence Guinea, read L’Enfant Noir!) As the car passed herds of cute small boys parading to school in their uniforms, I kept imagining little Camara Laye, that age, circa 1937. Kouroussa is not quite as thrilling as I hoped, largely cause I got stuck waiting eight hours for a car, and then took said car for a trip of 85 miles—only six hours on the semi-paved main national highway! (Our road-side stops included one flat tire, at which we all piled out of the car and sat on the shoulder in the moonlight waiting for it to be repaired, two engine checks, one fiddling with the headlights to make sure that those wires stay connected and our headlights keep shining—not necessarily a given among Guinean vehicles—a prayer break, a detour for some lady to drop off a package, and a pee break. Remember, this trip includes thirteen people packed in a station wagon designed for seven. I am grateful that my bush taxi days will soon be over is all I have to say, and again, hats off to the Guineans who endure this every time they leave their town!)

Fouta
Barely after getting back to Dabola, I bust off again, this time to the Fouta Jallon region, also known as Middle Guinea. The best thing about the Fouta is that it’s COLD!! Probably in the steady 80’s, which is a praise-Jesus beautiful temperature range if I ever saw one. The Fouta is thick with the Peuls—the cousins of Cameroon’s Fulbé. One thing I can say about both Upper Guinea (Kankan area) and Middle Guinea (the Fouta) is that I appreciated the clarity of knowing which language to speak. In Upper Guinea it’s always Malinké, and in Middle Guinea it’s always Pulaar (and boy, are the Peuls insistent about your speaking their language! Not knowing Pulaar is hardly an option—they’ll just keep firing away at you in Pulaar until you crumble or stare blankly enough at them that it becomes clear that you do not understand! And then they scoff at you.) But at least it’s none of this guessing that you’re required to do in Dabola, which sits right in the middle of the two regions, where you never know where one is from or what language they speak. Knowing which language to use just to greet someone is really a relief!

In addition to cool air and lots of Peuls, Middle Guinea is known for some beautiful hiking and waterfalls. My friend Christiana, the fellow expat of Dabola, and I were traveling together and we got to splash around in lots of waterfalls, and stand on the edge of many in ways that would never be allowed in America! (Protective barriers are not yet all the rage here.)

This is near the little village of Doucki. (And once upon a time, that shirt was white, back when I bought it in eighth grade.)





The hut where we stayed while hiking.



This is Christiana and our guide going down a waterfall. One thing I learned from this hike is that just because there seems to be no possible pathway, you can still climb on/up/over things and get into places you did not think people were supposed to go! Goats, yes, but humans? I think I achieved new levels of nimble.



We met some wildlife along the hike in the form of a hungry cow.



Then it was time to hike back up a waterfall! Eek. The crafty villagers in the area had constructed make-shift ladders from bunches of sticks tied together, to facilitate the ascent up the rocky waterfalls. About once a year, they replace the ladders.

Guess whose butt that is:



Here you can see three more of the ladders that make up part of the trail on the left and the waterfall on the right.



I think the coolest thing about this hike is that it would just never happen in America. Rules, regulations and lawsuits probably don’t mix well with home-made stick ladders.

That is a mid-hike, I-am-very-tired face.



Again, villagers taking care of each other—they leave that yellow half of a jug and purple plastic cup on the rocks at all times so it can collect waterfall water and any passers-by can drink it. I should note that while we tourists are paying lots of francs to troop around and get blisters and hike in the waterfalls, the local villagers use this path as a part of their daily life--reminds me how easy we have it in America--no stick ladders required to get to my grocery store!



Each night after hiking it was bucket baths under the stars, and local rice and sauce for supper. All very lovely although sometimes I do question just how clean I get with a bucket bath. Christiana, however, did not complain of any unpleasant odors. (Thanks, dear!)

Near Labé, we crawled down some more waterfalls, the Chutes de Sala. Unlike bucket baths, playing in waterfalls, akin to frolicking under a high-powered hose, will get you clean!



If you happen to notice my legs in this picture, it is true that I have now lived in Africa/the Tropics for three and a half years and have still not obtained a tan. Now that takes something special.







What the hell
I’ll finish this blog entry by mentioning that on this trip I had a couple of interesting and unexpected encounters. The first was while Christiana and I were hiking. Our guide had just pointed out a thick red line of ants crossing the pathway in front of us. I was admiring the ants when I heard a rustle in the bushes just off the path to the right. The rustle turned into a flapping, and the flapping turned into a very hard FWACK against my head! Stunned, I looked as the creature flew off. Christiana had been right behind me and seen it all. “Did that bat just fly into your head?” she asked in her proper British accent. “Was that a bat? Holy shit!” Not only was that a bat, it left a little bat cadeau too—a nice sticky trail down my arm. Mmmm, bat poop. Wow. I scared the shit out of a bat! What are they doing out in the middle of the day anyway??!! No lasting, vampire-esque damage done, however, and my ear stopped ringing from the impact about twenty minutes later.

The next up-close and personal encounter was while Christiana and I were waiting at the car park for a bush taxi out of Labé, heading homeward. She had wandered off in search of a bathroom while I was sitting on a curb in the shade, reading a book. I’d slipped off my sandals and just had my feet resting on top of them. I was enjoying my book when I felt a curious pulling at my big toe. I look up from my book, down at my feet, and see a crazy man bent over, releasing my toe, and smiling up at me as though pulling the white girl’s toe at the car park is just as natural as picking daisies in the spring time. He stands back up again, the transaction complete, and contentedly walks away. I just stare after him, so surprised, and thinking he’ll at least turn around, look at me, maybe thank me for a pleasant toe-pull, but he just moseys off! I can’t help but start laughing! I’m not even sure if anyone else noticed it!

As the hours wore on and we waited for a car, I saw the crazy guy wander around a few more times, and felt myself instinctively pull my feet up under me and my eyes follow him. What was he going to go after next? A bunion? My nose?! All told, we left Labé with no further harassment, but of all the parts of my body that have ever been admired, I believe this was a first for my big toe.

