A Taste of Volunteer Life

I'm in Kissidougu, hanging out with G15 and G17 volunteers who will be my closest neighbors along with Phil and Andrew in Gueckedou. We had a nice meal of steak and french fries last night which was delicious, though I'm not sure the steak would have measured up to much by American standards. I woke up this morning covered with bedbug bites, big, itchy, bumpy ones all over my arms and feet. Ugh. Luckily, there was calamine lotion in the house as it seems everyone gets bedbugs at one point or another.



In Yende Milimou, I spent the night in what will be my new home! It is beautiful. I have a big 2 bedroom house right on the school property. Picture where the school teacher must have lived in Little Women or something and thats my house. The toilet is around back, a pit latrine, and the shower is a gravel area marked off by a bamboo fence. Picture Gilligans Island. I love it! I basically stayed at the house and people came by and dropped off rice and sauce or introduced their wives, or tried to offer a bowl of bloody pork.



Yende is right beside a big mountain. It is really pretty and green because of all the rain. Yesterday was market day and my local mom took me around and bought me cucumbers and helped me bargain for pannes to tailor more traditional Guinean attire. The whole town is very excited and overly helpful. It is difficult to actually do anything because everyone is trying to help and introduce you to all their friends, etc. I won't have cell phone service which is a bummer but many volunteers dont and I'll be in Gueckedou or Kissidougu often enough to communicate with the outside world, eat ice cream and be with other volunteers.



The bush taxi's have been hell, but I suppose I will get used to them. People in the forest are not used to Peace Corps volunteers yet and they assume we have lots of money. We have to fight for reasonable prices and basically travel the same way Guineans travel. Yesterday this meant, cramming 13 people in a station wagon that needed a push start by the petits (little children). I went to pay the driver the 8 mille francs and he said pay me if we get there. Fortunately, we made it.

I'm tired from a poor nights sleep, sharing a bed with 2 other people and many bedbugs. Somehow I was the only one that got bitten. We are all dreading our very long bush taxi ride back to Forecariah tomorrow but trying to deplace the taxi which means, rent the whole thing for us. Even though PC didn't give us enough money to do this we are pooling our money together to make it happen.

My feet are disgustingly dirty and my clothes reek from 2 weeks of wear. Despite all that, it is good to be with friends and laugh about how ridiculous this country is, and what the heck we are doing here. From the internet cafe we are heading to an orphanage where Jess has to drop off some clothes. Then I think we are going to a bar.

I'll be excited to sleep in a familiar place tomorrow, assuming we make it there in a day. Send me some news and I'll be in touch when I can.

Peace.

Gueckedou!

I'm visiting Gueckedou for a few days with Phil, Andrew and Jerrad. Gueckedou is about 45km south of Yende, my village. It is a pretty huge city and it has a lot of luxuries. I am at the Director of Educations compound taking advantage of the internet room there available to teachers. They must be running it on a generator because we haven't seen signs of electricity so far.

Last week we were in Mamou at a forestry school that the Peace Corps rents out for conferences throughout the year. It was a nice break from our host families as we enjoyed bunking up together and cold showers! It was a counterpart workshop where we met our superviseurs from our respective sites and got to know them and they learned about the role of a PCV, etc. Mamou is in the Foutah region, which is beautiful and even chilly at times because its in the mountains. On Saturday the forrest group piled into a bush taxi for a really long, bumpy ride to Gueckedou. Phil and I were sharing the front passenger seat staring danger in the face while Andrew, Jerrad and two of our counterparts crammed in the back. J, I relived Knoxville and listened to the Island Tour most of the way. It was a sweaty adventure to say the least. The nervousness wore off more quickly than I expected and we made it safe and sound, though gross and with sore bums and achey backs.

We just passed through my village so I didn't get to see my home or anything, but I am really really excited. It is beautiful. There is a gorgeous mountain right beside the village which will be first on my list of priorities when I settle in. We stopped the car and I greeted some children and important people who all seemed very eager and excited to have me. As my counterpart told me, "Je suis attendue." Which means they are waiting for me. He also gave me a new Kisi name, Sia Leno, Sia being the premiere fille. Leno must be a good last name too because so far in Gueckedou I have a lot of really nice brothers. It is a huge city but amazingly people call me by name when I walk around.

