Sierra Leone

Yesterday we arrived in Conakry after a lovely eight days in Sierra Leone. We left Conakry April 5th around 5:30AM and arrived in Freetown around 6:30PM after the taxi ride from hell, by far the worst I’ve experienced so far, but hey, it was with good company, so I really shouldn’t complain. The countryside in Sierra Leone was breathtaking, and it’s the end of the dry season. I can only imagine how much more green and lush it is during the rainy season.

We rolled into Freetown wide-eyed and jaws dropped. We were shocked by how much more developed it is than Conakry. We marveled at things like trash collection, sidewalks, paved roads, cold drinks that were actually cold, functioning government buildings, and real restaurants (and plenty of them). We ate at an ocean-side restaurant the first night that had draught beer and real booze (Captain Morgan and Coke Light – I was in absolute heaven). Despite our fatigue from staying up all night before the trip, we were positively giddy.

Monday we walked around Freetown seeing the sights and buying delicious treats we can’t find in Guinea (muffins, hotdogs, etc). Aside from the food, the Sierra Leone National Museum was my personal favorite. They had an amazing exhibit where they had given village women cameras and asked them to photograph women’s lives. We saw pictures of women getting beaten by their husbands who were smiling (the woman had taken goods from her husband to sell to make money to feed her family since her husband wouldn’t give her money), of a stillborn baby (a woman had been beaten that harshly while pregnant), of women cooking (similar to what I put on my blog), of a man bringing a new wife into his home unannounced, of hairdressing (one of the few ways women here spend time on themselves), of teenagers impregnated by adult men who deny they slept with the teen (and of course the girl is then forced to drop out of school), of girls doing the ridiculous amount of chores they have to do after school when they could be studying (another of a girl who’s given no food if she doesn’t complete her chores for her brothers). We also saw more empowering pictures of girls in their school uniforms at all girls’ schools and women who had found the means to get sewing machines, which enabled them to become financially independent from their husbands. This was the coolest thing I have seen since coming here. I wish the exhibit could be turned into a photo album and distributed widely because it is astounding what women in West Africa go through.

After the museum we stumbled upon an amazing artisan market – this kind of thing just doesn’t exist in Guinea because there just isn’t the demand. We all ended up changing money to buy some of the fabulous items we found. We also saw the first college in West Africa (Fournah Bay College), and one of the security guards took us around the top of the mountain upon which it sits, showing us a natural spring that people from miles around come to for drinking water. I barely made it down the mountain carrying nothing but my purse; I don’t know how they do it with 20L of water…

Tuesday, we hit the beach. We arrived around 3PM, and from that time until 11AM Monday morning, we did nothing but swim, sleep, drink, and eat. The beach was stunningly gorgeous as you can see from the photos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/37048709@N05/). It is almost completely untouched, and for the first few days, we were the only ones there. The mountains lead right down to the ocean, and there’s a river that flows into the ocean (hence the name, River No. 2). When the tide was low, we would float down the river and let the current carry us out to sea. A natural lazy river if you will. We ate fresh seafood (shrimp, barracuda, lobster, crab) every night for dinner. Okay, that’s a lie. Everyone else ate fresh seafood every night while I ate mounds French fries because I’m 22 years old and I still refuse to eat fish, but those fries were delicious, and I was very content.

So that was our week at the beach: lovely and relaxing. Monday we got back to Freetown in time for one last delicious dinner (mozzarella sticks and hamburgers, which you can’t really get here in Guinea. At least not without bones) and the big Easter Monday celebration. I swear Easter is the biggest holiday in West Africa, which is a little bizarre since West Africa is mostly Muslim, but hey, who doesn’t love a good party? The streets were bumping until we pulled out of town at 5:30 Tuesday morning. All in all, it was an amazing vacation.

