Starting a New Chapter

Happy Holidays to all! I am trying to take in as much cold weather as I can before I leave for the land of excessive heat again on January 5.

Over the two months that I’ve spent at home, I’ve had some change-of-plans, the biggest being that I was offered a job, am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer, and will not be going to Liberia next month. The position, research assistant, is for a group that does randomized studies in developing countries to evaluate the efficacy of programs in order to shape better policy. In Sierra Leone, we will be looking at how the improvement of roads affects the communities along them.

For this new position, I will be living in the capital, Freetown. I’ll have electricity and running water most of the time, access to internet at work, restaurants and grocery stores with a variety of foods, and for the first month at least, I’ll be living in a house with other expatriates. Needless to say, life in the capital will be drastically different than life au village. And so this will be my last post. I won’t go on about everything I learned in the Peace Corps and how life-changing it was. I will say that I had an experience more amazing than I could have imagined and feel so lucky that I was placed in Guinea, a country full of people who will stay with me forever. If you ever have questions about Peace Corps, Guinea, or West Africa in general, I’m more than happy to talk your ear off (leave a comment on here and I’ll email you). And if you find yourself in Sierra Leone without a place to stay, I am happy to show you some West African hospitality!

So Long Guinea

Hi everyone. On Monday, October 19th, PC gave the official word that, due to instability and unpredictability, we would not be returning to Guinea. We completed transfer and close of service procedures last week and have gone our separate ways. I am actually writing this post in Minneapolis, MN, USA where I arrived Tuesday evening!

A number of G16ers (my education group who came to Guinea in July 2008) were offered positions as teachers in Liberia, a country also along the West African coast, just south of Guinea. Liberia will not be ready for the PCVs they requested until January, so I, along with ten others, are lucky enough to get to spend the holidays at home this year. Our new positions will last until our original close of service date, July 26. Some of us will stay until October to help complete the training of two new education groups — one for Sierra Leone and the other for Liberia. If Guinea stabilizes and reopens by then, we would also have the option of doing a third year of service back in the country we now call “home”.

Liberia will be very different from Guinea in some ways, the biggest being that it’s an English-speaking country, but from what I hear, it will also be similar. The infrastructure is supposed to be even worse than in Guinea due to the war. Electricity exists only in the capital, Monrovia. The part that most excites me about Liberia is its President: Ms. Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson! The women’s movement is supposedly big there, and I can’t wait to see for myself.

Dioulde, our APCD/Education Director for PC Guinea, kept us well-informed of the situation in Guinea while we were in Mali. School started on the 19th, which is good news because there was some talk that it wouldn’t start at all this year. It was very sad to say goodbye to the PC Guinea staff who did so much for us while we were there. Those of us going to Liberia will be seeing Dioulde and the training manager, Ousmane, again as they will be working for PC Liberia, at least for a few months.

That’s it for now. I’ll write again in January before we take off for Liberia. I’ll leave you with a quick story about my last couple days in Bissikrima.

My Mom had sent white t-shirts, fabric paint, glue, and rhinestones so that my girls’ group and I could decorate shirts. I was saving them for the school-year, but when I got word Saturday, October 3rd that I’d be getting picked up for evacuation on the 7th, I decided we’d have to do them on Monday and Tuesday. So the girls came over Monday, and a couple boys happened to be hanging around as well. Abel, who is very artistic, was helping the girls with the writing. Since they rarely have the opportunity to do anything requiring creativity, they just stared at the blank shirts for a while before requiring that I make an example. Since Rachel’s birthday was coming up on the 17th, I decided to make her a shirt that said “BIRTHDAY GIRL”. So, what did all the girls want to write on their shirts? “HAPPY BIRTHDAY [their name]” or “HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALISON AND [their name]“. Just like that. In English and everything. So Abel wrote it out for them, and they attached rhinestones and sparkles.

I told them they’d have to come back Tuesday after the front dried so they could work on the back. I also told Abel he should make one for himself, which he agreed to do. When I looked over at his work a while later, I saw the outline of fist holding up the middle finger. “ABEL!” I said to him, “Do you know what that means?” “Yes, Mme,” he told me. “The football [soccer] players do this to each other during the games sometimes.” “Yah, but it’s not a nice thing, Abel. I don’t think my mother would like it if she knew that’s what you were drawing on the shirts she sent.” “Mme,” he sighed, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world, “It’s for battling my enemies.” I bit down hard on my lip to try to keep from laughing. Abel, best student in the 10th grade class, thinking he’s some kind of thug in the non-existent gang-world of Bissikrima. Absurd! But I let him carry on because I couldn’t trust myself to continue the conversation any further without giggling.

I hope to see you all while I’m home (until January 9th). Happy Halloween!

My Number

My number while I’m in Mali is 011 223 76 85 08 10. We’ll be here for at least two weeks.

Back in Mali

Hi everyone. Just wanted to quickly update. Due to recent events in Guinea, all of PC Guinea has been evacuated to Mali where we’ll stay for 2-4 weeks while PC determines whether or not we can return to Guinea. We were informed last Saturday and had a few days to pack before we started getting picked up Tuesday. I had a tearful goodbye in Bissikrima. I have a feeling with the elections coming up, we won’t be headed back. In any case, we’ve all arrived safely and hopefully I’ll be able to better update you sometime in the next few days.

