Going To Church

Call me a bad Christian, but after nearly 2 years in Guinea, I have finally gone to church for the first time.  I probably should have gone for Christmas last year, when I was in a Christian region, but drinking palm wine with the locals was more appealing than a 6 hour service in a language I didn’t understand. 

Guinea is a majority Muslim country, the actual statistic escapes me, but I imagine it’s around 80%.  Christians are sprinkled all over the country, but most live in the Forest region to the south.  Even in Kankan, almost all the Christians are Forestière (their families come from the Forest Region).

There are two churches in Kankan: catholic and protestant, which are the two sects of Christianity found in Guinea.  We chose to go to the protestant one because that is where one of our old guards goes.  We arrived at 9:30 and the service had already started, but luckily you can never be late in Guinea.  An usher with an orange-blue-red bandana around his neck like a boy scout seated us.  We were a group of four and arriving later, there weren’t many seats left, so it was a tight fit.

The service followed a similar program as in America.  There was singing, readings from the gospel, the Lord’s prayer, the exchange of the Peace.  Everything was said in French, and then repeated in Malinké.  The music was accompanied by a keyboard, djembe drum, and a koran (a gourd surrounded by a net of beads that has a maraca-like sound).  It wasn’t southern gospel church intensity, but there were some raised hands, exclamations of “Hallelujah” and “Amen”, and the music had more rhythm than your average Anglican hymn.

About thirty minutes after we arrived, we realized the church was divided into men and women and my male site mate was sitting on the wrong side.  No one said anything, so I guess it wasn’t a big deal and the gender separation was done more out of habit than enforced by the church.  Was kind of awkward for a second though.  What surprised me the most was the absence of crying babies.  Outside the church, there are crying babies everywhere, so the calming of them during the service is a true act of god.

The sermon was about serving god in different ways, based on that reading about individuals being different parts of the body (hands, feet, head) that together make up the metaphorical body of Christ.  It wasn’t horribly long, which was a pleasant surprise considering most Guinean’s penchant for grandstanding.  During the sermon, the Boy Scout ushers patrolled the pews, waking up any dozing followers.

Next came communion, which was prefaced by a scolding by the reverend about who is allowed to take communion.  Among the excluded: the unbaptized, sinners, casual churchgoers, those who covet, people with any doubts about their faith.  Then he called the congregation to take communion, but after that reprimanding no one stood.  Gradually, they started to line up to take their bread and wine.  We Americans refrained since based on the recently listed qualifications of a good Christian, we didn’t’ seem to fit the bill.  Plus that bright pink “wine” looked too much like kool-aid, and, as a rule, I don’t drink kool-aid in an organized fashion. 

The service ended at noon and everyone milled about outside, chatting with friends.  It was interesting to see how community ties were formed around the church, compared to the mosques that tend to be more of a place to pray than a community center.  The whole experience was surprisingly similar to church in America.  However we all agreed that the biggest thing missing was a nearby restaurant for after-church brunch.

My Peace Corps Alphabet Part II

M is for maggi, a bouillon type cube that is used in literally all foods.  It is full of MSG and therefore delicious.

N is for Néré, a local tree with bean-like fruits that we eat twice.  First, the yellow powder surrounding the seeds in the pod that acts as an appetite suppressant.  Then the seeds themselves are prepared to make sumbara powder, basically a local maggi.

O is for Oser Reposer (dare to relax) because you have more free time than you know what to do with as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Many use this time productively: to reread Harry Potter, learn the harmonica, unsuccessfully brew various wines, build a brick oven, or, in my case, learn to snap (but only with my left hand).

P is for the Peugeot 405, perhaps the most durable automobile ever built.  We use the several decades old station wagons from Europe as nine-person bush taxis. Or ten. Or eleven.

Q is for Quinn, my first cat (RIP), who like to sneak into neighbors’ huts and jump on their faces while they slept.