So, just a couple more entries is probably all you’ll here from me! The Grand Depart from Guinea is next week, with a brief detour in Europe before arriving on terra firma, aux Etats Unis on May 13!
My love to all! :)

Ask and You Shall Receive:

A Chicken Head Dress.

So I asked the local tailor to make me a dress out of his leftover scraps. I’m quite satisfied with the results, below. Who doesn’t like chicken??







People do wear entire outfits out of Chicken Head fabric. I only got the scraps. :)

Randos

And in no particular order, here are more random excerpts from Guinea…

I was at a fancy restaurant in another town for a conference recently and ordered a salad. It came with fries in it! (I’d thought they were tomatoes at first cause it was dark and hard to see, and they were covered in dressing. Surprise!) Who knew how good that could be? (Very good.) Another African delight!

Also at this conference, my Guinean counterpart surprised me one night after dinner. We’d all eaten a lot, and he leaned back, rubbed his belly, and said, “ooohhhh, haari bébé!” Haari is Pulaar for “I’m full,” …my counterpart had an “I’m full baby.” I always say when I’ve eaten too much and feel like I’m going to pop that I have a food baby. Apparently Guinean men get food babies too!

Another interesting run-in I had was on a bicycle. The closest volunteer to me is 14 miles down the main road in a small town. I was riding over to pay her a visit and feeling just a little bad-ass for biking it instead of taking a bush taxi. I came upon a couple frail-looking old men on the road, also riding their bikes, and we exchanged greetings. They were very friendly and seemed to be enjoying themselves, chatting, in no great rush to get wherever they were going on their rickety old bikes. (Most bikes I’ve seen in Guinea and Cameroon are pretty low-tech—one speed, with foot brakes.) The men asked me where I was going, listing a couple of far-off town as options. I told them I was just headed to the next town, and inquired after them. “Kouroussa!” they said cheerily. That was humbling. Kouroussa is about 85 miles past where I was going. And I thought I was tough. Hats off to the happy old men!

On another unrelated note, I am apparently building a reputation for myself as a traditional healer, complete with bag of fetishes. In the part of Guinea called Haute Guinee, in the Northeast corners where the Malinké folks live along the Malian border, I’ve been told that the traditional healers carry their fetishes, charms, and goodies in a little black bag. Well, I have been carrying the same little blue bag (kind of a wallet on a string) since I found it in my apartment in France in 2003. Needless to say, it is getting a little ratty. OK, it is exceedingly ratty, and is held together with electrical tape and safety pins (which have also doubled to hold up my pants when the zipper on those bust in the middle of an Ethiopian museum.) So my little blue bag has long since given up its shade of blue, and is now resigned to a sad and dingy shade of black. And so, I’m a sorcerer! I was recently approached by some co-workers with inquiries as to what fetishes I carried in my bag, and what I could potentially do for them… Safety pins, anyone?

And lastly, work is going well. I’ve been hammering out the training modules for the members and staff of my microfinance organization, CAFODEC. It’s really enjoyable to collaborate with my Guinean colleagues because they have great insights and examples, and I just put it all on paper. Plus, Guineans are really entertaining to work with! I was with about five of them to review some drafts of the training modules, and between practically every module, someone had to stand up and “warm up the room” by telling a joke or some ridiculous story. Some of them were totally inappropriate for a work setting, by American standards, and so were that much more awkward/entertaining! I’ll translate my favorite one, but I’m sure I won’t do it justice. I should note that the days of the week in French, starting with Monday, are lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi and dimanche. (That’s important for the joke.) Soooo, a man takes a new wife. Satisfying this man’s sexual appetite is just wearing her out, so they talk about it and come up with a truce. They’ll have sex only on days that end in redi—mercredi and vendredi. (Wednesday and Friday.) However, on a Monday, lundi, the man comes home and is feeling particularly hot to trot. “Madammmmme!” he calls out, “Can we…?” She stops to calculate the say of the week. “It’s lundredi!” he cries out!

That’s all from Guinea for now! Gros bisous!

The bobos of Dabola

Hey amigos!

Here’s some random updates from Dabola—odd and entertaining things I’ve seen while wandering around town.

First, we all know that the baby on the back tradition is alive and well in Africa. It is the way to carry your child— from the age of an infant to about a two-year-old. Little kids often imitate their mothers doing this, tying little dolls or other random things onto their backs. But one kid, who looked about three, took the cake. The doll he had tied onto his back was SO big that from a distance I had know idea what it is—all I saw was a jumble of different-colored limbs. It was a white plastic doll that must have stood about 3 feet high, when not strapped onto an even smaller kid’s back. Its big white plastic arms were sticking up above the kid’s head at different angles and its plastic dolly legs were jutting out in front. Needless to say, it looked ridiculous and adorable at the same time, and I couldn’t help laughing out loud as I walked past the oblivious little boy (and kept laughing for about the next 100 meters too!)

Additionally on the subject of piggy-backing, I saw some young girls accomplish an impressive feat that in my childhood, I always wanted to attempt but never quite had the prowess to pull off—the double piggy back. They were standing only about twenty feet from where my colleagues and I were sitting at the village bank one day. Our heroine was about twelve years old and she already had a girl who looked about eight on her back. Then she managed to bend over, and a ten-year-old climbed on on top of that! The ten-year-old had long enough arms to be able to reach around the eight-year-old and they all proudly (and noisily) took off to show some grown women. I was massively impressed! I’ve never seen anyone else manage that! (Any volunteers want to try when I get back?) I made sure all my colleagues saw, but no one seemed quite as thrilled as I was. :) Oh well, there are perks to being easily entertained.

