Oh Yes it’s Ladies Night!

Salut! So for the past two days, every single girl from G16 (all 12 of us) has been in Conakry for the various reasons I’ve mentioned in previous posts. On Friday evening we decided we’d have a little celebration of our being in country for a year and not having lost a single one of us with a cake. Saturday the little celebration with cake started to grow into a small dinner, and by Sunday morning we had decided to do an all-out, labor-intensive meal. We started around 2:30PM cleaning the green beans (a real treat for us since we can’t find them au village) and preparing the cake batter. By 5 we were in full swing with all hands on deck prepping the eggplant parmesean and garlic bread. I’m not complaining about our kitchen here in Conakry because I’m very grateful we have one in a country where a kitchen generally consists of a bucket of water and a wood fire on sand “floor” outdoors, but our kitchen is on the smaller side, which makes it difficult to do large group meals. If you have the gas on for the stove, that means the oven doesn’t get much gas. So two hours after we put the cake in the oven, it was still 100% batter (and yes, the oven was on — we lit it ourselves). We ended up moving to the kitchen in the office, which involved climbing up and then back down two flights of stairs, the smoke alarm going off for most of the cooking process, and plenty of sweat since the kitchen is, logically, not air-conditioned. Rachel and Emily disappeared about halfway through the cooking process, which I noted as rude to the rest of us who stayed and sweated it out. As we were carrying the finished meal up and then back down the two flights of stairs, we heard them yelling from the roof. When we had finally made it up the three flights of stairs, we saw what all the yelling was about, and it brought tears to my eyes (I’m telling you, I appreciate the smallest things I used to take for granted). The boys helped them to carry a table up there and then had set up fresh flowers and candles for the most lovely table setting I’ve seen. We toasted ourselves and sat down to the best meal I’ve had yet in-country. While the food was excellent, it was the company that made it so wonderful. Despite the difficulties of being a female in this country, we are all still here one year later, and I think that says a lot about the quality of the women in G16. We are family now. I posted some pictures on my flickr account.

In other news, I fortunately have no bugs, worms, or any other creepy crawler living in me, probably due to me not only filtering but having a heavy hand with the bleach I put in my water (to the point where I made Lisa throw up by over-bleaching her water last week…oops). My students started the Brevet today, and a few of them called to say it went well. Math isn’t until Saturday, so I have to wait a while to hear about that. My mom and Paige should be arriving in approximately four hours! More news in a couple weeks. By then we will have another 17 of us in-country — welcome G18 Take care and much love!

Uploaded pics

I uploaded some new pics to my flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37048709@N05/

And just some fun FYI… we have all been doing our medical mid-service examinations this past week, and of the very few people who’ve heard back on their stool samples, four have had amoebas or parasites. I should be finding out what various bugs and/or worms are currently living in my intestines tomorrow!

Happy 4th of July!

Hello all! Just wanted to quickly wish you a Happy 4th! All but two of the G16ers (the group I came in with) are here in Conakry to celebrate the 4th, welcome the new group of education volunteers that comes in on Wednesday that we are SO thrilled to finally get to meet, and to celebrate our one year anniversary in Guinea. What a lot we have to celebrate Today we’re doing a pig roast and potluck. We all chipped in to buy a three-in-one blender/juicer yesterday, and we are going to be making some delicious tropical drinks with the Malibu rum the Barrons sent Rachel in one of her care packages. It should be a very fun day, and I think we are all especially grateful for our freedom after living in a country with plenty of checkpoints, bribes and general corruption for the past year.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I was doing at this same time last year — running around like crazy getting everything in order to leave and having a wonderful 4th of July celebration with my cousins (Matt & Tim), the Reynolds family, and the Dimond family. I hope you all have fun celebrating with family and friends back home. I sure wish I could be there with you!

A Tournee in the Fouta Djallon

Hello again! I can’t tell you how amazing it is to have 24/7 access to internet here in Conakry. It’s the little things that bring me the greatest pleasure now.