R is for rice and sauce, the staple, and often only, food in Guinea.  Sauce choices are usually one of the following three: 1) soup sauce, which is like a less hearty beef or fish stew; 2) peanut sauce, which is like a watery peanut butter and 3) leaf sauce, which is reminiscent of creamed spinach.  I will have eaten at least 400 bowls of this by the time I leave Guinea. 

S is for Sarata, the best club in Kankan.  Where the beers are cold and the dance floor is hotter than my tin roof in April.

T is for toubabu, or ‘white person’ in Malinke.  This, along with its variations of toubabumuso (white woman) and toubabumusonin (small white woman), is the ever playing soundtrack to my life.

U is for my own little USA, e.g. all the other volunteers who keep me sane after yet another passenger in a taxi throws up into my hair. (Yes, I realize this one is kind of a stretch, but ‘U’ is a difficult letter.)

V is for my velo (‘bike’ in French) that takes me everywhere.  Kankan-centre is about 6 km across, not counting the extra belt of ‘suburbs’ that surrounds it, and I spend the majority of my day biking from place to place.

W is for waiting, which I spend around 30% of my time doing.  I used to get mad, now I just get a lot of reading done.

X is for XXL, the green apple flavored energy drink that basically takes the place of beer in this Muslim country.  When everyone goes out, it’s this that fuels the hours of sweaty dancing.

Y is for yogurt, which is cultured in buckets in peoples’ houses and sold out of plastic bags or plastic cups.  It is delicious though and if you’re lucky, cold and with tiny millet balls or tapioca mixed in.

Z is for the Zagat’s Guide to Ice Cream in Kankan, a dream project of my site mates and I to rate all the soft serve machines in Kankan.

Planting Trees and Getting Connected

I cannot believe my time here is almost up.  Well, relatively, at least.  The wonderful Lily Schorr is coming to visit, then it is Tabaski and Halloween, then G21’s Close of Service (COS) conference, then my parents visit, Thanksgiving, Christmas/New years, and suddenly it’s January and I leave to embark on an awesome COS trip.  Plus, in between all of that I need to finish up some projects and ensure that others will continue after I’m gone.  It always amazes me how time here is so fluid.  Some days I feel like I have absolutely nothing to do, then I think of the next couple months and feel overwhelmed by work and want to start it all now.  Something Peace Corps has taught me is that, in Guinea at least, you really can’t force things to happen and it’s better to just enjoy your downtime while you have it.  When you over-prepare here, chances are it will change the day of and all your preparations will have been for naught.  It does teach you to think on your toes though.

***

I started the summer with a World Environment Day conference, put on by Green Hand Action.  The morning was a presentation and debate on the biodiversity of a local lake, led by a professor at the university.  We invited all the stakeholders: the ministry of fishing, the prefect, and the local group is charged with the conservation and management of the lake.  It was a rare opportunity for all these groups to get together and have a frank discussion. 

Green Hand Action members at World Environment Day

Once the discussion was opened, claims started flying around that NGOs only work to get projects so they can graft the money.  This in turn prompted the NGOs to shoot back that the government does the same thing and, what’s more, doesn’t even support those civil societies who are actually working to improve their communities.  These accusations from both sides are, at times, true, but I have also worked with NGOs and government officials who are doing genuinely good work.  I hope that this conference has encouraged these positive deviants to work together and not get discouraged by those just in it for the kickbacks.

* * *

Condé and I have been leading a weekly SRI course at the agricultural school that we started in July.  We’ve had over 50 participants and have been able to create and introduce a new appropriate technology, a hand-pushed weeder/aerator.

Condé pushing our sarcleuse

The only problem is some mysterious animal or pest that is eating our rice stalks down to the ground.  Our demonstration plot is right next to the student dorms and one student recently told me he saw the animal eating the rice when he came back from the dance club late one Saturday night.  We think it is some sort of wild rodent and have set up a trap nearby, so hopefully I will be eating bush rat stew sometime soon and our rice will be growing tall. 