One thing that seems somewhat universal is high school girls being high school girls. I went to a soccer match—apparently a big deal of a soccer match—that featured the 11th grade vs. the 10th grade teams from the local high school. It was the final of some tournament and I and everyone in Dabola under the age of twenty were present. The field was pure dust, and everyone crowded the sidelines sucking on oranges and cheering. I found myself surrounded by high school and middle school-aged girls. They seemed to be all dressed in their best pagne—matching tops and wrap skirts, hair freshly braided, proud and ready to show off. I’d say about zero of them were actually paying any attention to the game, yet somehow, they all seemed to know at exactly which moments to scream and jump up and down, when their team would shoot a near-miss or perform an awesome save. It seems to be a high-school-girl sixth sense. It felt like Friday night football in America.

Two other cool things I got to do recently: hold babies and look at electric dams! (Random, I know!) But first I should explain that an ongoing form of entertainment for me is finding the smallest babies I can, silent sleeping bumps fastened to their mother’s backs. The mothers go about their daily business in the market and at home, seemingly not even remembering the baby back there, but I’m just fascinated—the tinier the little human, the more I have to try not to stare. And sometimes I’m too tempted and just have to pat the little baby butt. (Boy, I sound like my mother there.) Anyway, a colleague and I recently visited his sister, who’d just given birth. The baby wasn’t even a week old. I’d never seen such a tiny baby! (I should also note that typically, African village women eat less when they are pregnant, because a smaller baby is that much easier to birth.) So this one was miniscule! I even got to hold it. They asked me if I wanted to throw it on my back; I declined. Maybe it was because I’d asked at what age they start wearing babies on the back and they told me at about this age—one week. Wow! Floppy heads and everything. “Baby” didn’t even have a name yet—that happens at a baptism ceremony when it’s about eight days old. Until then it’s just “Baby.” Even better is the Pulaar word for baby, “Bobo.” (Drag out the first syllable and make it long.) I love that word and it is definitely coming back to America with me. :)

And lastly, not involving small children, or any children at all! I got to see where my town’s electricity comes from. The local hydroelectric facility was put in place by the Chinese in the 1974 and refurbished in the 90s. In America, you’d never be able to stroll into a major electrical plant. But here, I just did. A lone guy was sitting at a table in the middle of a huge room with high ceilings. He had his feet propped on the table and was gazing at a wall-full of flashing lights and buttons. He stood up and shook my hand when I came in, and then I got to look at all the flashing lights and buttons myself! Everything was labeled in Chinese! Most knobs and buttons and dials also had a French translation printed in small letters, but not all of them. … And now I see why things don’t get fixed when there’s a break down!

Hope everyone’s doing well and life is happy in America!

Bonjour de Dabola!

So I’m here at my post! Back to the world of trash fires, errant goats and cows, dusty roads, and enthusiastic toothless old men greeting me in languages I don’t know! I’ve taken these first few weeks to do a lot of exploring. Dabola is laid out along a main road, and loosely bordered by “mountains.” It’s got lots of trees! There are endless footpaths that make for great rambling and exploring. Somehow, I feel like I’m noticing things in different ways than I did in Cameroon.

For example, I am obsessing over the mango tree outside my window. If I remember right, mangoes were ready and waiting for my mass consumption by about February in Cameroon. Here, the rainy season is shifted later, and thus, I have to forlornly stare at my mango tree… and wait. Let me assure you, watching mangoes grow is only minimally more riveting than watching grass grow. But I never even noticed the itty-bitty baby mangoes in Cameroon! (Maybe it’s the five mango trees in my compound?) I never noticed when the trees flower, and then the tiny mango, already perfectly shaped, first comes out as small as the nail on your pinky finger. Fascinating. Even if slow-moving.

Another thing I’d failed to notice as closely in Cameroon was the moon. Maybe it’s because my old house had a tin-roofed overhang so I never really saw the moon and stars? And in Dabola, there’s that much less electricity, so when the moon is out, you notice. It is so bright you’d think you could read by its light. And when it is not there, wow, I can’t remember the last time I’d been in such darkness.

And speaking of electricity, I was spoiled in Cameroon. Here, we get electricity starting at about 2pm, in spurts. So I’m learning to adapt my work schedule and entertain myself otherwise!

One thing that’s great for entertainment is that Dabola is so much more open than my part of Cameroon, where everyone lived behind walls, in compounds. Here everyone’s huts are out in the open and it’s fascinating in that just walking around town I can see so much more of people at work and play—women pounding grain, kids running around, men watching TVs that are perched on a stool in the dirt. It also means it’s that much easier to enter into conversations with people, exchange greetings, and just be visible in the community. Oddly (or at least I’m still getting used to it!) so many of the footpaths run straight through people’s compounds—and in this sense, I mean just a family’s grouping of huts. So you troupe right past women cooking, naked children running from their bucket baths—it’s accessible in ways it never was in Cameroon. This morning I walked past a guy eating his morning serving of rice. I greeted him, and he shouted out, “Invitation!” Every one does that here! Any time you’re eating, you’re expected to at least offer to share it… even to strange white people wandering past! (And no, I did not have any, but I have taken other folks up on that when their sauce looks particularly tasty. :)

I live in one of few walled-in compounds (and really I don’t mind the minimal privacy that that affords. And not having to offer my food to every passer-by. :) But another big difference from Cameroon is that in Guinea, the volunteer’s host organization provides your housing. So you really do live like a Guinean, in ways some of us didn’t in Cameroon. There were so many safety regulations in Cameroon, (like you can’t have a thatch-roofed hut cause it’s easier to break into) that a lot a lot of us PCVs lived in the nicest house in the village, just to meet those regulations. (Again, I was spoiled and had a faaat house!) Not in Guinea! Bring on the thatch roofs. It’s pretty cool. I don’t have one, but my closest fellow volunteer does. Although it looks charming, she says that snakes have fallen from it, and it leaks during the rainy season—not fun. As for me, I live in the same compound as the office of my host institution, along with a few other co-workers. I have two small rooms in a row of little apartments—one for the bed and one for cooking and working and everything else. Privacy is not a big part of my life these days. People are always around—so at least on the flip side, it’s good for socializing and easy to hang out with Guineans. And lucky for me, my colleague who is right next door (and whose every word I can hear through the wall) is a really nice single young woman. (She’s my age and not married yet—quite rare by Guinean standards!) She has a TV too, so sometimes in the evenings I go over and watch the Guinean or Ivoirian news or the Latin American imported soap operas, which are just as revered here as they were in Cameroon.