As you may know, I live in Bissikrima in Haute (Upper) Guinea. Haute Guinea is where the Malinke tribe has settled in our country. Bissikrima is technically in Haute but on the border of the Fouta Djallon (Middle Guinea). The Fouta is where the Peul tribe has settled, and they are the most populus tribe in Guinea with over 40% of Guineans being Peuls, so they can be found everywhere in the country. Bisskrima, Dabola, Dialakoro, and other villages near us consist of about 60% Malinke and 40% Peuls, so where we are is an interesting mix without any ethnic tensions at least from what I’ve seen. The Peuls are streotyped as being hardworking and conservative (Muslim), and I’ve found those stereotypes to be on the true side. Looking at my class rosters, I would say Bissikrima is a good 90% Peul, but that’s only because the Peuls value education. Peul men tend to have multiple wives, at least more often than non-Peuls. They also tend to marry their daughters off at younger ages and to older men.

So last week, as our training in Mamou ended Friday, Lisa and I decided to head up to her site in the Fouta for a few days. We spent the first night in the regional capital, Labe. I was shocked by how quiet and peaceful it was in the morning as Peuls are quieter, more conservative people. (Actually, one of the other PCVs who lives with the Susus in the Basse Cote had to switch taxis on his way into Mamou and that the new taxi was full of Peuls, and he was going, “Who died? Why is everyone not screaming like in the last taxi?”) Saturday morning we headed to Lisa’s site, which is 50K from Labe on one of the worst roads I’ve been on yet. We didn’t go over 20K/hour at any point during the trip.

We spent four days in Mombeya, which is a teeny, tiny village. First of all, I was freezing almost the entire time because the Fouta is a mountainous region, and I’m just not used to the cooler weather at higher altitudes. Lisa and I spent most of our time hanging out in her host family’s living room with their five month old baby and the mom, who is 22 and married to a man who is at least 54. I adored the mom who was the most spunky and feisty Guinean woman I have yet met. She openly talks to Lisa about how much she despises her husband, the mayor of the town (and with good reason — he’ll go on trips and leave her with no money to feed their children or herself, so she’s forced to go around to people in the community asking for money). Lisa taught her the word “asshole” in English, so she’ll whisper it under her breath when her husband’s making her mad, and when he asks her what she’s saying, she says, “Oh nothing. Just singing.” We spoke openly with her about excision, her boyfriends, his girlfriends, etc. I found out why nearly everyone in this country has both a spouse and a boy/girlfriend. Marriages are arranged by the family, so you marry your spouse, who you are not usually in love with, but then keep a longterm boy/girlfriend with whom you are in love. I had a lovely time with Mme Bah. She was also the typical insanely kind Guiean woman. When Lisa told her I was coming, she went out and found a chicken that she prepared especially for us (one of the most delicious meals I’ve had…ever). Every morning she asked us what sauce we wanted that day and would prepare it for us. An incredible woman to say the least.

We also spent time with the village Doctor with whom Lisa works. I’ll be honest, he was kind of a jerk. His wife is the most gorgeous woman I have seen yet in this country that is teeming with beautiful women. I told him so, and he said, “Oh stop.” I said, “Do you tell her how beautiful she is?” He said no way, she’d get a big head and think she didn’t have to do work around the house anymore. When we were eating dinner with him one night, he called his wife lazy in the middle of the meal. Lisa and I were steaming at this point. Earlier that day he’d been talking about taking another wife, talking about the benefits of female excision (to keep women’s sexual urges under control — if they weren’t excised, they’d just be out having sex with everyone!), and other infuriating subjects. Calling his wife, who’d spent all day preparing his food, washing his clothes, and taking care of their baby, lazy was the last straw. We went home frustrated and sad. This is a highly educated man in the community, and he still stands behind the ideas we find so upsetting in this culture. If the educated men refuse to change, is their any hope for Guinea as a whole?

In any case, it was a lovely few days, and Lisa and I enjoyed each other’s company as well that of Mme Bah’s. One thing I appreciated about the Peuls I met is the value they place on education. There was a school in every little village and settlement we saw, and you just don’t see that in Haute (or Basse Cote for that matter). Many of the men told me their wives were in Labe, and when I asked why, they said because they were still in high school. So yeah they’re marrying them at ages we would consider far, far too young, but they’re also allowing them to stay in school.