* * *

Mid-July through Mid-August was Ramadan.  I decided not to fast this year and it was a completely different experience than last year.  For one, I didn’t sleep 18 hours a day.  Even though I’m not Muslim and therefore not required to fast, I felt guilty every time I ate and tried to do it in secret.  There was still unprepared food in the market, but all the street meat, snacks, and rice bars were gone from the sides of the roads.  Luckily, there is a Christian Togolese lady who runs a restaurant that become the lunchtime haven of Forestières (of whom the majority are Christian) and expats (ie PCVs and other West Africans).  Some days, I fasted accidentally simply because I was too lazy to search out food.  Other days, I did so purposefully because I was tired of feeling excluded.  My family still let me eat the break fast meal with them regardless, but that rice porridge tasted so much better when I knew that I had earned it.  Because I didn’t spend most of my days in a hunger nap this year, I was able to see just how much people secretly cheat.  If only I had known that last year.

* * *

The timing of Ramadan forced us to push Green Hand Action’s annual cashew reforestation project back to late August, the very end of the ideal planting time for trees in this region.  It is hard enough to get people to work when they’re eating, so I can only imagine the struggle we would have faced had we done the project during Ramadan.  Our group was smaller than last year and therefore easier to manage and, since this was their second year of the project, I was able to take more of a back seat and just be another volunteer.  This was easier said than done.  Watching four people do a job that could have been more easily by one, it was difficult to not take the reins. 

In the end, we planted 6 hectares (about 15 acres) of cashew trees in less than a week with a minimal amount of intra-team bickering.  I did have to take a quick session on the best way to give constructive criticism (some tips: don’t call the receiver stupid and yell in their face) and offer friendly reminders to keep good notes, always get receipts, and maybe not buy several pounds of candy because it would make everyone happy.  At times, it felt like I was chaperoning a high school service trip, which, in effect, I was, since most of the members of Green Hand Action are high school students.  Fortunately, we were greatly helped this year by Mr. Sanoh, my Pioneer Farmer partner and the owner of the land on which we were planting.  He is a cashew expert and did the work of five of my high school students, even during a torrential downpour.

I’m really proud of all the members for managing the project themselves this year and I think that they are too.  It gives me confidence that the NGO will continue to function after I leave in February, which is really the goal of all my projects: forward progress that can and will be continued.

* * *

The biggest thing going on in Guinea right now are the legislative elections.  BBC has a kind of “everything you need to know” site  and this article by a fellow American inConakry gives a more detailed backdrop for the current situation.  Basically, after the election of the President in 2010, legislative elections were meant to be held, but for various reasons (mostly logistics and the innate inability of political parties to agree) they kept getting pushed back.  They were most recently scheduled for September 24^th, now the 28^th (which incidentally is the anniversary of the stadium massacre in Conakry).

This is the closest we’ve come to the elections actually happening since I’ve been in country, which is exciting because it means the official campaign has started.  According to campaign rules, candidates can only campaign starting from 30 days before the election.  In Kankan, at least, the campaign is pretty fun and mostly chaotic.  Everyone wears their party colors and ties bandanas on their motos/cars/bikes/babies.  Posters are plastered on cars, shops, and cars.  One party even has a 6-foot wide beach ball with a picture of the candidate’s face on it.  Then every day, outside each parties’ headquarters, there are actual parties, with speakers, DJs, and dancing.

The most chaotic parts (and frightening, if you happen to bike through them accidentally) are the huge motorcades.  Hundreds of party supporters hop on their motorcycles, usually with another 2-3 people on the back and race through town at 50 mph, sounding horns, popping wheelies, swerving madly from side-to-side, and generally disrupting traffic.  The scariest I’ve seen was a van doing unbelievably tight donuts with fifteen people on the roof.  At one point, two wheels were off the ground and I nearly had a heart attack thinking I was about to witness a gruesome accident.  Besides the need to bike more cautiously, the upcoming elections haven’t affected life in Kankan too much, which makes me hopeful there will be no need for Peace Corps to disrupt its program due to political instability or violence.

* * *

Starting this summer, Orange, one of Guinea’s main cell phone carriers, lowered the costs of its data plan and started promoting mobile connections, whether with a phone or an internet USB stick.  This has been great for me because I can receive e-mail everyday for less than $3 a month.  The network does go out for hours or days at a time, but I don’t even have reliable electricity, so that is the least of my problems. 