I’ve been able to start my work, visiting village banks and preparing training modules to hopefully help them with some of their operations. The local village bank is open every Wednesday and Friday, is completely volunteer-run, and consists of a table under a veranda on the side of the road. All transactions are recorded manually in a variety of ledgers. When business is slow, there’s always a steady stream of high-schoolers walking by that I can watch. One of the “responsables” of the bank runs a local omelet and tea shack, and he brings us tea and coffee in plastic bags to sip on. (real coffee!! whoa! never saw that in Cameroon!) It’s really pleasant and the folks are very friendly.

And lastly, I’d forgotten to mention I’m named—fully! I took a week to pick a Guinean last name because I wanted to get a feel for the town and the different groups and not pick any name that would label me as the town crazy or reject or anything too offensive. But you’d think my not having a Guinean last name was catastrophic! Guineans I’d meet in town were always asking me about it, and my entire first week, it was a constant topic of discussion among my colleagues. Nabou, my Guinean first name, got turned back into the full Djénabou, yet another version of that name. That’s fine with me— Djénabou is a great name, not too common but everyone knows it, and easy to pronounce (jen-a-boo). So, that first week, it was a constant battle for who would bestow their last name upon me—everyone wants you to give you their name. Mr. Sow would call out, “Djénabou Sow!” And Mr. Coulibaly would say, “Djénabou Coulibaly!” I’d just smile and nod at anything. My counterpart, like everyone who works at my host organization, is a Diallo, so he was all for Djénabou Diallo. It’s a little too much alliteration though and I’d rather add a little diversity to the group instead. When Mr. Diallo saw that he wasn’t getting anywhere with the Djénabou Diallo suggestion, he also proposed the name Sock. He said Sock is a last name that’s from all over Guinea, and it could include people of any tribal group, which is important here! When I explained just what “sock” is in English, holding up my foot as I did so for emphasis, he burst into laughter and it was clear that Djénabou Sock had gone by the wayside. Additionally, I had to tactfully explain why I was not interested in being a Sow. So finally, there’s a name I like, which in Malinké means “take hold of your heritage.” It’s Keïta… pronounced Kate-uh. :) So I’ve gone from Kate to Fleurange in Cameroon to Djénabou in Guinea, now back to Kate…uh. :) And it’s doubly cool because Djénabou is a Pulaar first name, and since Keïta is a Malinké last name, that covers the two big tribal groups in town, so everyone is happy!

More updates from Dabola soon! My love to all!

A few thoughts from Nelson

I’ve just finished reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, in which he recalls his role in the decades-long fight against South Africa’s apartheid regime. He made so many points worth remembering (600+ pages worth!) but I'll just give you some of my favorite quotes. As my sister Barrett said, “Don’t you wish that man were your grandfather?!!”

In 1964 Mandela and 12 of his colleagues were charged with acts of sabotage and planning an armed invasion of South Africa. The potential punishment for these crimes was death by hanging. Instead of testifying, Mandela made a four-hour statement from the dock, outlining the history of the African National Congress (ANC), their roles in the anti-apartheid struggle, and how they had gotten to the point where they were, causing them to make the decisions they made, for which they were indicted. Mandela’s intention was “to put the state on trial” for its apartheid policies and discriminatory treatment of black South Africans by the ruling white minority. Although Mandela did not deny the charges of sabotage, he did oppose the charge of planning an armed invasion, which the ANC was not yet considering. The accused and their lawyers had mentally prepared themselves and were expecting a death sentence. Bram Fishcher, Mandela’s lawyer, urged him not to read his closing paragraph, as follows:

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

This was mind-blowing to me, because people my age mostly only know the end of the story—that Mandela is a freedom fighter who brought about necessary changes. It’s stunning to realize that he was only one judgment away from death—and how different the course of history could have been.

Mandela’s thoughts on his lawyer Bram Fischer, also struck me:

As an Afrikaner whose conscience forced him to reject his own heritage and be ostracized by his own people, [Bram] showed a level of courage and sacrifice that was in a class by itself. I fought only against injustice, not my own people.

Bram was a purist, and after the Rivonia trial, he decided he could best serve the struggle by going underground and living the life of an outlaw… In many ways, Bram Fischer, the grandson of the Prime Minister of the Orange River Colony, had made the greatest sacrifice of all. No matter what I suffered in my pursuit of freedom, I always took strength from the fact that I was fighting with and for my own people. Bram was a free man who fought against his own people to ensure the freedom of others.

One thing I found notable about Mandela was his ability to know when to negotiate and when to stand his ground, and the fact that he rarely lost his cool. A prison guard on Robben Island once insulted his wife, and on that rare occasion Mandela lost it. He didn’t physically assault the guard, but gave him a good round of verbal abuse. Later, reflecting on that incident:

Even though I had silenced Prins, he had caused me to violate my self-control and I consider that a defeat at the hands of my opponent.

Regarding a film he saw while in prison on Robben Island, commenting on the leadership styles of those he admired:

I was particularly affected by a documentary we saw about the great naval battles of World War II, which showed newsreel footage of the sinking of the H.M.S. Prince of Wales by the Japanese. What moved me most was the brief image of Winston Churchill weeping when he heard of the news of the loss of the British vessel. The image stayed in my memory a long time, and demonstrated to me that there are times when a leader can show sorrow in public, and that it will not diminish him in the eyes of his people.