There are many things I will no longer take for granted after living here for two years, but the main thing is freedom: the freedom I have being a woman in the US (which I’ll try to explain perhaps tomorrow) and to do anything and be anywhere without question so long as I’m doing nothing wrong. In both Guinea and Sierra Leone there are checkpoints every so often along the main roads (or every five minutes in the case of Sierra Leone). In Sierra Leone, the police would ask us what we were doing, ask us when Peace Corps was coming back to Sierra Leone, and send us merrily along our way. In Guinea, you just brace yourself every time you come to a checkpoint – how much hassling and harassment will it take to get past this time? The Sierra Leone border patrol helped us through with no problem, but we knew we were back in Guinea when we came out of Guinean immigration to find our bags wide open and being searched without us present. Every checkpoint on the Guinean side required bribes from our driver and screaming matches between him and the militaires manning the checkpoints. It is a point of much frustration, but all you can (and must) do is smile and be sweet to the officials, even if you think the whole thing is ridiculous because all you’re doing is trying to get home! In any case, that by no means spoiled the vacation; it was just something I thought I’d throw out there. Just one more thing I, as an American, am grateful for after living here.

Right now I’m planning on heading back to site on Saturday, so I’m hoping to post at least once more before then. I hope everyone enjoyed their Spring break. Missing you all, and I’m quite possibly coming home for Christmas… If I do, I can’t wait to see as many of you as possible!

Pictures

So my pictures were not posting to my blog for some reason, so I created a flickr account to show you my hut and the rest of the photos from cooking with Salematou. They are in a random order, but I just couldn’t deal with the slow internet and power outtages forcing me to start over again anymore. So here you have it! Click below to see the pictures:

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

We’re leaving in five hours (hopefully less) for our trip to Sierra Leone. I’ll be back in Conakry the 14th and will post more pictures, etc before I go back to site on the 18th.

I Have a Friend!

Hello everyone! I hope all is well at home. The news we hear most often here is how awful the economy is, so hopefully you are making it through the hard times okay. I’m still in Kankan and thought I’d put up a quick post while I have time.

As a female, it’s really hard to find friends in the village. Very few women are educated in Guinea, and school is where Guineans learn to speak French, so that makes communication rather difficult because I don’t speak the local languages (or at least nothing more than the greetings and very basic phrases). On top of that, the women who are educated generally live in bigger towns not au village. So I have my female students who speak French, but my relationships with them are more along the lines of mentor/mentee than friendship. And then that’s it. I have a couple male friends, but generally there’s some kind of underlying motive with men here, so I tend to keep my distance.

But, when Ben came down Wednesday evening to go to Kankan, he told me he had found me a friend! Her name is Fatoumata Barry, she’s 24 years old and has already finished university (that is young to have already graduated college, lots of times Guineas are graduating high school around that age). She just moved to Bissikrima but was up in Dialakoro for work purposes. Ben happened to meet her, and she told him how she doesn’t have any friends in Bissikrima. So now I have a friend! Ben introduced us Wednesday evening, and she and I have a friend date for Sunday afternoon when I get back to Bissikrima. She’s going to show me where she lives. She’s working for the community organizer in Bissikrima, so hopefully she’ll be here for the rest of my service. She speaks beautiful French and seemed very kind (like all Guinean women).

I know this sounds ridiculous, but that’s one of the hardest parts about being here is not having females to chat with, so this is super exciting.

Other than finding a new friend, not a whole lot has been going on. I’ve been keeping busy with school and my girls group has started off pretty well. We play volleyball Thursday afternoons at 4:30 (in 130 degreee heat) and usually hang out at my hut Friday afternoons listening to music and doing some kind of little activity — coloring, making friendship bracelets, doing oragami, etc. I think we all really enjoy it. I’ve been seeing my new PCV neighbors every weekend, and it’s been so nice to have some new Americans to talk with. In a week and a half I’ll be in Conakry and hopefully we’ll head to Sierra Leone April 5th, but we have just started hearing reports of unrest there, so our trip might be canceled again, in which case we’ll go to Dakar, Senegal. We’ve been getting so excited for this trip (it’s what’s getting me through this freaking hot weather), and we all need a little break from Guinea. School is supposed to end sometime in May. Or June. Who really knows. That’s the way it goes here.