So that was my brief tournee in the Fouta. I’ll be headed back in a couple weeks when my mom and Paige are here for what is supposed to be an amazing hiking experience. I’m already looking forward to cooler weather, traditional people, and quiet mornings.

More to come tomorrow…

The Math Competition

Hello, hello! I’m back in internet action for a week or so… Hopefully enough time to update you on all the things worth telling. I’m hoping to do a post a day (or so) until Paige & my mom get here on Tuesday.
So the math competition was a week ago Saturday (6/20). My students and I spent Friday making and decorating posters with the names of each participating school, and we had a lot of fun. I really enjoy hanging out with my students and finding out more about their lives — where they were born, where they’ll go to high school, etc. Two of my favorite boys spent about an hour and a half at my hut with Sacha and myself, and I noticed one of them had brought a novel he was reading. Now it is quite rare to see a Guinean, especially one living in the bush, reading for fun, so I asked him if he knew of Harry Potter, and he said he’d heard of it but hadn’t read it. My mom had offered to bring some Harry Potter books in French, but I told her no since Guineans hate sorcery, and thus I didn’t think those books would go over very well. But after talking to Abel, my student, about it, I decided to have her bring them. He told me he “LOVES sorcery!” Well, we’ll see what he thinks of the book, but in any case, I’m excited to start a mini-library and hopefully to instill the joys of reading in some of my students.

But back to the competition… I asked all of the schools to arrive by 9:15 in hopes of them arriving before 10. They started showing up shortly after 8:30 before most of my own students even showed up, which indicated to me that they were taking it much more seriously than I had anticipated. I was shaking in nervousness at this point. We began the first competition at 9:55, with five schools participating. M. Bah, my disciplinarian who hasn’t been on my list of favorite people lately with the sweeping and corruption issues, was like the perfect dinner host, welcoming and introducing all the teachers from different schools to each other. Shortly before we started he pulled me aside and said, “This is SUCH a good thing. It’s so great for us all to meet and collaborate.” Just before starting, we discovered we had a slight problem in that some teachers claimed to think they only had to have one girl among their two teams when I had specified numerous times with each teacher that they had to have at least one girl per four person team (and two teams per school). So after working that whole debacle out, we began. Bissikrima was represented by a team of four girls (which did not make my boys so happy, but I told them to get their teams together ahead of time, and the girls got their act together while the boys didn’t). Bissikrima ended up winning 7.5 to the nearest team’s 5. M. Bah spent the entire three hours of competitions holding back the throngs of students and adults from entering the classroom (the ones who screamed and cheered everytime Bissikrima got a point — we had a real homefield advantage), and he was in tears after the first competition because his daughter was on the winning team.

The second competition was much closer, and nerves were much more on edge as this was the competition of the “strongest students”. For the bigger schools, there’s no difference between the two teams, but for the smaller schools, there’s a huge difference. So there was an accusation of cheating, a couple accusations that my answers were incorrect (which I worked out on the chalkboard to prove myself), but overall, the second competition went pretty smoothly. We were shocked to find Hunter’s school, a very small one from way out in the bush, come out on top. Redemption! They had lost to Bissikrima by one point in the competition in May and were more crushed than Hunter and I could have possibly dreamed they would be. I wish I could adequately describe the excitement and joy of his team as they realized they had come out on top. Bissikrima, Dabola, and Famou (the private school in Dabola) all tied for second place, and Dabola had a difficult time letting go of their cheating accusation, but they eventually came and ate with the rest of us before heading home.

I had the results announced on the radio Saturday evening, including the names of all the students on Bissikrima’s teams. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and I was relieved things went so smoothly, when you never know how things are going to turn out here. I was particularly thrilled because I had 50-60 students showing up daily for my reviews/math team practices the week leading up to the competition, which was techinically after school had ended for my 10th graders. This was the whole point of the competition, so I was thrilled to see it serving its purpose! Overall, it was a a big success, and I am already looking forward to doing more with my 10th graders next Spring.

