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!