Tomorrow we will go to Yende to spend the night in my house. I am really excited. I have a great feeling about my new village and the villagois life. Unfortunately I won't have cell phone service but I'm right in between two big cities, Kissidougu and Gueckedou. Thursday we will head for Kissidougu to stay with some volunteers there before piling into a long and dreaded taxi ride back to Forecariah.

Physically I'm feeling great. Stomach bugs come and go but at the moment I'm feeling tip-top. I had a really overdue bucket bath this morning so I am feeling particularly clean and refreshed. I just finished reading Mayflower which I really enjoyed and I'm about to start The Cruelest Journey, about a woman who paddles 600 miles to Timbuktu from near Bamako. Oh yeah, and I tried bush rat the other day. It tastes like chicken. I just read that PC Mauritania was evacuated to Senegal. I don't know anything more than what was in the news but I think it is an example of how cautious PC is with these situations.

That's all for now. Soon I'll be back in Forecariah teaching summer school and scrounging for food during Ramadan. Then before I know it I'll be swearing in at the U.S. Embassy in Conakry. Thanks for your interest and support and your letters (which I know will be waiting for me on the next mail run). Don't forget to email as well even though I may not be able to respond for a while.

Signing out from the forest region, with love,
Em

Hello World!

I am in Conakry at the moment and have an hour at an internet cafe. There is so much to share that I won't even come close to pouring it all onto this post. Before anything else I want to mention that I am in very good spirits and sleeping probably around 9 hours a night for the first time in my life. I want to highlight some notable stories and characteristics of life in Guinea.

I live with a Guinean family. This means there are anywhere from 10-15 people sleeping at the house on any given night. It also means that I don't even know everyones names after living there for 3 weeks. There's a lot to elaborate on here but I don't have time and I don't want to miss the opportunity to share this story. My 3-year-old host brother, Papi is quite the clown. One day my friend and I were sitting outside my room talking. Papi had been in and out, yelling things in susu and climbing on us. We hadn't seen him for a few minutes when in he marches plops down on the middle of the cement floor and produces a box of matches and some cardboard. He looks right at us before expertly striking a match and putting it to the cardboard. The match went out and the cardboard didn't catch. Barely disapointed and instantly losing interest he dropped both toys and went off to find some other way to amuse himself. Other times I've seen him enjoying wacking the Casa (stone walled hut with a straw roof, and good ventilation, for shade in the yard) with an intimidatingly large knife.

Things were pretty shocking at first but petit a petit they are becoming normal. Like the conditions of the roads, cafes, the market, etc. Everythings run-down, used and dirty. Bush taxis carry passengers on the roof. I'll be having my first bush taxi experience in a couple weeks so wish me luck. I may wear my bike helmet. I don't have running water and electricity is spotty but usually on for 5 or 6 hours every other night. I try to kill everything in my room that moves but the mice remain invisible and I'm pretty sure they don't sell mouse traps anywhere.

So many things each day are new and different. Like having a conversation with my 18 year old host sister and describing to her what the inside of an airplane looks like or what ice cream is. Or the fact that I'm afraid of the well and always stay a foot or two from the edge and let my siblings fill the bucket. Or how to cut the head off a chicken (which is quickly). Dogs and cats are mistreated here and it's really, really sad. There is no such thing as a trash can or a left-over scrap of food. Everyone yells fote (white person) at me and the others everywhere we go.

I'm starting to come around to the rice and sauce, which is a blessing because I've mostly been eating bread and peanut butter. The pineapples and mangos are delicious. There are still a lot of foods that I haven't tried yet but I'm being cautious, taking it a little bit at a time. I haven't gotten really sick yet and am hoping to keep it that way. On that note I've been stuck with meningitis, yellow fever, rabies, hep a, hep b, and typhoid vaccinations and may still have more to go. I also sit through sessions dealing with everything from foot fungus to Malaria. Bucket baths are delightful and pretty effective but it is really challenging keeping my feet clean! I forgot to mention this before but my bathroom is scary, and belongs in a horror movie.

I got my site announcement!!! I will be teaching lycee (high school) in Yende Milimou in the Forrest Region which is where the elephants are and is supposed to be one of the coolest parts of Guinea. I'm really excited to visit my site in a few weeks.

In my spare time I study a lot, play a lot of spades, sit around with my host family, ride around on my bike, listen to the BBC and get a decent amount of reading done.

Life is good and exciting. We are all learning that pretty much anything can happen in Guinea.

Write me letters! I will be in touch as often as I can.

xoxo