When I think I’m having a bad day…

Prison was a kind of crucible that tested a man’s character. Some men, under the pressure of incarceration, showed true mettle, while others revealed themselves as less than what they had appeared to be.

In their later years on Robben Island, the prisoners would put on plays, including Sophocles’ Antigone:

I only performed in a few dramas, but I had one memorable role, that of Creon, an elderly king fighting a civil war over the throne of his beloved city-state. At the outset of the play, Creon is sincere and patriotic, and there is wisdom in his early speeches when he suggests that experience is the foundation of leadership and that obligations to the people take precedence over loyalty to an individual.

Of course you cannot know a man completely,
His character, his principles, sense of judgment, not till he’s shown his colors, ruling the people, making laws. Experience, that’s the test.

But Creon deals with his enemies mercilessly… He has decreed that the body of Polynices, Antigone’s brother, who had rebelled against the city, does not deserve a proper burial. Antigone rebels, on the grounds that there is a higher law than that of the state. Creon will not listen to Antigone, nor does he listen to anyone but his inner demons. His inflexibility and blindness ill become a leader, for a leader must temper justice with mercy. It was Antigone who symbolized the struggle; she was, in her own way, a freedom fighter, for she defied the law on the grounds that it was unjust.

I’ve joked that I do a prison routine workout sometimes when it’s difficult to exercise outside. But in addition to being a great leader and activist, Nelson could have totally kicked my ass.

I have always believed that exercise is not only a key to physical health, but to peace of mind. Many times in the old days I unleashed my anger and frustration on a punching bag rather than a policeman. Exercise dissipates tension, and tension is the enemy of serenity. I found that I worked better and thought more clearly when I was in good physical condition, and so training became one of the inflexible disciplines of my life. In prison, having an outlet for one’s frustrations was absolutely essential.

…On Monday through Thursday, I would do stationary running in my cell in the morning for up to forty-five minutes. I would also perform one hundred fingertip push-ups, two hundred sit-ups, fifty deep knee-bends and various other calisthenics.

…I did manage to influence some of my more sedentary colleagues. Exercise was unusual for African men of my age and generation… I know that some of my younger comrades looked at me and said to themselves, “If that old man can do it, why can’t I?” They too began to exercise.

(He wrote that when he was 59!)

Regarding the negotiations process to dismantle the minority rule and apartheid government with then South African President F.W. de Klerk:

I was often asked how could I accept the [Nobel Peace Prize] jointly with Mr. De Klerk after I had criticized him so severely. Although I would not take back my criticisms, I could say that he had made a genuine and indispensable contribution to the peace process. I never sought to undermine Mr. de Klerk, for the practical reason that the weaker he was, the weaker the negotiations process. To make peace with an enemy one must work with that enemy, and that enemy becomes one’s partner.

On fear:

Time and again, I have seen men and women risk and give their lives for an idea. I have seen men stand up to attacks and torture without breaking, showing a strength and resiliency that defies imagination. I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. I felt fear myself more times than I can remember, but I hid it behind a mask of boldness. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

And finally,

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than the opposite. Even of the grimmest of times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but it was enough to reassure me and keep me going.

He is a good person to think about when I’m feeling frustrated or challenged. I admire the way he seems to approach his work with both a sense of opportunity and obligation. I found it interesting how extensively he talks about his family, and wonders if he should have been a better son, better father, better husband, been there to bury his mother when she died, or give away his daughter when she was married. He chose to put the needs of the entire nation before the needs of his immediate family, but not without some pain. At the same time, it was the moral support of his wife Winnie that gave him the strength to get through prison. He often said that his family suffered more than he did while he was in prison. His life was defined by the anti-apartheid struggle, and his family came second, even though they were essential.


And now, back to Guinea…
In other news from Conakry… we are going to our posts! I’m thrilled! I head out to Dabola for the first time tomorrow. Due to the political situation and the waiting, I’ll only be there for a total of three months instead of the intended six months, but I’m excited nonetheless to have an opportunity to enjoy the village life. I’m not sure what kind of internet access I’ll have in Dabola, so you might not hear too much from me… but it’s only three months! Til next time, amigos…

My new friend, and other tidbits.

Happy holidays everyone! On Christmas Eve, I had a lovely night sitting on the beach with fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, toes in the sand, listening to some latin music, and watching the sun set and some hookers dance. It was lovely and a little surreal, especially knowing it’s the last time I intend to spend Christmas abroad in random surroundings for a while. I am already looking forward to celebrating Christmas next year… somewhere cold!! (Yes, Louisiana counts as cold!)

Election updates!
So here are the updates from Guinea. We had presidential elections! When the initial election results were announced, the losing candidate’s supporters protested. When the police came out to quell the protests, it often got violent. The government declared a nation-wide state of emergency and imposed a 6 pm curfew—any vehicles on the roads after that time were stopped by police. Some of the worst violence was directly in the neighborhood of the Peace Corps compound, so we stayed hunkered down in the Peace Corps house for a few days. I was allowed to venture out as far as crossing the street to get my bean sandwich for breakfast, but even that was after making sure no gunshots had been heard recently. Fortunately, that only lasted for a few days, but it did cause casualties. You can read more on that here.

Some interesting photos:

My host brother from when I lived in Dubreka somehow got his hands on this sample election ballot. I think it’s well designed in that it takes into account that only about 30% of the country is literate—making the photos and colors necessary for the average voter! (That statistic courtesy the CIA World Factbook.).



Here’s one of the typical campaign billboards. I find it interesting and telling that there is a woman as part of Alpha Condé’s “rainbow coalition.” (The other candidate, Cellou Dalein Diallo, had no women in his campaign posse.)