Hopefully another update tomorrow… happy Summer to all

One Week!

Hey all — just a quick post. I’m at Tanya’s in Dabola for a little dinner party with a couple of guests she has in town (one of the guests is a Canadian who happens to be a UMich alum! Talk about making my day). Paul made a delicious chicken parmesean, I made french fries, and we feasted!
One week from today is the big math competition in Bissikrima. We may only have five schools since the math teacher at the other school in Bissikrima refuses to have girls on his teams. I won’t even get into it because I’m so infuriated. In any case, please send positive thoughts my way that it doesn’t all errupt into complete chaos and screaming matches like I’m very worried it will. It’s serving its purpose in any case because my kids are studying like crazy.
Hope you are all in good health at home. I will post sometime the week of 6/22. Thank you to my mom, Aunt Sue, the Grannies, Maria/Anna/Bruce, and the Mallerys for packages/letters on the mailrun we just had

An Update from the Bush

Waahh my life has been filling up and feeling ever so busy lately. But first, I hope this finds you all well at home. It’s summer already! School is out or nearly out. Gosh, has time been flying there like it has been here?

So, as I said last weekend, one of my smartest girls is pregnant. She’s 17, and she and this boy in her class have been kindy touchy feely lately, or at least they were four months ago. And now she’s pregnant. I was so upset I couldn’t function for a couple days. There are a very few number of girls in school (most of whom I think they keep only because someone to do the sweeping). Of the few that are in school, there are far fewer that are smart and hard-working. And now I’ve lost one of those girls because she’s not going to be able to continue going to school with a baby. One of my counterparts was explaining the pregnancy rules to me, and he said that there is some woman who’s a higher-up in the education department, and she’s rather revolutionary and recently changed the rules. If you’re pregnant and married, they will now let you continue to attend school. Wow, how generous. So, as soon as this girl starts to show, she’s supposed to be kicked out. Any day now… Oh, and my last smart 8th grade girl just got married off, so she’s done with school. These girls are like 14 and their parents are marrying them off to 30+ year-old men. GAH!

While we’re on the topic of women, my principal and disciplinarian will often kick girls out of my class for not sweeping. Well, I’d had it, and so I went to them very calmly the other day (even though I was ready to burst), and said, “So I noticed you kicked Soaudou and Binta out of class.” Principal: “Yes, they didn’t sweep.” Me: “Right, but I noticed that you didn’t kick out any of the boys, and they didn’t sweep.” Principal: “I’ve told you that’s not how we do it here.” Me: “It’s not fair the girls do all the work and the boys do nothing. They need to share the work.” Principal: “The boys do other work.” Me: “Really? What? I’ve never seen them do any work.” Principal: “They make the fence surrounding our schoolyard and cultivate the land in it.” Me: “What fence are you talking about? We have no fence. There are no crops being cultivated in our schoolyard.” Principal: “Well, they’re going to start this soon. And anyway, you’re only saying this because you’re a girl.” UM HELLO?!?! You’re damn right I’m saying it because I’m a girl. I told him I’d be making the sweeping charts for my classes next year, and I will not teach anyone who doesn’t help with work around the classroom. He said, “We’ll see.” GRRR!

While we’re on the subject of my principal and disciplinarian… an example of corruption in Guinea. They knew I was going to Dabola to do some work for the group I’ve started working with on the computers (this is a couple weeks ago). They asked if I could type some stuff up for them. I said sure if I had time. Then they said I could make photocopies of it afterwards, and I said, “We’ll see.” So, they send a kid over to my hut with a sheet and a note that says, “Make 150 photocopies of this.” There was nothing to type. So I stopped by school on my way to Dabola and asked for photocopy money. Now, they’ve collected 5000GF from each 10th grader (a dollar, which is a LOT of money here, especially for a 10th grader). My principal has walked into my classrooms and started yelling at my kids about how he has to go to Dabola all the time for their Brevet admin stuff, and he has to pay for the gas, so they all better pay up: 5000GF. So they did. But, surprise surprise, they had no money for photocopies. The collected over $150, and now all of it’s missing. And then they had the gall to ask me, the white girl, to pay for it. I said no way and left.