Mail

Please don’t send any mail until further notice.

News from the Bush

Hi all. I know the news from Guinea has been grim, so I just want to reassure everyone that things are very calm up-country. In fact, there has not been even a hint of a problem in Haute. I can’t detail our security, but I will say that we are in excellent hands with PC. I’m not worried about my safety, only about the Guineans whom I’ve come to love in the 15 months I’ve been here. The Guineans I’ve spoken with over the last few days have expressed feelings of sadness and hopelessness. It’s such a small, close-knit country that it seems everyone has a friend or neighbor whose family was affected by the violence this past Monday. Yesterday and today were declared public holidays to mourn those who were killed at the demonstration. Dadis is calling for an international inquiry into what happened, and the African Union has given him until October 18th to officially announce that no one from the CNDD (his party) will run in the elections.

On a more light-hearted note… Nick, one of my PCV neighbors, and I were coordinating our rides to Kankan for girls’ conference last week. He was to call me when he was leaving his site so I could make sure that our taxi was ready when he and his girls arrived. I received the following phone call from him, “Hey Alison! Just want to let you know we’re moving… Well, the engine’s not on, but we’re rolling.” Typical bush taxi. Apparently they were pushed quite a while before the engine would start. It had me laughing.

Take care at home, and enjoy the Fall scenery. So long from Guinea!

An Update

You may have seen Guinea in the international news yesterday or today, unfortunately not for positive reasons. This past week demonstrations against President Moussa Dadis Camara (aka Dadis) began as it has become apparent that he will likely present himself as a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections (scheduled for 1/31/10). Twenty thousand people hit the streets of Labe (the regional capital of the Fouta Djallon) in a peaceful protest last Thursday, and yesterday over 50,000 protestors took to the Stade du 28 septembre (the main stadium) in Conakry. The protest yesterday did not remain calm after the military opened fire and used tear gas grenandes on the protestors. Eighty seven deaths have been reported, some of the candidates of opposition parties were injured, and four opposition candidates were arrested (three have since been released). The good news is that the interior of the country is completely calm, and we PCVs are all safe and sound, so not to worry! The village is the best place to be — not only is it extremely unlikely that any kind of demonstration would take place, but there are Guineans in every PC village that would guard their PCV with their life. Guinea’s Independence day is October 2nd, this Friday, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the peace up-country continues and that things calm down in Conakry.

Mois de Carême & Other News (written 9/26/09)

Hello everyone! I hope the school year has gotten off to a good start. It’s hard to believe another season has passed and you’re headed into cooler weather back at home. We’re finishing up the rainy season here in Guinea with about a month of lighter rain left before we hit the “cold” season. They say school will start October 5th, so sometime in the next month or so my three 10th grade classes and I will be getting acquainted and down to business. Bissikrima has three incoming 7th grade classes, so we’re turning the “office” into a classroom in order to accommodate the nine different classes (and boy do I feel sorry for whoever has to teach in that room because they will be getting defecated on often due to the mouse-bat infestation). Including me, the middle school has two math teachers to teach six hours of class to each of these nine classes, so this means the 7th graders won’t be getting any math this year. No wonder why the students struggle so badly when they finally get lucky and have a math teacher.

In other news, the mois de carême, aka Ramadan, just ended this past Saturday. The “30” days of fasting began Saturday, August 22nd. I put 30 in quotation marks because it was actually only 29 days of fasting. For the last ten days or so of the fast, they said they didn’t know when the fête (holiday) celebrating the end of the carem would be because it depended on the moon. The night that the moon came back out (aka the night after the new moon), that would be the last day of the fast and the fête would take place the next day. In any case, despite the fact that there was no moon Saturday night, they decided to go ahead have the fête on Sunday, the other reason being they don’t like to have fêtes on Mondays (except for Tabaski last December…). I’m still a little confused as to why they didn’t just count out the 30 days and settle the matter that way, but who am I to talk, really, because I didn’t fast for a single day. The rules of Ramadan are as follows: no eating, drinking, or even swallowing your own spit after the morning prayer (at 6AM) until sundown. This is repeated for 30 straight days. There’s to be no TV watching, music, dancing, etc. As one of my students explained it to me, “The fast is to repent and the day after the fast ends, it’s like you’re a new baby, all your sins have been forgiven.” So the fast is over, the fête has been celebrated, and now everything’s just about back to normal except that all the females still have their hair beautifully done, a leftover from the fête.

Now I’m in Kankan for girls’ conference, which covers content similar to what we did in our girls’ camp except the girls have come from all over Haute Guinea (1-2 from each village that has a PCV). We’ll head back to our villages Monday, and Tuesday I’ll go to Dabola to spend the week updating Concern Universal’s website. CU is the NGO for whom my friend Tanya works. Saturday (10/3) is Paul’s big race in Dabola featuring a 10K and half-marathon. October 4th I will finally be back at site just studying for the GRE and waiting for school to open at which point you’ll all already have been in school for at least a month (two in the case of Lauren!).