Alpha Conde, the winner, was inaugurated on Tuesday, December 21. Heads of state from 13 African nations attended! In his speech as Guinea’s outgoing leader, General Sekouba Konaté rebuked other African leaders who have performed poorly in implementing transparent and fair elections. I thought this was great—taking the opportunity to shed light on the abuses of power that are glossed over in so many of these countries. We, the developed nations, often turn a blind eye because we would rather keep a place like Guinea stable so we can extract its oil/iron/aluminum ore, ignoring the shady internal politics as long as the man in charge gives us what we want. It was, in fact, my Guinean colleagues who disagreed with me on the subject of Konaté’s speech, saying that the inauguration was not the time to reprimand other leaders for their non-democratic performances; that this was a time to celebrate. I tend to think that any time is a good time to call out a lack of transparency. Right on, Sekouba.

Some good articles on the inauguration and our new man in charge, Mr. Conde, are here, here, or here.

And lastly, I have to share a joke that one of my Guinean co-workers at CAFODEC told me the other day:

A Chinese, an American and a Guinean are sitting around talking about elections. “In my country,” the Chinese man boasts, “we are able to know the results of an election within 24 hours after voting.”
“That’s nothing!” says the American. “In my country, we can know the results that very night.” The Guinean leans back and smiles.
“Well in my country,” he says, “our systems are so advanced that we know the results of the elections before they even happen.”

Microfinance fun
A small tidbit of good news is that although we still haven’t been allowed to go to our posts, I was allowed out of Conakry long enough to attend a national microfinance conference. It was interesting to watch, as Guinea’s microfinance sector is in such an early stage of development. The leaders here are really looking to surrounding countries—Benin, Senegal, Mali—for inspiration and guidance. There is currently SO much demand that goes unmet mainly due the microfinance institutions’ lack of loan capital. At the conference, we heard from a few women beneficiaries of micro-loans. One woman joined one of Guinea’s first microfinance establishments almost twenty years ago, when it was still just a project of the US Agency for International Development. She’s taken progressively larger loans, which have allowed her to buy land to farm and to start her own small business dying cloth, which supports her family. When she first told her story, it was in Soussou, one of the local languages. I couldn’t understand a thing, but she was so confident and expressive in her speech that I was totally captivated. She asked the new government to pay attention to Guinea’s microfinance sector and to support it so that other women can have the same opportunities she did.

My friend…
In other, much less politically charged or professional news, I have a friend! Let’s just say I am diversifying my overall friendship repertoire. I was walking to work one morning, and a young woman sitting on a bench on the side of the road enthusiastically called out a greeting to me. I was in a good mood, and greeted her back. She motioned me over, informed me that her name is Aminata, and that we should be friends. Cool, I thought! By friends, I assumed she meant we’d occasionally drink tea together on her bench on the side of the road and talk about the neighborhood happenings. That seemed just fine by me. She told me she’d known many of the past Peace Corps volunteers so I figured she’d be like a comfortable old buddy. I am sure hard up for friends here in Conakry—being in the Peace Corps house under a state of emergency is not so conducive to making friends. So I was open to and grateful for the opportunity to meet some neighbors!

About a week later, I get a call from Aminata. She said that she was at the bar on the little stretch of beach right behind the Peace Corps compound with friends, and that I should join them. I wasn’t feeling up to it that day, and so told her maybe next time.

The next weekend, I headed to the beach bar with a few other PCVs. We were planning to meet up with an American friend we hadn’t seen in some time, and I was very much looking forward to catching up with him. We were having a pleasant conversation, when Aminata comes up, crying out “Naboooouuuu!!! (my Guinean name) I was going to call you! I was looking for phone credit to call you!” Before I have a chance to say anything, she pulls up a chair at our table and introduces herself to my fellow PCVs. She simultaneously rubs the back of my neck in an odd, over-friendly sort of greeting. Then she tells the other PCVs how close she and I are, that I am her favorite friend, that we are the best of friends, and holds up her fingers crossed tight, indicating the unshakable bonds of our friendship. I believe Aminata and I had greeted each other in the street about three times at this point.

I didn’t want to be impolite to Aminata, but I really just wanted to catch up with the friend we hadn't seen recently. At particularly inopportune moments of our friend’s stories, Aminata would enthusiastically jump in, ask me something irrelevant, and I’d miss the point of the story. I even explained to her that we hadn’t seen this guy in a while, so I wanted to hear his stories. But by this time, she’s signaled over two more of her friends to join our table. “We should speak in French!” she says, “or you can teach me English!” Not exactly what I had in mind for the afternoon…

As time wears on, my fellow volunteers are giving me looks that say, “Hmmm, your friend here is persistent, non?” At one point when Aminata got up to visit with some other friends, the waitress took her chair away, to use at another table. Undaunted, Aminata quickly came back and procured a new one. All of our social signals and clues that in America say, “We’d really just like to catch up with each other today!” have gone completely over her head, as they often do when two very different cultures try to communicate. Aminata goes on to tell us how close she was with certain volunteers who were previously in Guinea. One of my PCV friends in our group had also previously been in Guinea, and she knows the fellows with whom Aminata kept company. “Oh yes,” my PCV friend notes, “those were the boys who got kicked out. And they slept with prostitutes.” I look over at Aminata, chain smoking proudly, and it all starts to come together. Prostitutes, and only prostitutes, would ever smoke in a bar in Guinea. Wellllll.

My new friend/prostitute faithfully remains at our table for the rest of our time there, waiting… until we all make our pleasant good-byes and head home. Aminata is friendly and outgoing, characteristics I appreciate, and I can’t tell if she wants to be my friend to hang out with me… or my fellow PCV friends of the opposite gender…

The next day, I was talking with another fellow volunteer who had previously served in Guinea. “Oh yes,” he confirms, “Aminata? She’s definitely a prostitute. Actually, she’s the one in charge, the Madam.” So, my first friend in Guinea—quite the entrepreneur! Gotta start somewhere, right? It’s going to be a beautiful friendship.

I’m named! (Mostly.)