And one more corruption story before I cut off my rambling. My neighbor Bailo was like, “Madame, if I got ahold of this years math Brevet questions and gave them to you, you’d spend like a week doing them for us on the chalkboard right? Until we had them all memorized?” “Um, no, Bailo, that’s called cheating.” “Well, what would you do if I got ahold of the questions and gave them to you?” “Burn them.” Bailo gasped in horror. Cheating is frequent and completely accepted in the schools here. It’s infuriating. But corruption and cheating, it’s so engrained in the culture. Bailo and his friends who were hanging out when we were discussing this, none of them view that as cheating.

Okay, last story because I almost peed my pants watching this scene and I want to share it. On Thursday afternoon we got a nice, big storm, and while it was trickling off, I was sitting outside with Salematou and Saidou. Guineans are incredibly afraid of the cold. They act like it’s going to kill them. And by cold I mean mid-high 70s. Anyway, it was 75 degrees, and this little kid is wearing this winter jacket — one of those jackets with the faux fur lining around the hood. The jacket is zipped all the way up so and the hood is on, so just their eyes and nose are visible, and it’s also a little bit too small, kind of reminded me off Ralphie’s little brother in his snowsuit in “A Christmas Story” when he can’t move his arms. In any case, this little kid goes steaming, rocking back and forth from side to side because he can’t move his arms, by in front of us, all bundled up in this jacket, but wearing shorts. That’s it. I couldn’t stop laughing, and even Salematou and Saidou were chuckling a little bit.

I don’t know the next time I’ll be updating… maybe Thursday? Maybe not until after the 22nd. In any case, the big math competition is June 20 — so keep Bissikrima in your thoughts that day Take care, all. Miss you!

A Post from 5/11 (the internet went down…are we surprised?)

**If you’re sending me a letter, will you please send it (or at least a copy of it) to my home address (you can email my mom for it, sharonv@visi.com)? Letters don’t tend to come through as well as packages, and since my mom is wonderful enough to send me plenty of packages, it shouldn’t take too long to get to me (and this way we can rest assured it WILL get to me). Also, a big thank you to my mom, Jackie, Lor, Aunt Sue, and Aunt Lori for sending me packages/letters that I got on the May mailrun. MERCI!**

Hey guys! I’m in Dabola again to type up some funding proposals for a group of teachers I’ve been working with in Bisskrima, and while I’m here, I figured I’d post.

Since I’ve gotten here (10 months ago…), Guineans all over the country have told me that the rains can start again anytime after April 15. Well, today is May 11, and we have yet to see a drop in Bissikrima. We’ve still been hitting highs in the 130s daily. Ugh, although sleeping outside has cured all my insomnia ills. BUT, I found out why it hasn’t rained yet. It’s the bricks you see. The guys who make the bricks, well, their bricks aren’t done drying, and the rain will ruin them. So apparently the rain holds off until the bricks are dry. Two independent and educated sources have told me this in the past week. Guineans are incredibly superstitious and have some funny quirks – like they hate when people whistle because whistling summons the devil (Ben’s a whistler, and they gave him hell for it when we first got here). You always have to put your right shoe on before your left shoe or it’s bad luck. The devil can also be found in baobob tress, so you have to be careful around those. Hmmm….

On Saturday, I was hanging out at Mme Kaba’s and I saw these kids in her compound playing with a large fish – an ugly bottom dweller. They were holding it, dropping it in the sand, washing it off, etc. They eventually put him in a bowl and brought him over for Mme Kaba and myself to admire. “Um, so are you putting that in the sauce today?” I asked her. She laughed, “No, no. We pulled him up out of the well this morning.” WHAT?! “Wait, you pulled that fish out of your well, the well that’s right over there, today? How did he get in there?” I was so confused. “Oh, we put him in there. He keeps it clean,” she informed me. That’s the first I’ve heard of keeping a fish in a well to keep the well clean. She also proceeded to show me the unopened bottle of “product” (bleach I assume) that she says she puts in the well every three days to kill bacteria. I read the instructions on the bottle, and it says to put a capful in a 20L bidone (jerrican) and let it sit for 20 minutes before drinking. It’s not like Mme can’t read. I don’t know why she blatantly ignores the directions (or why she keeps a fish in her well for that matter), but she’s not alone. A lot of my students tell me they drink well water at home, but, they add, they treat their wells with “products” (again, bleach I assume). They get these bottles of bleach for free from NGOs, but then they don’t use them properly, even with the instructions right there.

