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.

Not a new post, but...

I do have some photos!!

Sorry I haven't had time to write a new post, but it is a good thing because I've been busy.  It's the middle of gardening season so we've been harvesting lots of lettuce and salad.  Green Hand Action has been going through some major restructuring and preparing to launch all our projects for a great 2013.  My Master Farmer, Abu, and I have been hard at work clearing our 1 hectare experimental plot and starting our live fence.  And I've been helping out with a huge Guinea-wide moisquito net distribution campaign, part of the global effort to fight malaria.  So, you'll have to excuse the lack of actual blog post.

The photos are pretty funny though...

(if the above link doesn't work: https://plus.google.com/photos/109284563137945907097/albums/5837121539258524849?authkey=CM6GzOymsuO63wE)

One year in Guinea

Today marks the one year anniversary of my arrival in Guinea. Congratulations G21!

490 cashew trees planted in Balandougou with Green Hand Action

56 books read

14 flat tires replaced

4 regions in Guinea

500 (estimated) bowls of rice and sauce eaten

2 host families who welcomed me with loving arms

5 pizzas eaten from the beach bar in Conakry

693 kilometers from Conakry to Kankan

18+ hours in the taxi from Conakry to Kankan

29 days fasted for the month of Ramadan

2 times talking on Guinean radio

10 people minimum in the average station wagon bush taxi

2 poultry that I killed and plucked myself

0 meals of toh eaten that I enjoyed

3 times that I’ve been on Guinean national television

26 wheels of Laughing Cow cheese eaten by my cat

80 volunteers currently in Guinea

2 other countries (Sierra Leone and Benin) visited

5 Guinean outfits received as gifts

1 trip to the Guinean dentist (not THAT scary)

51 mephloquin pills taken

300 moringa trees planted at Fasso Demen

31 heads of cabbage harvested in my garden

7 dance parties at the regional house

4 nights that I’ve seen shooting stars

2 water pumps that we’ve installed at the garden

136 days without rain during the dry season

100s of times that I have heard the song Makale

19 greetings shouted during the fifteen minute bike ride to my garden

3 cans of oatmeal eaten

15 boxes of matches used to light my stove

365 days in this great adventure...

and

457 days to come!

Better Link to my Newest Pictures

Sorry, flickr is being weird and not letting me have a lot of photos and hiding them or something, so here is a better link to the newest pictures i've uploaded:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mvevans/sets/72157632014261475/

Tabaski and the Rain

Forewarning: I wrote this at the end of October and have only just got around to uploading it (sorry!), so some of the stuff might be a little dated.

Happy peanuts season! And I am not just talking about the fact that Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin are on TV all the time.  Here in Kankan, most of the rainy season crops are being harvested, including rice, yams, beans, and yes peanuts.  For my part, people love gifting me peanuts right as they’re pulling them up from the ground, so I am always biking around with a bag full of peanuts.  Luckily, the taste of raw peanuts has grown on me (I used to think they tasted like grass), so I’m in peanut eating heaven.  Plus nothing completes a lazy afternoon of tea drinking like a bag of fresh peanuts.

            The end of rainy season crops means that dry season gardening is starting again, which is the meat and potatoes of my groupement.  Water has begun receding from the garden area and we are slowly reclaiming all of the beds.  And as everyone comes back to the garden, I’ve started my series of gardening workshops.  The first, held in the beginning of October, was about a bed preparation technique called double digging.  By removing the topsoil, working compost into the subsoil, and then replacing the first layer, you can open the soil up deeper, allowing the roots grow bigger and faster.  This is especially important for clay soils like at Fasso Demen, where the subsoil has compacted to be nearly rock solid.  Besides the workshop, I’ve also created a demonstration plot, where gardeners can see double digging and normal bed preparation side by side and judge the benefits for themselves.  Future topics will include mulching, intercropping, and organic inputs.

            When I’m not toiling away in the garden, I’ve been working on rice.  In September, my counterpart and I attended a training on a new method of rice cultivation, System of Rice Intensification (SRI), in Benin.  It was a great training, run by Peace Corps and USAID at an agriculture school/research center outside Cotonou.  We got to meet PCVs and their counterparts from other countries in West African and I even saw a friend I studied abroad with in college. The visiting volunteers got to experience Cotonou, which is an awesome city with a beachy feel to it.  It also has ice cream and Indian food!  It was also my counterpart’s first time on a plane and he returned to Kankan a minor celebrity. 

            When we got back, we immediately started planning our trainings.  Our neighbor attends a local agricultural school whose graduates become extension agents and agricultural advisors, so we decided to have our first training there.  Over 65 students showed up, and some professors too.  Once we got over the initial hurdles of my strange American accent, which way the desks should face so as to best get the slight breeze, and a generator that no one could start, the training was a success.  As it is the off season, we could only go over SRI theory, but we will return next year for the practical segment, and to set up an experimental plot.

            Fasso Demen finally got to use our Super Moneymakers! That’s a water pump, by the way.  Conde and I attached all the piping and hooked it up to the well in our compound to see if the thing even works, and it does!  So what is it? Picture a Stairmaster with two hoses attached, one in a water source, be it well or river, and the other with a spray wand on the end.  There is also one that looks like a giant bike pump in place of the Stairmaster.  The pressure from them can shoot water over 20 feet in the air, so of course the whole neighborhood came to see what was going on and we had everyone try it, from my seven year old host sister, to the wizened old lady next door.

            Kenny, one of my site mates, and I have been preparing for our Agribusiness Conference, to be held later this November.  In a nutshell, agribusiness encompasses business skills and topics specific and applied directly to agriculture.  We’ve invited members of the local gardening federation and will be covering topics such as record keeping and marketing.  Since most gardeners sell their produce themselves at the local market, business skills will help them better plan and organize their gardening and hopefully increase their profits.