Simultaneously, there has been a big push in smart phones from Chinese manufacturers.  I would estimate that in urban areas at least 1 out of every 5 new phones purchased is internet capable.  This has opened internet access up to a whole new group of Guineans, especially the youth.  Kids who have never used a computer are now posting pictures on Facebook from their phone.  The lady who runs the rice bar I go to was updating her status while spooning out bowls of rice and sauce.  I’ve been opening e-mail and Facebook accounts for people almost daily and it is amazing to see how fast it has spread.  While a lot of new users are just posing selfies everyday (picture MySpace circa 2005), others are using the internet to become more informed about world and national news.  For a country with an isolationist history, this is a big change and I personally am excited to see how this IT revolution can help Guinea in the future.  Okay, we may not be at the revolution stage just yet, but for the moment at least everyone can watch this Nicolas Cage/Miley Cyrus parody:

And isn’t that what free information and open access is all about?

My Peace Corps Alphabet Part I

When people talk about Peace Corps, they always talk about the big "experience" of it all, but there's also a lot of little things that I think characterize my two years here.  Following is a collection of a few of them, according to the alphabet:

A is for Allah Akbar, otherwise known as my 4 AM alarm.  This is the start of the call to pray that crackles over the mosque’s loudspeakers five times a day.

B is for bucket baths, which I take usually daily.  Apparently there is a hotel in the south of France that actually charges extra for this ‘luxury’, although they call it a tropical shower.

C is for “Chop My Money”, the number one hit by Nigerian duo P-Squared that is constantly playing in clubs, cars, radios, phones, etc. 

D is for disease, the number one plague of Peace Corps Volunteers.  Unfortunately, living in a place where everyone east with their hands and toilet paper, or even soap is at that gas station 100 km away, means you are often sticken by something else that starts with the letter ‘d’.

E is for “Eh, Allah”, the exclamation meaning anything from “Oh my gosh” to “I don’t believe it” to “Say what now?!?”

F is for Faso Démén, the gardening group I work with and a never-tiring bunch of women who keep me stocked with fresh veggies. 

G is for Guiluxe, the national beer of Guinea.  It’s not too horrible if it’s cold, as unlikely as that is.

H is for handholding, which everyone does all the time and is an important sign of frienship here.  I especially like when 2 burly gendarmes stroll down the street hand-in-hand, old Soviet AK’s strapped to their backs.

I is for “Ifo, huh?”, quite possibly my favorite Malinke phrase. It means ‘sorry’, but changes depending on the tone.  You can say it after a kid trips and falls or if someone loses a family member, but also if you buy the last cold Fanta, as in “sorry I’m not sorry”.

J is for jaro, a type of bitter eggplant native to Guinea that is something of an acquired taste.  I eat it raw now, though, so I guess it only takes a year to acquire.

K is for Kankan, my site and second biggest city in Guinea.  It’s got all the city amenitites, cold drinks, an internet café, Pringles, but still has enough of a village feel that you know everyone.

L is for latrines, which you learn to love. Or at least tolerate.

Happy Ramadan!

So for the end of Ramadan, everyone goes to mosque for a big service/prayer but since our mosque isn't big enough, we have an outside prayer at the intersection near my house. I would say almost a thousand people come to line their prayer mats up on the soccer field and road.

Please note the awesome rainbow umbrella to block the sun.

My Pantry

... And by pantry I mean tabletop next to where the cockroaches live

(not shown: the million packages of bacon I already ate)

P. S. I am posting this from my phone so sorry if the formatting is a little crazy

Photos from World Environment Day

This past Saturday, June 22nd, I hosted World Environment Day with an NGO I work with, Green Hand Action.  We held a science conference in the morning about the diversity of fish in a nearby lake and then in the afternoon had some public skits performed by a theater group and a gang of neighborhood kids who helped us plant trees in 2012.  It was a really big success with over 100 people attending the conference.  People were talking about it all around town the next day and the young volunteers in the NGO were so happy and proud of themselves.