In school news, I had a little incident with a girl in my 10th grade A class. She came up to me while everyone was working on exercises and gave me a list of girls’ names that she wanted me to give to the disciplinarian. She said I had to kick those girls out of class right away because they hadn’t been sweeping. Yah right! “No way. You can kick them out after my class. Sit down and do the exercises,” I told her. By the way, I’ve only seen this girl a handful of times all year and not one of those times was she herself sweeping. The next day, the disciplinarian enters my class, reads off some girls’ names and tells them to leave. “M. Bah, does this have anything to do with sweeping?” I asked him. “Yes. These girls haven’t swept,” he told me. “Well, I haven’t seen any of the boys sweeping. Why aren’t you kicking them out?” “That’s just not how we do things here in Africa,” he informed me. All the teachers are my school are always talking about gender inequality here, how much harder women work, and how it’s time to change that. Then they turn around and do things like this. We argued a little bit before he decided to let the girls stay, I think mostly because he didn’t want an argument, not because he wants to start working towards equality. AGH! It can be so frustrating! But I suppose if I were a Guinean man and could sit around on my booty all day watching women do all the work, well, I wouldn’t really want to give it up either.

Anyway, Hunter and I have our math competition next weekend. We made up the questions Friday night under the full moon since there’s no way you’re going to be before midnight when the moon’s nearing full. The kids in the village stay up til all hours banging on pots, empty cans, wheelbarrows, anything they can get their hands on. My students know we’ve already made up the questions, and they are really worried Hunter is going to give his students the answers. I guess that’s because cheating and corruption are so rampant here. Luckily, I don’t think we have to worry too much about Hunter. Hopefully next weekend doesn’t end in complete chaos, but I won’t be surprised if it does. I’ll try to come back and post the weekend of the 23rd.

I hope you all are doing well back in the States. For the next couple weeks (hopefully just days, but really who knows?), I’ll be sitting in Bissikrima, waiting for the bricks to dry… Take care!

PS It rained, no poured, the very night I wrote this post (5/11). We’ve had three big storms since, and things have cooled off slightly although it’s awfully humid. In any case, the real rains, the rainy season itself, should be arriving as June rolls in and school finishes up.

**The post after this is more recent, due to internet troubles etc, etc, this one got posted second and not first. C’est la vie en Guinee (that’s life in Guinea)!

Quick Update!

So this is going to be rather quick, but I just wanted to update about the math competition. It went perfectly, so smoothly it was almost unbelievable. We had an accusation of cheating from each team in the very first two rounds (which, really, we should have expected), but other than that, everything went off without a hitch. The kids had spent lots of time practicing and reviewing, and it actually showed. They had a fabulous time and thanked me the entire 45 minute ride home. I had the local radio station announce the results and the students’ names, and all the teachers at school and the principal thanked me profusely. The principal actually proceeded to give me a huge speech about how important the competition was and went around to all eight classes announcing the results (which had just been announced the previous night on the radio literally everyone listens to). In any case, it was such a success that we’re planning another one, this time in Bissikrima, and this time we’re inviting six schools. So far four are in (the two in Bisskrima, Dialakoro, and Cissela), and next Friday I’ll return to Dabola to invite the last two. So that is what’s keeping me busy currently — that and the end of the school year and work with the group Youth and Friends Association of Bissikrima (we’re hoping to get money to do sensitizations at the schools).
I recently found out one of my best students is pregnant, and I’ll write about that next time (which should be next Saturday when I have a required trip to Kankan). I hope you are all having a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend and a good time kicking off summer. Much love from Guinea!