That’s all the news for now, but like I said, I’ll post new pictures in Conakry in a couple weeks. I’ve been cooking with my neighbor Salematou on the days when we don’t have school, so I’ve got some great pics from that. Take care and happy Spring

A Few Fast Facts

Hi everyone! I’m in Kankan for the weekend to celebrate St Paddy’s day and hang out with other PCVs. In less than two weeks I will be in Conakry in AC! I will do a few posts in Conakry including plenty of pictures. For now I’ll give you a few quick facts about life in Guinea.

Highest temp I’ve seen: 142 degrees farenheit

Low that same morning: 70

Average daily high lately: about 140 in the sun and 107 in the shade

Average temperature at bedtime: 94

Average temp where I start to feel chilly: 90

Average temp where it’s too cold to sleep: 72 (but it’s been weeks since I’ve seen anything below 80)

Number of liters of water I drink/day: about 7

Number of miles in an average bike trip I do to see my PCV neighbors: 30

Average number of kids in any given class I teach: 52

Average hours of electricity I have during the rainy season: 12/day

Average hours I have now: 0 (the river is dry so the dam can’t generate power)

Average time spent on laundry/week: 1 hour

Average number of things I wash: 10

Number of outfits I wear in a week: 2

Average number of times/day a Guinean gives me something (oranges, peanuts, bread, eggs, cold drinks, etc): 2, they are so generous even though they have so little

Most interesting gift a Guinean has given me: maxipads

Number of times/day I apply sunscreen: at least 2

Kind of food I eat: carbs — bread, rice, and fruit

Times per week I deep soak my feet: 3 (they get filthy without sidewalks)

Number of times it’s rained since 10/31: once, very lightly

Average amount of water I use in a bucket bath: 6L

Average bedtime: 9:30PM

What is now “sleeping in” for me: 5:52AM

Type of mattress I sleep on: straw (there are foam and straw mattresses in Guinea) and I love it

PCVs here take Guinean names, mine: Aissiatou Keita

There are about 10 first names for each gender and 20 last names in total in this country. It makes it easier to remember peoples’ names.

It can be kind of scary to go out to use the bathroom at night (snakes), so you can buy special buckets to use as a toilet during the night and rinse out in the morning.

Price of 5 bananas, 2 mangos, and 6 oranges I bought last Sun: 45 cents

It’s a real compliment to be called fat here. When my neighbors saw pictures of me from when I first got here, they complimented me on how fat I was. When you come back to your village after a trip, they tell you you look fatter.

Work women do: daily sweeping, cooking (on a wood fire), washing clothes, getting water, cleaning the children, cleaning the house, selling things at the market for money.

What men do here: make tea. Oh, and order the women around. I may be a little negative, but I’m having some real gender issues here currently.

French is the national language but not many people speak it, particularly those who never attended school. They speak Malinke and Pular in Bissikrima. It can make communication pretty difficult.

There are “video clubs” where they have generators and satellites. They show movies and soccer matches for about 30 cents. That is where I watched the inaguration in January.

Okay the internet is running out… More in a couple weeks. Take care all! And as the Guineans say: Portez-vous bien (wear yourself well)!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hi guys! I’m writing to you from Dabola, the town 23K from me. Hunter and Ben came to Bissikrima yesterday afternoon, and we spent the evening drinking cold drinks, eating delicious care package food, and catching up on the past couple weeks. This morning Hunter and I left for Dabola around 7:30 (Ben didn’t come because he’s feeling under the weather) to visit the new volunteer Paul. After a loooong ride here and much wandering around asking for the “toubabo” (white man), we finally found him, and now here we are at USAID using the internet! When we’re done here, we’re planning on going out to lunch for chicken, fries, and cold drinks. Afterwards we’re going back to Bissikrima to make breakfast for dinner (and oreos for dessert!). What a great day

Things have been going well at site, although ever since returning from our week of training in January, the days have been getting hotter and hotter. In the mornings it’s a chilly 65 degrees, but by the time I get home from school between 12:30 and 1:30, it’s well into the 90s. The hottest it’s gotten so far is 100.8 (and that’s in the shade under my straw roof — quite a bit cooler than in the sun away from my hut). It’s around 90 inside when I crawl under my mosquito net to go to bed around 8:30. And it’s only going to get hotter. Yikes! Luckily it’s incredibly dry, so the heat at this point is completely bearable. Check back with me on that in April. I’ve been drinking copious amounts of water — a minimum of 5L a day, which means more trips to the pump. You should see the biceps on this girl!

