Volunteer !
Hello world! Yesterday was our swearing-in ceremony. I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer and Guinea now has 94 total volunteers.
Training ended well with 3 successful weeks of practice school. It was good to get some actual teaching done and I was able to receive a lot of constructive feedback at the same time. I have to write a lot of definitions and theorems on the board because the students don't have text books. It wastes a lot of time. Classes are 2 hours long and time goes by pretty steadily because there is so much to try to squeeze in. Practice school was also my first experience with grading papers, dealing with cheating, late homework, etc. Bead school didn't prepare me for this! It's going to be challenging developing a routine, but I feel good about it.
Ramadan finally ended with lots of praying and eating and dressing up in the fanciest bubu you can find. I was happy to see it end. Pretending to fast gets old quickly and Guineans tend to be grumpy in the afternoons.
The rainy season seems to be tapering off which means I've been more careless with my umbrella (not too smart since it still does rain quite a bit). Last night actually, we went to the beach bar for pizza and there was an amazing lightning storm. It was really spectacular watching these huge bolts light up the sky over the ocean.
I packed up my room in Forecariah, said goodbye to my host mother and many brothers and sisters, students and friends. We arrived in Conakry on Wednesday and were given a warm welcome by some volunteers at the PC house. Thursday, we drained the bank of our newly acquired allowance, and went to the Lebanese stores downtown to stock up on cans of tuna, hummus, spices and other things that aren't generally found anywhere but Conakry. We went to the paper store for flip chart paper, markers, folders, pens, notebooks, etc.
Yesterday was the ceremony followed by a great lunch. I'm not sure what kind of fish it was but it was the meatiest fish I've ever had. Today we are doing more shopping and I'm helping organize the buying of stoves, gas tanks and hammocks. It is going to be a mission but hopefully these are all one time purchases and I can't wait to make pancakes and eggs and whatever else I can put together with the help of the Where There Is No Restaurant, PC Guinea recipe book.
Tomorrow I'll be in a bush taxi all day, luckily there are 7 of us going to Kankan so we will deplace a car just for us. Kankan will be my regional capital until NZerekore opens up, hopefully with the next group of extension volunteers arriving in December. I haven't been to Kankan yet so I need to learn my way around and do some final shopping. I will arrive in Yende probably on Thursday.
For security reasons, they have changed my house so now it's a toss-up again, whether I'll have a hut or a house, pit latrine or wet latrine, etc. I guess I don't really care. Good ventilation is important and I'd prefer a pit latrine.
So after all the hectic training, intense friendships, and hustle and bustle, in a week I will be totally on my own. A lot of volunteers talk about the feeling you have when the PC car drives off. I can't wait for life to settle down.
I'm finishing my post now later on the same day after getting rushed out to shop for the day. I just got back from my most hectic day in this country, shopping all over Conakry for stoves, gas tanks and hammocks for our group. It is difficult to communicate the headache and time that this takes. There were a lot of defeated moments and I am utterly exhausted, but finally everyone has almost everything they need. So, I'm signing off, covered in Guinea and depleted of energy. I new I was getting into an adventure before I came here but now I think I am reevaluating my previous perspective on what that word means. I'm alive and my belly is full of the best meal I've had in this country to date, two hamburgers, potato salad, coleslaw, watermelon, pineapple and brownies.
Much love and I will be in touch as soon as I can.
Peace
Training ended well with 3 successful weeks of practice school. It was good to get some actual teaching done and I was able to receive a lot of constructive feedback at the same time. I have to write a lot of definitions and theorems on the board because the students don't have text books. It wastes a lot of time. Classes are 2 hours long and time goes by pretty steadily because there is so much to try to squeeze in. Practice school was also my first experience with grading papers, dealing with cheating, late homework, etc. Bead school didn't prepare me for this! It's going to be challenging developing a routine, but I feel good about it.
Ramadan finally ended with lots of praying and eating and dressing up in the fanciest bubu you can find. I was happy to see it end. Pretending to fast gets old quickly and Guineans tend to be grumpy in the afternoons.
The rainy season seems to be tapering off which means I've been more careless with my umbrella (not too smart since it still does rain quite a bit). Last night actually, we went to the beach bar for pizza and there was an amazing lightning storm. It was really spectacular watching these huge bolts light up the sky over the ocean.
I packed up my room in Forecariah, said goodbye to my host mother and many brothers and sisters, students and friends. We arrived in Conakry on Wednesday and were given a warm welcome by some volunteers at the PC house. Thursday, we drained the bank of our newly acquired allowance, and went to the Lebanese stores downtown to stock up on cans of tuna, hummus, spices and other things that aren't generally found anywhere but Conakry. We went to the paper store for flip chart paper, markers, folders, pens, notebooks, etc.
Yesterday was the ceremony followed by a great lunch. I'm not sure what kind of fish it was but it was the meatiest fish I've ever had. Today we are doing more shopping and I'm helping organize the buying of stoves, gas tanks and hammocks. It is going to be a mission but hopefully these are all one time purchases and I can't wait to make pancakes and eggs and whatever else I can put together with the help of the Where There Is No Restaurant, PC Guinea recipe book.
Tomorrow I'll be in a bush taxi all day, luckily there are 7 of us going to Kankan so we will deplace a car just for us. Kankan will be my regional capital until NZerekore opens up, hopefully with the next group of extension volunteers arriving in December. I haven't been to Kankan yet so I need to learn my way around and do some final shopping. I will arrive in Yende probably on Thursday.
For security reasons, they have changed my house so now it's a toss-up again, whether I'll have a hut or a house, pit latrine or wet latrine, etc. I guess I don't really care. Good ventilation is important and I'd prefer a pit latrine.
So after all the hectic training, intense friendships, and hustle and bustle, in a week I will be totally on my own. A lot of volunteers talk about the feeling you have when the PC car drives off. I can't wait for life to settle down.
I'm finishing my post now later on the same day after getting rushed out to shop for the day. I just got back from my most hectic day in this country, shopping all over Conakry for stoves, gas tanks and hammocks for our group. It is difficult to communicate the headache and time that this takes. There were a lot of defeated moments and I am utterly exhausted, but finally everyone has almost everything they need. So, I'm signing off, covered in Guinea and depleted of energy. I new I was getting into an adventure before I came here but now I think I am reevaluating my previous perspective on what that word means. I'm alive and my belly is full of the best meal I've had in this country to date, two hamburgers, potato salad, coleslaw, watermelon, pineapple and brownies.
Much love and I will be in touch as soon as I can.
Peace
posted by emily at 12:27 PM
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