Here's some photos of it on my Google+ account:


https://plus.google.com/photos/109284563137945907097/albums/5894919859266836273?authkey=CKDKnJmcgbLeDg

My Dream Sensibilisations

One of the activities almost all PCVs do during their service is lead sensibilisations.  As many times as I’ve asked, no one knows what this really translates to in English, but it is basically when volunteers go out into the community and spread some sort of knowledge.  For example, going door to door with a picture book and explaining the causes and preventions of malaria.  Or leading a short skit about responsible life choices and condom use.  Basically, the goal of a sensibilisation is to give community members the knowledge necessary to make informed choices and incite behavior change.

Usually sensibilisations are similar to what I mentioned before, dealing with nutrition, malaria, environmental protection or conservation, or girls’ education (to name a few), but sometimes I really wish I could give a sensibilisation that would help improve my own life here.  Some of the ones I’ve dreamed up:

• how to make a pizza: Pizza making is really most limited by the lack of ingredients, but it never hurts to be prepared for when cheese finally makes its way to Kankan.
•  proper street crossing behavior: This would generally center around what I consider a golden rule: look both ways before crossing the street.  I would bet at least 65% of traffic accidents are caused by someone literally stepping into a moving motorcycle.
• arriving on time: One of the first things we were told in PST was how nothing ever starts on time in Guinea and to expect it and bring a book, but after hours of reading my kindle in waiting, it would be nice if people were a little more prompt.
• the joy of puns (plus a side sensibilisation on sarcasm): People aren’t much into wordplay here, which means I am approximately 50% less funny than in America.  Also no one ever laughs at the following joke:

An English and French cat, both named 1-2-3, have a race to cross 

the English Channel. The English cat won because un deux 

trois quatre cinq (that’s 1-2-3-4-5 in French, for you Anglophones, 

pronounced ‘un deux trois cat sank’).

• customer service: A favorite joke among volunteers is how hard it is to get people to sell you something.  You walk into their restaurant and no one is there, then search around and when you finally find the madame she looks really offended that you’ve asked to buy a bowl of her rice.  There has been many an occasion where I haven’t bought what I sought out to just because it was so difficult (and I am lazy).
•  line forming: In general, occasions that would normally call for lines in America (the bank, buying something at the corner boutique, mosquito net distributions), are dealt with in a somewhat orderly crowd.  Usually, at the bank, everyone puts their ID cards in a perfectly straight line in front of the teller and then stands in a jostling crowd just behind, straining to hear their name called.  The crowd thing tends to work because people get exasperated and demand service in about the same order in which they arrived, but sometimes I just don’t feel like pushing my way towards the front to shove my money into the rice lady’s hand.  Luckily, there is always a kind-hearted Guinean crowded next to me who is more than happy to do so for me.
• girl scouts: While the girls empowerment and training part of this would no doubt be great, I’m really just in it for the cookies.

SRI in the News

Last September, I attended a Peace Corps Training in Benin on a new method of rice cultivation, called System of Rice Intensification (SRI).  My counterpart Conde and I will be holding a big training this summer at a national agricultural school.  Over 40 students and professors will attend and most of the training will be hands-on, allowing us to set up a demonstration plot comparing SRI and current practices.  We will then invite other community members, researchers from the local agricultural center, Eaux et Forets officials, agricultural extension agents, average farmers, to visit our plot and talk to them about the benefits of SRI.

Transplanting rice at the training in Benin

Anyways, NPR recently posted something about SRI on their website and I thought I would share it with anyone who is interested.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/05/03/180821486/unraveling-the-mystery-of-a-rice-revolution?sc=17&f=1001

It's kind of cool when stuff we're doing over here in "no-one's-ever-heard-of-that-country" Guinea is also being talked about on NPR.

May Day!

Well after celebrating May Day (which apparently is an international holiday celebrated everywhere but America), it is now officially May, which means Malaria Month is over.  So what have I been doing to keep my mind off all those delicious mangoes I'm allergic to?

