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