So for the next month and a half, I’ll be at site teaching, hanging out with my Guinean family, and  hiding out in my hut to avoid the heat (it’s a good 10-15 degrees cooler in my hut). I have a trip to Kankan planned in March to celebrate St. Patty’s, and then a big trip to Conakry and Sierra Leone try #2 at the beginning of April. My family is planning on visiting in July, so those are the big things on my radar (besides the mailrun of course) for now.

Teaching is going well. This week I tried to start vectors with my 10th graders only to find that my students had never worked with the coordinate system and could not even place a point much less comprehend a vector. These kids have been failed every step of the way. I’m starting my girls group again now that I know which girls are working hard in school and will be allowed to participate (and I got some great ideas on what to do and how to do it during our week of training last month). Hunter and I are working on setting up a math competition between our middle schools as preparation for the Brevet in June. I’m also looking into working with TOSTAN, an NGO that works against excision/female genital mutilation (96% of Guinean females have been excised to some degree) and early marriage, which causes them to drop out of school and start reproducing. My 8th grader who got married over the holidays, the star girl in the class, is no longer in school. So I’m looking forward to these projects as well.

I hope you are all in good health at home. I’m constantly writing letters home, but unfortunately they won’t be mailed until April 5th or 6th, so watch your mailboxes the week before Easter! Next time I’ll be online is the weekend of March 20th, so until then, take care. Much love from Guinea!

The Bush Taxi Experience

As PCVs in Guinea, you have few options for transportation. If you’re lucky, you manage to snag a ride in an air-conditioned PC car usually with your own seat belt and everything. A little less lucky and you find a “patron-ride” which can be anything from a ride with an NGO or just a nice, private car. Aaand those who are not so lucky get to take a bush taxi (or some combination of biking and bush taxi-ing for the unluckiest of all). Now it is possible to have a good trip in a bush taxi. In fact, in the handful of trips Ben and I have taken in bush taxis so far, we’ve had few if any problems (aside from the whole being kicked out of the car and forced to wade through a completely washed-out road during site visit).

To take a bush taxi, you generally have to arrive at the taxi station (and by station I mean piece of dirt land ear-marked for taxis that exist every decently-sized town) very early in the morning, preferably before sunrise. You pay for your ticket ($7 for the 234K from Bissikrima to Kankan), choose your seat, and begin waiting, which is likely what you will spend the rest of the day, and maybe some of the night, doing.

First, let me describe to you a bush taxi. A Puegot – have you ever seen one of those station wagons? They’re French, and that’s what constitutes a “taxi” in Guinea. You put two people in the passenger seat and often a third straddling the stick shift (one leg actually in the driver’s well…), four in the middle seat, and of course there’s the third “bench” that’s been added in the back that fits three. Babies and small children ride on laps, and the apprentice, who rides along to help fix the car every time it breaks down, rides in the tiniest bit of trunk space that still exists given the third seat or, more simply, on top. There may or may not be other riders on top as well. So in any given bush taxi, you have at least nine passengers but oftentimes many more. (I actually stop and stare now at cars with less passengers than there are seats it’s such a rare sight.) “Wait. So you can’t bring a bag with you since there’s no trunk?” you may be asking. Oh, you can bring a bag. As many as you like actually. Chickens? Goats? Sure, dead or alive. Bikes? Motorcycles? Why not! It all gets thrown on top to the point where the top may be heavier than the interior and at every turn in the road your heart pounds as you feel your car start to tip.