Earlier this week a fellow volunteer, the gentleman who had served here as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the 60’s, asked if any of us wanted to go exploring and find an old bar he used to frequent back in the day. I was ready for a little adventure and happy to see a bit more of Conakry.

The bar, called La Paillotte, or The Grass Hut, was still there and as alive as ever. A few things had changed since the 60’s. (Namely, there used to be a pit of alligators right outside the dance floor. How combining drunken dancing people with large-toothed reptiles was a good idea, I have not yet deciphered. Alas, the alligators are no more; the pit is cemented over.) There are probably a few more plastic flowers strewn around the bar than in the 60s. I’m not sure if plastic flowers were as prolific in Guinea then as they are now, but fake flowers are the answer to every decorating question.

Equally interesting was that in the 60’s, Guinea was at the height of its communist days. East Germans diplomats and spies frequented the bar in a day when tourists weren’t even allowed into the country! (Why they let Peace Corps in, who knows, but my friend and his crew did get the boot only halfway through their service, escorted out of the country by the military in ’67, when Guinea decided it had had enough of foreigners.)

My volunteer friend told folks about his young heady days of the 60s, and they were thrilled that the older wiser man had come back to pay a visit. I just got to ride along on his coattails and get free beer. But I got a few other freebies that night, and it was my first encounter with the epic Guinean generosity I’ve heard so much about.

The original bar owner had passed away only recently, but his replacement sat us down to chat, and immediately asked what she could give us to drink, on the house. The new owner is a lovely woman, Mrs. Ganaba Sylla Touré. She’s well dressed and made-up, and speaks articulate French. I’m impressed that she’s at the head of this establishment. As we talked, I learn that she’s from Dabola, my future post! She was very excited to learn this, and immediately proceeded to write down the phone numbers of her entire family so I can call them once I arrive.

As our conversations continue, it comes up that I don’t yet have a Guinean name. “Well, you’ll take my name! Ganaba!” Hmmm, I ponder that. Several folks have offered me names already, and I usually waffle, not liking the sound of it. I’m picky! I want my new name to be just right, not too common or boring, but also not too far out. The name Ganaba, she tells me, is apparently somehow interchangeable with other variants: Zaïnab, Nabou—it’s all the same name. Ganaba seems a little heavy on my tongue, Zaïnab sounds so foreign, but Nabou, I like. Pronounced nah-BOO, it reminds me of one of my mother’s many nicknames for me, Boo. The familiarity feels comfortable. I render my verdict on Nabou, happily accepting my new name.

Content with my newfound identity, I lean back and sip my beer. “You know who else has our name?” Ganaba asks me. I stop to think.
“No, who?”
“The Prophet’s daughter!”
I almost spit out my beer. The original Zaïnab was certainly not sipping beer when she got baptized. I feel sacrilegious, and subconsciously hide my beer under the table, out of sight of Islam and out of respect for my honorable namesake. Woops!

As the evening wore on, Ganaba took off one of her many bracelets and just gave it to me—cadeau. As 8pm approached, my fellow volunteer and I had to head back to the Peace Corps house to beat our curfew, which is in place as long as we’re in Conakry waiting for election results. We prepared to call a cab, but Ganaba would have none of it. She summoned her personal driver and before we knew it, we were off in her shiny black sedan. In the space of a couple hours, I had acquired a new name, a bracelet, a free ride home, a pleasant buzz, and most memorably, a first insight into Guinean generosity. And all this from a woman I’d only just met! When it’s that easy to become homonymes and friends, I get excited and anxious to meet more Guineans, to get out of the bubble of the Peace Corps house, and to see this country. Now there’s just one thing left—deciding my Guinean last name!


Election update: As of late Monday night results are IN from the November 7 Presidential run-off!! As the results were announced, an unexpectedly late storm pounded Conakry, rain washing the streets clean. Symbolic? We can only hope. The Electoral Committee cleverly released the results on the eve of the Fête de Mouton, or Eid al-Adha, one of the largest Muslim holidays of the year, when people are expected to be visiting friends and family, eating sheep (in memory of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, before the sheep handily stepped in), and generally, not violently protesting. Most folks seemed to stay close to home yesterday, celebrating the Fête on a scaled-down level. Guinea’s Supreme Court now has eight days to confirm the election results. Once things are calm, we’ll head to our posts. It’s true that there has been unrest in Conakry, I can hear the gunshots, but I’m happily hunkered down in the Peace Corps house with plenty of reading material and a very large stash of yogurt (although no sheep). Hopefully, the supporters of the losing candidate, Diallo, who have been quoted as saying “Victory or Death!” will take another look at that stance… I’m encouraged to know that the roughly 2,000 election observers from the Carter Center, the European Union, and local groups did not find the “massive fraud at all levels” that Diallo has accused. I’m equally curious to see if Condé, the winning candidate, will make good on the pledge both candidates made prior to elections to include the other in a unity government, and if extending the olive branch would quiet the street riots. I’ll limit my public commentary on elections for now since it’s a sensitive, political subject likely to get me into trouble, and I’m here to serve all factions as an apolitical volunteer. You can read more here, or feel free to send me an e-mail or a comment on the blog if you’re curious to know more.

I don’t cook. Cause I’d rather shock you.

My homestay family was always trying to coerce me into the kitchen. “Ma will teach you how to prepare crabs this weekend!” or, “We’ll show you how to make the sauce with manioc leaves!” They seemed genuinely keen to impart their culinary knowledge on me. It’s equally typical that I’ll be sitting around a table with a variety of African colleagues, enjoying a good meal, when somebody drops the cooking bomb. “Oh, toi, tu peux preparer comme ça, non?” Oh you, you can cook like this, right? I can never tell if they’re just pulling my chain, egging me on, or if they’re truly curious. So I usually just smile and make a blanket statement of, “No, I don’t like to cook.” The Africans recoil in horror. “You don’t like to cook??” The kitchen is not only the woman’s domain, but her pride! I don’t know even one married African male who cooks—that is what wives here are for—it is part of how she contributes to the family.

