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.
 |
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Green Hand Action members at World
Environment Day
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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.
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 24th, now the 28th (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?
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