- teaching my university English classes about malaria and the parasite's life cycle.  Imagine trying to explain red blood cells to low level English speakers.  Luckily I had a biology major in my class who assured everyone that our blood is in fact made up of billions of tiny cells.  It was also great to see how many of my university students were already really knowledgable and passionate about malaria's impact on their community.

- painting a malaria mural at a local health center with my site mates.  Considering our complete lack of talent, it came out pretty good.

I only covered three of my five shirts with paint while doing this, so it was a success?

- having a public information stand to celebrate World Malaria Day.  We set up an info booth right outside the university with posters and music and invited people to come talk to us about malaria in their community.  An interesting mix of people came, from young girls on their way home from school who giggled and gave us flowers to put in our hair to health workers who wanted to give their 2-cents on the distribution campaign.  We even got a visit from Population Services International, who is funding the distribution campaign.

But just because it's May does not malaria is done.  In fact, since the rainy season has just begun, the disease is just gearing up for its onslaught again.  The bed net distribution campaign that I talked about in another blog post has gotten pushed back to later in May, so there are still a lot of 'sensibilizations' (basically public trainings and mass PSA type events) and preparation work to do for that.  

Some activities I have coming up in the future are:

- the start of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) course at the national agricultural school, funded by the Small Project Assistance fund, that Conde and I will be leading.  We will be teaching over 40 students and professors in a several month-long course in this new method of rice cultivation, working with them to create a demonstration plot that compares SRI with current cultivation practices.  Other PCVs have done this and seen over a 70% increase in yields! 

- a second year of cashew reforestation with Green Hand Action.  We will be working in collaboration with my Master Farmer to plant another 5 hectares of cashew and train some of the local cashew planter associations.  Both my Master Farmer and GHA members just attended a cashew training we hosted in Kankan, so they have lots of information to share.

- planning for Faso Demen's seed bank.  I'm currently in the process of applying for a grant to start a seed bank with my gardening groupement, Faso Demen.  This will provide them with cheaper seeds at more appropriate times of the year and encourage them to save their own seed.  Seed conservation is great because it means they don't have to buy new seed each year and, by choosing seed from the best plants each year, the bank's stock of seed will gradually become more and more adapted to our climate. This project involves a lot of trust between the groupement members as they will be sharing seeds with each other, so takes a lot of planning and politicking on my and Conde's part.

Faso Demen's fancy new logo

Now I'm off to go continue waiting and praying for the rains to come.  When its over 110 each day, every little gray cloud in the sky gives you hope.

Listening to Weezy and praying fo' drizzle

Happy Malaria Month!

No, we are not celebrating the disease, but the fight against it.  As part of PC Guinea’s celebration of malaria month, we have all been challenged to get involved in malaria projects at our sites.  Our malaria coordinator even made a competition out of it, and the region with the most points at the end of the month gets a prize!  I’ve taken this opportunity to get involved with the national bed net distribution campaign, a project that aims to get all Guineans sleeping under a mosquito net this year by distributing millions of them.  Since you can’t have malaria without mosquito bites, zero bites means zero malaria.   Here’s something I wrote a couple months ago, when I first started working with them:

As an agroforestry volunteer entering the Peace Corps, malaria was only on my radar as the reason I had to take that little pill each week.  Since then I’ve witnessed the detrimental impact this disease can have on my community, so I was especially excited when asked to participate in the national bed net distribution campaign. Specifically, I’ve partnered with a local NGO, Association pour la Promotion des Initiatives Feminin (APIF), who is charged with the distribution of nets for the prefecture of Kankan.