I like to take the opportunity of these awkward dinner-time conversations to blow a few minds. So I launch into my spiel. It goes something along the lines of, “You know, I’m actually not a very good cook. I’m better at finance. That’s why I work in the bank. I have more to offer doing math stuff in the bank than I do in the kitchen. So I’ll keep putting my time and efforts into the bank job, and then use that salary to hire a cook. See? Bonus! Job created!” (Some Africans I’ve met actually reproach the relatively wealthy foreigners who do not hire household staff. If the wealthy have enough money to employ people, then, according to this line of thinking, they should be giving jobs to those who need them.)

These ideas surprise my African friends because it’s in our womanly genes to be in the kitchen, isn’t it? I think my reasoning is sometimes misunderstood here as scoffing at all the culinary efforts and talents of so many other woman, and I come off looking too big for my britches, too uppity to do the most basic and necessary of tasks—cook. But my point is simply to raise the question of where a woman has value. It could be in the kitchen, as is typically the case in Africa. But it could additionally be in a bank. Or a hospital. Or a courtroom, classroom, boardroom, etc. Dropping the “I don’t like to cook” bomb is one way of planting a little food for thought.

I just finished reading the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, which got me thinking. That is a man who likes to cook, likes to eat, and likes to think about where all of his food comes from! (I recommend it, but I think if I had actually read it while living in America and eating American-grown food I would have my undies in a bundle. There is enough in there to unsettle one’s stomach. Ignorance can be bliss. But, I recommend it anyway!)

In reading this book (in addition to getting alternatively disgusted and hungry) I’ve realized to what extent I distance myself from cooking in Africa so as to distance myself from my prescribed gender role here. In America, I’ve equally detached myself from a kitchen just to avoid any possible chance that some man would expect me to be stirring a pot every evening, or try to subjugate me, apron-clad, into a kitchen corner.

Earlier today, a fabulously interesting American lady co-worker invited me over for lunch. I happily stuffed myself with a variety of her delicious foods, and was feeling spoiled, satisfied, and appreciative. We were talking about the gender roles in the kitchen—in Africa, in America—and she exclaimed, “But I LIKE to cook! I’m happy to do it!” And it dawned on me that I kind of do, too. Chopping things is stress-relieving! And experimenting with weird ingredients is fun—wondering if my dishes will actually come out edible! I’ve just been too busy trying to prove a point to admit it. I’m not great at cooking, but I sure do like to eat, and it’s fun to make other people happy with the thought and effort that goes into making a tasty meal. In the same way women’s lib has become all about having the choice to stay at home with kids if that’s what a lady wants, I’m realizing that stretches into the kitchen as well. I don’t ever want a man who’s dependant on me for his next feeding, but I do want to know how to make a satisfying meal from time to time. Even better to make that sweet meal with a nice man. :) Plus, food fights are hot.

So, it’s not the deepest of revelations, but I appreciate what dawns on me with the clash of American literature and African culture. I think in my future African dinner conversations I’ll try to be a little more open to the possibility of sharing a cooking lesson. I’ll just have to work in my value-of-a-woman discussion somewhere between chopping and stirring.


PS—Election update. Things are smooth here! The Electoral Commission is announcing results gradually, as they come in, since last Sunday’s elections. Hopefully we’ll know the next Guinean president by this weekend! For the curious, a brief update here.

Weddings, elections, and your mother.

Here’s what I’ve been up to!

Weddings.
One of our language trainers, Tidiane, got married and we were all invited to the wedding! The ceremony took place in the family compound. Tidiane told us we’d probably rather skip out on the lengthy section of Koranic readings. We obliged. We showed up for the civil ceremony and… the food. :)

The inevitable flock of kids



As many people as we Americans photographed, the Guineans were practically lined up taking pictures of us! I guess it’s not everyday a flock of white people shows up at the village wedding.



Women folk cuttin up.



(This was a Muslim wedding in the strict Wahhabi tradition. At one point someone from the groom’s family attempted to put some music on, but that quickly got nixed!)

This one isn’t a fabulous picture, but I love how it captures the backdrop to the wedding scene. Tidiane is in the gray boubou, and his soon-to-be wife is in all white.



Everyone crowds around the table as the couple says their vows. The official government representative threw on the appropriate red, gold, and green Guinean sash. And baseball cap.



After the ceremony, we ate some delicious food, including a typical Peul dish called lacchiri e kosan. You serve yourself a big pile of corn flour. On top of that, scoop yourself a helping of sour milk (kind of like yogurt.) Add some sugar, mix it all up, and enjoy! Tidiane was so happy for us to be there, but I think we were really the ones who benefited—my first Guinean wedding!

Elections!
Sunday November 7—election day is today! If all goes well, then results will come in within about a week, they won’t be too heavily contested, and then all of us PCVs will go to our sites! In the meantime, I’m fortunate in that I’m getting to work in Conakry with my host organization CAFODEC, as well as several other microfinance organizations. It’s been really interesting to learn about the microfinance sector here as a whole, and to get to meet with the big dogs and ask them all my questions!

Your Mother.
Finally, here’s a really cool trick from Niger, courtesy one of my fellow Response volunteers who served his two years there. Apparently, the terrible insult you give somebody in Niger is… drumroll… The Shegiya. To Shegiya somebody, you thrust your five fingers towards them, palm out. You can make an angry face with that, too, if you’d like. It’s like flipping the bird in America, but cooler, becaaaaauuuse shegiya comes from the Hausa word shegintaka, meaning in English, bastard. The five angry fingers mean, “The night you were conceived, your mama slept with FIVE men and she doesn’t even know who your daddy is! Bastard.” It’s a low blow. My friend said folks in Niger will do this to each other in traffic, in an argument and he’s even seen mothers do it to their own kids! How odd!

That’s the scoop from Guinea!