More Guinean Ways…

Okay, I just want to make sure I clarify that these are all generalities and definitely do not apply to every single Guinean. Just little things I notice.

- We Americans get excited to see monkies here while Guineans think they’re nothing special. Squirrels on the other hand excite Guineans like you wouldn’t believe. You don’t see them too often here, and boy is it thrilling when you do!
- Guineans all over the country are convinced there are 52 states. It must be in a book somewhere. Now the fact that they have a ballpark figure, way to go them because I don’t think many Americans could say how many regions there are in Guinea (4 if you’re wondering). M. Camara, the geography teacher, once interrupted me during class to consult with me about the number of states. When I said 50, he said, “Yeah, but did you forget Alaska and Hawaii?” So we had a big debate on the 4th of July about how many stars to put on our American flag cake.
- A very popular thing to do for any event – mainly weddings but also funerals, baptisms, etc – is to make tons of t-shirts with the honorees faces on them. These can be given out or sold at the event, depending on the wealth of the hosts.
- The moon is like a nightlight for the village. Kids stay up super late running around and banging on pots, pans, or whatever they can get their hands on because they can see! I have to admit, I do enjoy the full moon right up until I want to go to bed.
- The largest bill here, the 10000GF note, is the equivalent of about $2. When we go to the bank, we get handed stacks of money. There are maybe 3 ATMs in all of Guinea and no credit cards accepted anywhere. All purchases are made in cash. Imagine buying a car in two dollar bills!
- There are NGOs that sell or give away bleach products (to make water cleaner for drinking). The bottles clearly explain how to use the product (ie put a capful in 20L jerrican of water), but for some reason, Guineans just dump the product directly into their wells and then declare that well-water safe for drinking. Even the most educated people in Bissikrima do this!
- Corporal punishment and the beating of children are fairly widely practiced here. I have to be very careful when deciding whether or not to involve the disciplinarian in conflicts at school because if I do, it is likely to result in the student getting whipped with a rubber strap in front of the class.
- Guineans are obsessed with Akon because he’s originally from Senegal. I hear his songs (the same ones, over and over) multiple times per day.
- Notebooks are the most valuable learning tool most Guinean students have. There are no books, so what they copy into their notebooks is what they have to study from. At the end of the year, the most studious pupils guard their notebooks carefully because the students who haven’t been coming to school or paying attention all year will steal them.
- Speaking of books, there are no books or magazines available to Guineans au village, only in large cities. My students here have nothing to read. Coming back from my most recent trip to Conakry, I brought back copies of Jeune Afrique and Amina, two popular magazines here. My students have been passing them around and loving them. PC publishes a magazine (when it has the funds) that contains poems and short stories about issues facing Guinea female (excision, prostitution, etc) by Guinean females. I have to keep requesting extra copies because my boys keep taking them. Even my 30-year-old tough-guy neighbor Saidou loves it – he sat outside reading it outloud to himself for three days straight.
- Guineans are very touchy-feely with the same sex. I’ve rarely seen male-female PDAs here (only once have I seen a pair making out, and that was in Conakry), but you see guys holding hands, rubbing each other’s legs all the time. It’s not in a sexual way whatsoever (homosexuality does not even exist here – it’s completely unknown), but it was still shocking to see at first.

“There is no act of faith more beautiful than the generosity of the very poor”

I found this quote in a book I read recently (Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts), and there isn’t anything that more perfectly describes Guineans. They have so very little: the average Guinean has just over $1 a day to spend, and that’s a biased average due to the corruption at the top. Most Guineans live on much less than that, yet the Guineans in Bissikrima shower me with gifts on a daily basis – oranges, bananas, mangoes, eggs, bread, peanuts, shoes, clothing, meals, etc. How can Guineans give to me, the American who has everything, when they are struggling to feed their families? They see me in the day-to-day, and they know I’m not wanting for anything, yet they continue to give and give and give. But that’s the culture here, to share what you have no matter how little it is.

If you’re eating and someone passes by, you are obliged to offer “invitation” to this person, offering them to join you. When someone shows up at your house thirsty, you get them cup after cup of water until their thirst has been quenched even if you’ve never met this person before in your life. Keep in mind that it’s not just some quick water from the tap like in the US; that’s the heavy water someone has carried from the pump back to the house. In one of my neighboring houses lives a large family with two elderly ladies who sell goods at the market all day, everyday. In the evenings when they’re walking home with buckets on their heads, wood stools and more buckets in their hands, Salematou and Alhissaine will run to take things out of their hands and carry them the rest of the way home. When I’m coming home with heavy buckets of water, my hostmom will walk to meet me and insist on taking one even though she is getting old and doesn’t do those things even for her own family. When I first arrived in Bissikrima, people kept coming up to welcome me, to tell me “tu es chez toi!” (you’re at home here!), if I need anything, just say the word. When I go to my students’ homes, their families insist on feeding me, and will oftentimes run out to get a Coke or Fanta for me. Just yesterday the father of one of my students took great care to give me a cup of pump water that he had bleached in order to make it drinkable for me.