            Together, we attended a training organized by Catholic Relief Services on how to organize the census data that had been collected over the past several weeks.  The NGOs from the other prefectures were there as well, each paired with a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Two days later, the chefs de santé from our prefecture came into Kankan with all the data they had collected from their assigned localities.  We all went around the room introducing ourselves and when it came to me someone asked, “Why is the Peace Corps here? What is their involvement?”  You see, Peace Corps volunteers are usually involved in small community-based projects, not internationally funded nationwide campaigns.  Once we started working, however, it became apparent that I had a lot to contribute.  As someone who understands Excel and had attended the prior training, I was able to help input the census data into the spreadsheet, effectively cutting the time it took in half.  Because I understood the logistics of the whole campaign, I could also offer advice about which logistical issues might arise and how to prevent them at these early stages of planning.  At the end of a long day typing in names of remote villages (And just how do you spell Gbangkonkorokansin?) and strings of numbers, the staff of APIF and I decided to meet at their office the next day to go over what we had collected.

            The next morning, as we looked over all we had collected, we realized just how much work there was.  Not all the census takers had followed the standardized layout and others had omitted crucial information.  We would have to make sense of any errors and resolve questions with the chefs de santé.  For the next two days, Cabinet, Junior, and I poured over Excel spreadsheets and submitted data forms.  For someone obsessed with order, this was at first a very frustrating experience.  There was no perfect way to make sense of the information and each person had a specific way they wanted to do things.  It took a lot of discussion and trial-and-error, but eventually we worked out a system of how to map out the distribution routes and calculate how many and what type of vehicle we would need.  Seen as a kind of ‘outside party’, I was able to point out flaws and offer suggestions without ruffling too many feathers.  Whenever a computer or IT problem arose, I could step in and fix it before it caused too much damage.  We worked long into the afternoon both days, a feat considering Nigeria was playing in the African Cup of Nations, but eventually finished, the first prefecture to do so, if I’m not mistaken.

            It was a great experience working with everyone at APIF. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I have experience planning and running projects and as a geeky American, I have an obsession for detail and logistics.  Because of this, my voice matters and I know how to help prevent any future logistical nightmares in this project.  In fact, I’m going to continue working with APIF several days a week until the distribution in April, consulting on each step of the project. 

Personally, knowing I’m working on a project that will make a noticeable difference in the malaria situation in Guinea gives me a huge sense of accomplishment.  When we finally finished, Cabinet looked at the numbers we had calculated. “Look,” he said, “we’re going to give over 500,000 people mosquito nets.” Helping prevent malaria in over half a million people? Not too bad for a stint in the Peace Corps.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this blog, I followed through on my word and have continued working with APIF a couple days per week.  They are a really motivated group of people who don’t mind working through the afternoon break and have put a lot of work into this project.  On April 25^th, we will finally get to distribute the bed nets we have been planning for all year!

NEW PHONE NUMBER

So the Guinean government has decided that it cannot provide enough phone numbers for everyone it keeps all the numbers at 8 digits, so it has decided to add an extra one on starting April 1st.  It’s unfortunately not simply adding a ‘0’ to the end of all the numbers or something easy to understand like that.  It adds a number in the second place depending on your service provider and current first and second numbers.  Watching the confusion that is bound to unfold over the next month will be no doubt hilarious, but hopefully it means all those random Guineans who somehow got my number will be confused and stop calling.

Without further ado, my new number is:

628 06 11 41

I.e. there is now a ‘2’ between the ‘68’ that used to start my number.

Here’s hoping the addition of that 2 will be give me better cell signal in the future!

How To Hold a Quintessential Guinean Meeting

All of these things have happened to me at least once, but never all in the same meeting, thank god.  But that level of hilarity is what makes a satire a satire. Ou bien?

So you want to hold a meeting? Maybe your groupement is starting a seed bank, your NGO is electing a new board, or a group of health workers is getting trained.  Somehow you need to get your group of people together to have a big talk.

You decide to have it Saturday afternoon, at 4 PM, after everyone is done with work and should, technically, be free.  Inevitably, some people will by Friday evening or Saturday morning, curious as to where everyone else is.  On the day of the meeting, around noon, it’s generally a good idea to call everyone again to reassure them that yes, the meeting is happening.

By 2 PM, it’s time to start collecting chairs.  No one has enough chairs at their house to properly supply the meeting, at least not the fancy plastic kind, so you go around to neighbors collecting chair until your compound looks like a Rainbow Brite moved in.  Oh, and don’t worry about returning the chairs afterwards.  Neighbors will send their petites (kids aged 3-12) to collect them.