So, you’re sitting there in the station, you’ve picked out your seats, and now you’re playing the waiting game. Waiting for the car to fill up, waiting for the roof to be loaded, waiting for the driver to fill up the gas tank. Most taxis look like they should have been in the junkyard at least 20 years ago – literally falling apart. When you go over a bigger bump in the road, you actually feel the pavement against the bottom of your feet. When you want to roll down your window, you have to ask around for the one handle that still exists and have it passed along. So you’re waiting, staring at the car thinking there’s no possible way it’s going to make it to your destination or even out of the station for that matter. Eventually, after what could be six or more hours, everyone starts piling in. All the sudden the driver, who you realize you haven’t seen up until this point (so the guy you paid for your baggage… who was he?), jumps in and off you go. Well, sort of. Usually you need some kind of push start from all the available young men at the station. Then there you are, on the road in your bush taxi.

I should take a moment to describe the roads. They’re the worst roads I’ve seen in my life entire life. Potholes, gigantic potholes that could fit the entire car, everywhere. In South Africa the speed limit was 120K, and that’s at least you fast you went. I’ve never seen even a PC car go more than 110, and that’s on the best stretch of road in Guinea. Most of the time you are going around 60K/hour because the roads are horrendous. Which is why carsickness is frequent. When a fellow passenger got sick half an hour into our trip to Conakry in December, the driver stopped to let him puke, but not before yelling at him and allowing all the passengers to make fun of him. When he got back in they gave him a plastic bag, and the rest of the 8.5 hours had the lovely background noise of him retching and puking into that bag. Luckily the windows were down so there was no stench. The passengers build a sort of camaraderie with each other, perhaps because you’re all sitting on each others’ laps and dug into each others’ armpits. If you have food, you share it. You chit-chat to pass the time. It is actually really nice. You look out for each other. As unenjoyable as it is to ride in a bush taxi, making friends with Guineans is a great way to pass the time.

So you’re driving down the road, you may have lost a wheel by this point (not uncommon), broken down at least once or twice (but Guineans are so resourceful they can fix anything), raced other cars (which caused you to break down again), stopped to let a passenger get out and try to shoot a monkey, and you’ve dodged livestock crossing, walking down, or even sleeping in the middle of the road. Drivers will slam on their brakes for cows and goats –those are assets, so you don’t mess around. Children on the other hand are treated like targets. Do the priorities seem a little messed up here?

Finally, after hours and hours, you arrive at your destination covered in dirt (I complimented my friends on their amazing tans when they arrived in Mamou for IST not realizing they were actually just incredibly dirty from their trip), tired, and ready to have your personal space bubble back but with some new, very kind Guinean friends. It could be worse, but I’ll never again be able to complain about air travel in the US.

Much love from Guinea!

A Family Get Together

Once a month volunteers are allowed to make a visit to their regional capital to do things like stock up on food you can’t get at site and, more importantly, take a little break. In Haute (like in the other regions) we try to plan to be here on the same weekend so we can all hang out — for example, in March we’ll all come in for St. Paddy’s day.  When we’re all at the house together, we spend a lot of time cooking, listening to music, and sharing stories over warm beer. We do at least one huge group meal during the weekend.

Last night we had our big group dinner for this visit. We spent all day shopping and preparing for our feast last night, which consisted of fried chicken, onion rings, noodles in peanut and onion sauce, fried dough, brownies, and banana milkshake-like things — all homemade.

So yesterday afternoon, David, who is unofficially the leader of Haute Guinea group meals, came home from the market with ten chickens. He quickly left to take care of some other business. The chickens were squaking quite obnoxiously, ruining the ambiance in the compound. A few minutes later we found some of them had managed to untie their feet and had gotten loose. We spent a good 20 minutes chasing these guys all over the compound trying to catch them and getting chicken poop all over ourselves in the process. The whole scene looked absolutely ridiculous. So, G16 (that’s us education volunteers) decided we’d had enough, their time was up, and we went to town killing these chickens. We brought them around the side of the house, and one of us would hold down their body and legs while another would kneel on their wings, pull their head so their neck was taught and eyes covered, and cut away. You have to hold them down for a few minutes after you remove the head because the animal will, as the saying goes, run around like a chicken with its head cut off if you don’t. Then you break the legs and cut them off. Following that, you place them in a larger bowl and soak them in boiling water for a few minutes to loosen up the feathers for the depluming. Levi and I were quite a team, killing a total of eight chickens while Jesse took down other two. To kill and deplume all ten chickens took five of us about two to three hours, but we had good company and good music. Next time I’m in Conakry, I’ll put up some photos. And let me tell you how delicious that fresh chicken was last night — amazing.