            Besides work, I have been enjoying hanging out with my family and neighbors.  Since we now have semi-regular electricity, I’ve been able to watch Guinean news more often, as well as Guinean and American movies.  Usually this results in me trying to explain some plot point.  Lets just say as confusing as Inception already is, it makes even less sense when I explain it in French.  Plus we all, myself and Guineans included, agree that Leo was better in Titanic.

            We also just celebrated Tabaski, one of the biggest holidays of the year, if not the biggest.  This is the fete de sacrifice, when everyone buys a big ram to sacrifice, although goats and cows are acceptable substitutes.  It is meant to be symbolic of Abraham’s almost sacrifice of his son, who at the last minute was switched for a sheep by God.  Our sheep spent its last two weeks tied up outside my house, befriending Quinn, my cat.  I guess that they weren’t great friends, however, since she had no problems eating her share of the sacrifice.

            Tabaski is especially big in Kankan because we have the Mamaya, a traditional women’s dance that draws Guineans from as far as Europe and America to attend.  It is held every night for a week in a round point called, unsurprisingly, Mamaya.  Several associations of people, called a sere, are formed and get to host it for three nights each, which basically means they all wear matching bazin (a type of fancy wax fabric) and are official dancers.  Anyone else can dance too, but its still a big deal.  There are several dances going on during the Mamaya, all kind of spiraling together around this circle.  It is pretty cool how the lines all fit together as they move in opposite directions.  My favorite is the men, who dance with this cane in a dance that has these silly looking tiny steps and reminds me of the Mr. Peanut mascot. 

This year, we also had several big names in Guinean music give concerts in Kankan, including Sekouba Bambino and Takana Zion, who was recently named Africa’s top reggae artist.  I unsuccessfully tried to attend both these concerts, arriving too early for one and too late for the other.  After nearly a year, it is still hard to understand the timing of events in Guinea.  In my defense though, I was with Guineans and even they didn’t understand when they would start.

I also totally forgot that I wanted to continue adding little tidbits about random Stuff PCVS Like, so I am now bringing it back with a vengeance.  First on the list: mayonnaise!!!! (a favorite of Lilly Schruben)

Mayonnaise

Okay, this isn’t actually something PCVS especially like, but he myriad uses of this condiment never ceases to amaze me.  There is the café francais, coffee or tea with a lot of sugar and a dollop of mayo floating on top.  The first time I regrettably mistook this for some type of sweet cream and ate it in one bite.  Every sandwich comes with a layer of two of mayo.  And of course there ist he plain mayonnaise sandwich, a local favorite.  Recently I had bouille, a type of rice or corn pudding, with mayonnaise stirred in (this was actually pretty good).  Perhaps the strangest thing about the mayonnaise phenomenon is the fact that, because practically no one here owns a refrigerator, it is never refrigerated.  As someone who worked in a restaurant where the temperature of the mayo was serious business, this shocked me.  Now, after using mayo that has sat opened on my table for three months and living to tell the tale, I still don’t understand how this works.  It seems to have the same ingredients as American mayo (oil, eggs, salt) and the brand I buy, BAMA, is even found in Publix across the southern US.  So what keeps it fresh after months of desert heat?  I guess it is just another miracle of Guinea.

Daytime Television

Unless you have a satellite dish, the only channel you can get on a normal antenna is Radiodiffusion Televsion Guinee (RTG).  At night, it basically only plays the news and tons and tons of commercials.  During the day however, there is usually at least one afternoon movie.  Sometimes, if there is nothing going on for them to talk about, we even get a double feature.  Any café or gas station worth its name usually has a TV tuned to this and it is a great place to relax during the heat of the day in which it is really too hot to leave the shade.  The best part about this, however, is the variety of films that get shown on RTG.  I’ve seen Scorpion King 3 (straight to DVD), The Full Monty (I have no idea how this was approved by RTG), and Hard Rain (Morgan Freeman was in this, so it is pretty legitimate I guess).  I don’t know who is choosing RTG’s afternoon line-up, but we would definitely be friends.

The Dead Toubab Market

The Dead Toubab Market is the used clothing area of the market in Kankan.  It’s not actually called that, but a volunteer started calling it that (toubab being the Malinke word for ‘white person) and it stuck.  It is where nearly my whole wardrobe is from at this point, as the combination of intense UV rays and washboards has ripped several of my garments to shreds.  Everything can be found in the Dead Toubab market, and I do mean everything.  If you’ve ever donated a shirt, pair of slightly (or very) used shoes, or even American Flag patterned leggings, it may have ended up in Guinea.  The day after the new shipment comes in, I always try to go and spend a bit looking through the piles of pre-worn clothes, searching for that long lost St. Louis Cardinals jersey or original Backstreet Boys 1998 Concert Tour shirt.  Even better than finding gems is when non-anglophone Guineans walk around in what turns out to be some very ironic shirts.  Some of our favorites are:

-       I <3 Vaginas

-       THE SPERMINATOR (with “I’ll be back” written below)

-       middle-aged men wearing Dora the Explorer or Hello Kitty shirts

-       “I love poopies!” with a brontosaurus on top (this one was finally gone from the stall last week which means someone bought it!)

-       I <3 Consensual Sex, although I guess this is a nice message?

Also, I have recently uploaded pictures to my flickr account.  Hopefully I’ll get to add some captions while I’m in Conakry next week helping with training. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mvevans/

Hope everyone has a great thanksgiving! I’ll be thinking of you and all the delicious food you’ll be eating!