Once that clock strikes 4 (or for those really au village, when the muezzin starts his call) it is time to get dressed for the meeting.  Remember, the brighter and ‘sparklier’ the better, and, as leader of the meeting, you should have Bejeweled infomercial levels of sparkles.  Now it’s just a waiting game.  If you’re lucky, people will start arriving by 4:30, but a better bet is 5.  As guests arrive, be sure to provide drinking water and a shower to splash off in (this only happened once, but was ridiculous enough I felt I had to include it).  By 5:45, you should have enough of a quorum to start your 4 PM start time meeting.  Have your local “more than averagely religious man let out a string of benedictions.  Don’t forget good health and plenty of offspring.

It’s now time for the meeting to start.  Choose a moderator and president for the meeting, whose roles are basically interchangeable, but who are both absolutely necessary.  Ask for a volunteer to take minutes.  Most likely no one will be aching to do this, so feel free to pick a victim at random (some advice: make sure they are literate first!).  Now write down the ‘Order of the Day’, a kind of schedule of the meeting ending with a ‘Miscellaneous’ category.  The president will say a few words worthy of their honorific and announce the meeting open.  The first topic can now be discussed, with the permission of the moderator, of course.

This is the real meat of the meeting, the back-and-forth.  Five minutes in, a baby should start wiling, prompting all the other infants to join in.  But have no fear, tops will come off, breasts will come out, and all the babies will be quietly nursing in the blink of an eye.  Any particularly strong personalities, and there’s always at least one, should have taken over by now.  Each will need to talk about each topic at least twice, so try to account for this in your timekeeping.  At about the halfway mark, you should have anywhere from 50-75% attendance, with stragglers continuing to arrive every couple minutes.  It is the perfect time for a group of vendors to enter your meeting space, selling candy, shoes, or cologne.  Half your meeting will most likely want to form a ‘commerce’ sub-group and will signal this by throwing off their shoes and running over to try on those bright pink flip-flops that are so popular nowadays.  You can continue in this divided state if you choose, but one of your previously mentioned strong personalities will probably take offense that he doesn’t have everyone’s full attention and commence a 10 minute lecture about the seriousness of the meeting.

Between all of this, you should have been able to at least touch on most of your topics and be ready to summarize and conclude.  If your meeting is outside, a herd of 5-20 sheep will walk through as you try to voice your final thoughts, drowning you out with their shockingly human-like screams (listen to this if you don’t understand what I’m talking about).  The most efficient and cute way to deal with this is to name your youngest petite head sheepherder and have him chase them away.  You can now signal your religious man again, who should have plenty of unused blessings left in his artillery.  Someone should start a round of thanks, thanking everyone from you tot heir mother to Obama that will spread to the rest of your attendees faster than the bird flu.  If it was an especially good meeting, this may even culminate in a song and dance in your honor.  With that, your meeting should be over.  Attendees will rush over to buy that last “Titanic: Jack and Rose” perfume before ht others and the neighboring petites will start to arrive.  Now you can relax and bask in the glory of your successful meeting, watching the rainbow parade of plastic chairs streaming from your compound.

Sidenote/background:  I remember having a session during Pre-Service Training about meetings in Guinea and thinking it was a waste of time to devote two hours to the topic, but, after attending my share of meetings, I can see why.  It is one of those instances where the Guinean culture mixed with French bureaucratic history makes for a very frustrated American.  Guineans are nothing if not verbose and meetings are the perfect soapbox for just about everyone.  That mixed with the never ending regulations and minute details of the French system make meetings seem slow and tedious to Americans.  This is not to say they are necessarily bad.  Because the meetings aren’t rushed, everyone gets a chance to talk and rarely gets cut off.  Also every detail about the meeting is recorded so you can look back at a later time.  In spite of this, I still have those days when I get so frustrated I just have to laugh out loud as we pass the fifteenth minute debating whether ‘Alpha broke his arm’ should come second of third in the Order of the Day program.