Many, many thanks to Julie W., my mom, the Kamins, the Mallerys, the Dimonds, Noelle R., Laura M., and Aunt Marianne from whom I heard on the last mailrun. Your news and anecdotes from home continue to be the highlight of every month spent here. If something interesting occurs next week, I will have many opportunities to post about it; if not, happy Fall and until next time… Much love from Guinea!

(The internet was down in Kankan, so that’s why I haven’t posted until today!)

Girls’ Camp! (written 9/19/09)

At the beginning of September, Sacha and I put on the first of our two girls’ camps we’d been planning since spring. We spent the week with ten girls from her village talking about various topics such as health (malaria, diarrhea, nutrition), sex (how the body works, pregnancy, contraceptives, family planning, STIs), depigmentation (women in West Africa use bleaching creams in an effort to lighten their skin, which is the opposite direction of white women in the US who go tanning but with the same result – cancer, skin problems, and an orange taint), excision (96% of Guinean females are excised/have experienced female genital mutilation), and planning for the future (how to set a goal, etc). After we were done with the material for the day, the girls would make up and practice skits conveying the information they’d learned that morning. Nick, another PCV, came down Saturday morning for the girls’ performance of the skits they’d made. It was a fun week, and the girls seemed like they enjoyed themselves.

This morning we finished our girls’ camp in Bissikrima. I invited the girls from my 10th grade girls’ group who were still around town, two 9th graders, and two 7th graders (all of my outstanding 8th grade girls had been married off by the end of the year leaving me with about three underachieving girls who rarely made it to school). We did the same thing in Bissikrima as we had done in Kobala, but we also had time to prepare morringa leaf sauce together (morringa is an extremely healthy “miracle plant” that grows like weeds here but most Guineans aren’t familiar with its benefits), and we had a visit from (PC Guinea) Director Dan.

I had high expectations of my girls, and they went ahead and far exceeded them. It was interesting for me to see how the girls perform in a subject that isn’t math. Their French was much better than it had been at the beginning of the year, they not only understood the information we gave them but could explain it better than we did, and they added in bits and pieces of knowledge they’d learned outside of our camp (like the name of the malaria parasite, which they learned in biology). I felt like a proud parent watching them perform their skits. They seem like high-school students already, intelligent and mature, and I’m so excited to see where these next few years end up taking them.

All in all girls camp was a huge success, and Sach and I are hoping to repeat it next year after school ends and right before I come home.

The Results are in! (written 9/10/09)

I was putzing around my hut Tuesday after lunch, when I hear a voice through my screen, “Mme! Mme! Come quick! The results are in!” I ran out to find M. Bah, the disciplinarian, who’d come to bring the results to the mayor. I followed him next door where I joined the other teachers to watch the mayor look over the list before he finally handed it over to us teachers. We immediately started reading over it. There were so many names, too many I thought. “Wait, how do you know who passed?” I asked. “No! Those are the names of all the kids who passed,” they told me. Thank goodness it’s perfectly acceptable to wear sunglasses inside here (sunglasses are a status symbol) because I had to pull the most often used move of volunteers here — putting them on to conceal my eyes that were quickly welling up with tears. Bissikrima had 57 kids pass of 153. That may sound extremely underwhelming, but for a school that normally sends under 40 kids a year on to high school, it’s a huge accomplishment. In the top six were three girls, which I found particularly amazing. (A couple of the girls’ dads said to me later, “Hey, your whole team passed!” My whole team being the girls in the girls group I do every Friday during the school year.) There are kids who worked very hard last year, but who I thought stood no chance of passing, at least not on the first try. But all of their names were on the list. It was so exciting!

We marched over to the sous-prefecture (where the two government buildings stand) where they had a big ceremony, publicly announcing the names of all those who passed. I wish I could properly describe the excitement and happiness those kids displayed. For the rest of the week I had kids coming over to share in their joy and thank me. It means so much to them and to their parents. I had one student, Mouming, who is so sweet and tries very hard but struggles in math. It’s just not his subject. During the school year he’d come over about once a week to get extra help from me. His family lives 20km from Bissikrima, so he lives with another family in town here and bikes home to see his real family and give them money every other Sunday. He explained it to me once, and said, “It’s hard, but if I have courage and continue to study, it’ll be better.” I have been worrying for a couple months now what Mouming would do if he didn’t pass because I was almost positive he wouldn’t. I was pleasantly shocked to see his name on the list. I was even happier to see him in person the following day when he showed up at my front door to celebrate. He had heard the results announced on the radio the night before and biked down to Bissikrima from his village to see his friends, etc. He biked the 20km here and was returning that night all while fasting for Ramadan. He couldn’t even take a glass of water from me! My students work hard, not just in school but in life, so it’s wonderful to see so many of them succeed and have an opportunity make a better life for themselves. Not many kids in Guinea get the opportunity to go to high school, and since there isn’t a high school in Bissikrima, it’s a really big deal that involves the kids leaving their families to go live in a bigger city that does have one.

After the ceremony we teachers sat around in the shade of a baobab tree congratulating each other on an excellent year. What a lovely day!