Today after I finish on the internet, I’m going to shop for some produce for Mme Kaba, eat some scrumptuous rice and sauce (the best I’ve found in country), and then head back to the house to relax, read, and socialize for the rest of the day before we head back home tomorrow morning.

Hopefully I’ll be able to update again in a week. Until then, take care. Much love from Guinea!

Sworn In

So here I am… a vrai (real) Peace Corps Volunteer! But I’m getting way ahead of myself. For the past two and a half months I’ve been living with my Guinean mother, Hija Mamdi Toure. She’s a 60+ year old (I think – nobody here celebrates birthdays or even knows how old they are) woman who was SO good to me. I lived in a very nice compound with a few girls my age who I called my “sisters”. I was surrounded by friendly people and all kinds of interesting activities. They all helped me with washing my clothes by hand (which they say I stink at doing…so good luck to me now that I don’t have them to help me), cooked for me (mainly eggs scrambled in an absurd amount of oil, french fries, and bread cooked over a chimney type little thing), helped me get my water (which is hilarious to watch, let me tell you), and many other things.

What have I been doing besides living with my family? Well, we spent 8AM-5PM in training, five days each week. The vast majority of the classes were language (French and recently I began learning Malinke) and learning how to teach. For three weeks at the end of August/beginning of September we did practice school, which is where the Peace Corps invited real Guinean children to come sit in on our classes with prizes for the best students at the end. This was eye-opening as the Guinean school system is very different from ours in the US. The class sizes are much larger, the students don’t have access to resources (basic things, like say, a compass, protractor, or even the textbook), and you have to deal with things like people passing by the classroom and stopping to stare at the fote (white person) teaching. During our training, we also learned about diseases like malaria (which one of us has already gotten), which snakes to be aware of (in my mind, all of them), and how to treat our water.

Oh the water. Yes, so I’ve been taking bucket baths now for two and a half months. I have grown to really love them despite the mini tadpoles, dead spiders,and gravel in my water and the film I find on top of it on a regular basis. I’ve likened it to swimming in a river or lake, and now that stuff doesn’t bother me. The water really is a problem here though. Two of my sisters had amoebas/parasites during the time I was in training, and that was not very fun. They threw up all the time and were pretty miserable. Bottled water is expensive, so they mostly drink the well water (the pump water is supposed to be cleaner, but unfortunately the pump is far away).

On my birthday (August 1 of course) we found out our sites. The volunteer trainers drew a huge map of Guinea on the floor of the classroom and our associate director gave a little history of each site before announcing the trainee who was headed there and placing them at their site on the map. What a cool way to do it! So, for the next two years I will be living in a village called Bissikrima, which is on the border of Upper and Middle Guinea. In the middle of August we got to go visit our sites to see where we’ll living, what we’d need, meet our village, etc. Bissikrima sits between some mountains on a main road (the one most used between the capital, Conakry, and the regional capital, Kankan. I am thrilled to say I will spend the next two years living in a hut. A two bedroom hut, actually! It’s pretty large inside, and I have a lovely “bathroom” off of my bedroom (I always wanted my own bathroom!) that is surrounded by a fence to give me some privacy. My bathroom consists of a large tree, some plants, and a pit latrine. It’s like a mini-rain forest, and when I took a bucket bath out there in the rain during site visit, it was complete and utter bliss. I think I may also use this as my laundry room. We’ll see. In any case, I am thrilled to be going back so soon!

And back I will go on Tuesday. Tomorrow Ben (my closest neighbor who also happens to be a UM alum), Hunter, our driver, our installer, and I will all leave to go to Farnah, near Hunter’s site. We’ll spend time greeting everyone (literally – not a single person in the village will be left out) on Monday before we install (move in) Hunter. Then the four of us will head to Dabloa (23K from my site) leaving Hunter at his site. We’ll spend Tueday morning greeting all of the people (mayors, police, etc) in my prefecture and village before installing me that same day. Wow! We were originally supposed to go to Kankan where we could shop for more stuff for our huts at the beginning of the week and then get installed at the end of the week. Late Thursday we found out that this wasn’t the case, so I’ve spent today running around Conakry like a mad woman trying to buy everything I need (and paying way too much in the process). Patience and flexibility… I’m getting a lot better at both!