Hi from Dabola

Hello again, everyone! I didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to be writing again so soon, but we’re in Dabola for the weekend to celebrate Sacha’s birthday, and the generator at US AID is back up and running, so we get to use the internet Ben, Levi, and I made it back to Bissikrima just in time for sunset last Saturday after a painless bush taxi ride (painless for us anyway, not so much for the poor woman behind me with two kids on her lap who was puking into a plastic bag the whole way). Even with the insane heat, I’ve had the best week yet at site.

I love coming back to Bissikrima after an absence because everyone seems so happy to see me, stopping by to welcome me home and ask me about my trip. Since we actually got to take our vacation this time, I came back feeling well-rested and ready to get back into village life. After my chats with Conor in Conakry, I have been dealing with the difficulties of being a female here in a much more positive way. I had a great week at school with my students. I marvel at the progress they’ve made since the beginning of the year — the same students who struggled with basic addition and subtraction and had never before plotted a point in a graph are now solving systems of equations completely on their own. Next Saturday we’re doing a small math competition with my 10th graders in Bissikrima to choose the eight students who will get to participate in a math competition with Hunter’s (one of my neighbor PCVs) 10th graders at the end of May. We just got the go ahead with the funding, so when Hunter gets her later today, we’ll get all of our plans in order. My students and I are very excited!

This has been the most intense week yet in terms of the heat. On Sunday I went out and bought a bamboo bed so I could start sleeping outside because I’ll wake up at 2AM in a pool of my own sweat, and when I glance at the thermometer, it reads 93 degrees. Ninety three degrees at 2AM. Yeeouch. We’ve been ending school around 11:15 or 11:30 because the students can’t pay attention any longer with the heat, which is even worse in the tin-roof schoolhouse. They keep saying the rains are coming, and I just keep on waiting. On the bright side, it’s mango season! They are plentiful, cheap, and delicious, although I have to say I still prefer the oranges.

All kinds of projects have been sprouting up lately, and so I’m no longer worried about being bored to tears this summer without school. In August we have Girls’ Conference, where each PCV brings a girl or two to their regional capital for three days to participate in sessions ranging from education to HIV/AIDS to discussions on what life is like for girls here in Guinea. So Salematou and I are already getting excited for that. Sacha and I just started discussing doing a Girls’ Camp, one in each of our villages. We haven’t started working on funding yet, but we’re throwing ideas around about things to do at the camp while we’re together this weekend. Paul is putting on a race (running) the first Saturday in October, so my girls’ group and I are going to start running together once the heat is over. I’m also helping him plan the big spaghetti dinner for all the participants that will take place the night before the race and setting up one of the water tables. Conor and I are also working on a project modeled after the photography exhibit I saw in Sierra Leone. Whew! And on top of all that, last night at dinner Paul introduced me to an English woman who is working at Concern Universal here in Dabola. Concern Universal works with girls in Guinea. She and I have been living just 23K apart for the last seven months and didn’t meet until last night! Apparently she comes to Bissikrima’s Sunday market to get out of Dabola sometimes. In any case, we were both really excited to meet another English-speaking female who lives nearby.

So that has been my great week. I also read a wonderful book that took my mind off the heat for hours at a time (Prep I highly recommend it). On Saturday, I arrived home to packages and mail from the US (the mailrun came while we were in Sierra Leone), so thank you thank you so much to everyone who sent letters and packages (Laura Martini, Aunt Lori, Grandma, my parents, Van and Diane, my roommates!). You guys make my life here so much easier (and my students love it when I share bonbons from the US with them). I miss you all so much, and it’s so nice to hear from you. To top off my great week, I open my email to find the nicest message from my 10th grade math teacher, Mr. Rumppe, who apparently just met Di Dimond, my mom’s best friend. That put a huge smile on my face

I think I mean it this time when I say I’ll be out of touch via the internet for a while. It’s not so much fun biking to Dabola in this heat, but I never know where the week will take me. It’s hard to believe an entire winter has gone by back home and a new group is already graduating from UM. I hope you’re all making the most of the nice weather (I heard it was 70 in the Twin Cities last weekend). Much love from Guinea!