**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)!