Other highlights of training having included buying a chicken for my mother (that actually turned out to be a deranged rooster who woke me up at 4:30AM daily, although the sun doesn’t rise until 6:30, for the last month of training), killing a chicken (not at all difficult after the rooster incident), sharing my room with a mouse (cockroaches really don’t bother me much anymore), coming home one afternoon to find a cow in my compound (what?! turns out he was for a sacrifice), and I found out all kinds of new science, for example my pregnant sister told me her baby would likey be white since she had spent so much time with me, nevermind the fact that both parents are black. In other exciting news, I forgot to mention I have electricity in my hut. It sound silly to say that, mais c’est vrai! It’ll only be on (supposedly) every other day (for 24 hours), but at our training site the electricity schedule was never accurate. The way I found out the electricity was on was when I heard children (and some adults) yelling and cheering for minutes on end. Just because the electricity came on doesn’t mean it will stay that way – we often get a five minute teaser and are left in the dark the rest of the night, but the dark isn’t so bad with the amazing night sky here.

After two and a half months here, we’ve found the little things to be a lot more exciting. A conversation between Conor and myself on the bus back to Conakry after finishing training:

A: Ohmygosh pizza tomorrowwww! And ice cream! Wow! I can’t wait!

C: Yah, and I think I’m going to try the chinese food! This is going to be so good. And tonight I’m going to watch a movie!

A: Ohmygosh YES! AND DRINK DIET COKE!

C: AND COFFEE!

A: AND TAKE A SHOWER!

C: AND SLEEP IN AC!

Tiffany: You realize how ridiculous this conversation would sound to someone in the states.

It’s funny but having good food here can just send my mood soaring. Lisa, my friend from Iowa, got a care package with oreos, which we devoured and then walked around in a euphoric state for the rest of the day.  Fortunately bad food does not have the opposite effect because I’d have a lot of miserable days if that were the case.

To quickly finish up, I should be online more often at site, since Dabola (which is only 23K from me) apparently has internet. Hopefully I’ll be able to update my blog more often, but who knows. I will also have cell phone service in my village, although I had to switch my number to 65655605. To call, dial 011 224 65655605 ANYTIME!

For now that’s about all. I’ll update ASAP, hopefully Tuesday. Thinking of you all and hoping you’re enjoying some lovely Fall weather.

Almost There!

Hi everyone!

Today we are leaving for AFRICA! I’ve spent the past two days at staging (orientation) in Philly with my group, G16. There are 25 of us, all education volunteers. The group is pretty young; the oldest person is about 27. We come from all over the US (and world!) — Florida, New York (but originally Ecuador), Arizona (originally Mexico City), North Carolina (originally France), LA, Washington, and we’ve got a few from the Midwest (Iowa, Ohio, Chicago, Indiana). It is an amazing group. Everyone is great and easy to talk to, which is very comforting because I know I will have good people I can lean on when those frustrating times arise.

In other good news, we will have internet and spotty cell phone service for all of trianing, which I know my mom will be thrilled to hear As soon as I get a cell phone number, I will post it.

For now, I am so excited I can’t sleep (really, I woke up at 4:30 this morning). The next time I write to you will be from the motherland. Take care, everyone!

My New Country

Hello, hello! I’ve been struggling to work this blog (it took me nearly an hour to get the Guinean flag uploaded; someone please tell me how nice it looks!), so I wanted to try uploading an image while I am still at home with all these tech-savvy people around to help me.

So I proudly present my new home to you — voici GUINEA! My assignment is secondary math education somewhere in this West African country. I’ll find out where specifically during training. Our first three months in-country will be spent training in a town 75km southeast of the capital, Conakry. During this time we will live with a family and learn French, a regional native language, how to teach in Guinea (where corporal punishment is common practice), how to stay healthy, etc.

More to come soon from the other side… In the meantime, I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July!