Some of the greatest kindness I have seen was when my family was here. They flew all the way to Guinea and came bearing candy and hand-me-downs. To Guineans, that is nearly incomprehensible wealth. So what did the Guineans of Bissikrima do? Did they come over asking for gifts or money as the Senegalese or Malians may have done? Far from it. For the duration of my family’s week-long stay in Bissikrima, we had a steady stream of visitors coming to not only say hello, but to bring us gifts. We had too many delicious meals to count, fabric, jewelry, Cokes (a very expensive treat that many Guineans have never even tasted themselves), clothing, Guinean “china” and more. My favorite gifts were the many chickens we received, mainly on the last day. We tried to refuse because a chicken is a very big gift, but my students and their families insisted that we take the various chickens they brought to us. When I said we couldn’t possibly eat them all before we left, they told me to have my family just bring them home. I had to explain that the only airline that would allow a chicken onboard is Air Guinee (honestly, Air Guinee operated more like a bush taxi than an airline), and that may be part of why it’s no longer in operation. M. Kamano, the president of the association I work with, put together a huge banquet with the most amazing food I’ve had yet in Guinea, dancing, and good company.
The moment that brought tears to my eyes was when my girls showed up one evening, dressed to the nines in their complets and Aminata carrying a huge tray on her head. On the tray were bananas, two cokes and a Fanta, a delicious chicken and French fry meal, and these souvenir handkerchiefs they had made for us with our names printed on them. I can’t get my girls to show up to my girls group that I organize half the time, and here they were, presenting us with food they had gone out and bought and then spent all afternoon preparing together when there was laundry, cleaning, and preparing for their own families to be done.

A PCV’s mother was here in December, and she herself had been a volunteer in Somalia. She went on about what a dump Conakry is and how underdeveloped Guinea is in general, especially given the mineral wealth (gold, diamonds, bauxite, ore). She said that Somalia 30 years ago was more developed than Guinea today, but, she said, she did not have families bringing her meals everyday and being as kind to her as Guineans are to her daughter. The director of the Africa region of Peace Corps, who oversees 27 countries, had lunch with us PC V trainers in Forecariah when I was there, and even she was going on about how wonderful Guineans are. While life can be hard and frustrating here for so many different reasons, the kindness and generosity of Guineans trivializes those difficulties. Guineans just can’t stop giving.

PS Many, many thanks to those I heard from on the July and August mailrun: the Reynolds, Madi, the LaGrange Vonachens, Mom, Grandma, the Paulsons, the Clines, the Dimonds, Geoff, Sar, and my neighbors, Mary and John! You guys are too good to me (and I love it!).

The VonAchen Ladies Do Guinea

Hi from Kankan! Paul and I are spending the night here before we head out to Mali tomorrow. We’re looking forward to live music and good food in Bamako, hiking in Dogon Country, and seeing the mud mosque in Djenne among other things. But before I get going on how excited I am, I wanted to write about my family’s visit since I didn’t get to when I left Conakry (the internet was down “because of the clouds”).

Overall we had a good time, and I think my mom and Paige got a good feel of life here. We spent a couple days in Conakry, a week in Bissikrima, a few days hiking in the Fouta, and another couple days in Conakry. Our time in Bissikrima was by far my favorite. The Bisskrimites received my family with open, loving arms and my mom and sister are still the talk of the town. I was walking home with one of my students the other day, and she and another woman were laughing about something in Pular. When we walked away, she told me the woman was laughing about how Paige and my girls spent so much time together without a common language in which to communicate but still had such a great time. We were given multiple meals every day. Their generosity was unending: gift after gift people here lavished on my family. On the last day we were presented with multiple live chickens (which we tried to refuse because we were leaving, to which my students replied, obviously, just bring them with. I had to explain that chickens aren’t allowed on airplanes). My girls coordinated (don’t ask me how because half the time I can’t even coordinate them myself to show up for the girls’ group) and brought over a huge tray with delicious chicken and fries that they had spent all afternoon preparing along with Cokes and Fantas, bananas, and souvenir handkerchiefs for us all. They all wore their nicest complets and looked stunning arriving in one big group with all that food piled on top of a try on Aminata’s head. We also attended a banquet put on the last night by M. Kamano, the president of the association I sometimes work with, with plenty of eating and dancing. It was a very happy week in Bissikrima.

A quick couple anecdotes before I end this post… I was introducing my mom and Paige to some women at one point, and one of the women grabbed my breast and then grabbed my mom’s and shook it around. I understood what was going on, but my mom was clueless as to why this stranger was groping her! The woman was just wondering if she was my real mom, the one who breastfed me. This same woman followed up this past Sunday by asking me if my mom had left and if I had gotten enough breastmilk while she was here (hardy har). I don’t really get the humor, but everyone else who was around found it funny.

Paige got two rather serious marriage proposals from my students, one of whom, Souphy, brought her a chicken the last day. We weren’t at my hut when he brought it over, so my neighbor had kindly kept it in his hut until we returned. We decided we couldn’t keep this chicken, so we put it in my backyard and waited for Souphy to show up again so we could give it back. When he came around, I told Paige to go in back and get the chicken. My backyard is shielded by a fence, so we couldn’t see what was going on, but we suddenly heard lots of chicken squawking and yelling. Even though the chicken’s feet were tied together, Paige just couldn’t get close enough to pick him up. All of us, Guineans and Americans alike, sitting out front listening to this go down in my backyard were dying laughing.

Of course, the most important visitor of the family, the male, my father, has yet to make an appearance in Bissikrima. Today when I told the Kamanos that he’d probably be here in December, Mme Kamano said, “Oh! But it is excessively cold in December. He’ll freeze!” So consider this your warning, Dad. It did get cold in December and January, but I’m pretty sure we didn’t see anything below 50.

Anyone looking to experience West Africa, consider this your invitation. I’m sure Bissikrima would be more than happy to welcome you here!