One Month in Africa

It's hard to believe that my first month in Africa has come and gone. While some things have become routine, like squat toilets and super spicy food, other things are still foreign like the complete disregard for time and the way in which I am treated.

This weekend was a real treat. A Peace Corps bus took all of us to these waterfalls about 20k from the training site. Here we got to dress like Americans and even act like Americans! I ended up dropping a whopping eighty grand on lunch and it was worth every penny. While I'll take hummus any day in the States, after a month, it was just spectacular. This was also the first time since being here that I was given ice! Granted it was a single cube, but it was incredibly refreshing. The waterfalls were gorgeous, the weather was perfect, and it was a good break from training life.

Last night I once again stayed up until midnight talking with my host brother on the front porch. I'm amazed that we are able to talk so much with French being both of our second languages. However, that might be what brings us together since we are both strangers in a strange land! There are many times where I know words in English but can't translate them into French, and it's the same with him and Wolof. None the less, he asked me about Protestants and we talked about the differences between them and catholics. Before I came to Africa, he said he had no idea protestants even existed. We also talked about our mutual lack of proficiency in Susu, how Africans/Americans view drinking, the difference between the metric system and what the US uses, and developed countries (because every Senegalese loves to talk about how their country is way more developed than Guinea).

Today I leave for a three-day training workshop in Mamou, and then I'll spend a few days at my future site (so no internet for at least 10 days)! I really have no clue what to expect. I don't expect it will be much like Dubreka, but I also don't think it is your typical minuscule village either. So here goes! I've got my backpack on my back and my camera around my neck and I'm ready to head out, but before I do, I'll leave you all with a tragically funny story...

So I was sitting on the roof when my brother's friend asked me how many kilo's I weighed. I proceeded to explain that we don't use kilo's in the states. However, I remembered that my phone had a converter so I was able to tell him how much I weighed. I then asked him if it was normal to ask girls how much they weigh because it's impolite in the United States. He told me he needed to know if I was going to break what I was sitting on. I was sitting on a slab of cement!! However, now they don't tell me that I'm too skinny so at least something good came out of it. I don't think I'll ever get used to the fact that being called fat is a compliment here.

Malaria, Mountains, and Site Announcements!

I can't say that this has been a normal week (although is it possible to have a normal week in West Africa?). Since you last heard from me, I may have battled with my first bout of Malaria, I survived my first earthquake, I scaled my first African mountain and I finally found something très bien glacé to drink! I also had my second experience in the innards of the markets here. They are not to be taken lightly. If you don't get lost, then the smell will get to you pretty fast, or you'll get surrounded by petites trying to sell you bags of water and eventually you have to buy something just to make them leave you alone. In fact, even paying adults to leave you alone happens more often than one would like! However, I was pleasantly surprised that you really can find most toiletries au marché (except hand sanitizer so please, please, please send that to me). If you haven't noticed yet, my franglais is getting much frequent!

So to the mountain story! A group of us met at the market on Sunday morning ready to head to the mountain with our guide. The only problem was our guide never showed up. We waited around awhile, but finally just decided to wing it. We all piled into a taxi where the gas tank was literally a bucket in the backseat with a wire leading somewhere that powered the car! The taxi driver didn't feel like taking us all the way to the mountain, so he finally pulled the car over, turned it off and told us to get out…and we obeyed. We probably only ended up walking an extra mile to get to the base so it wasn't too bad. On our way down the road, we noticed that these three guys were following us. We finally asked them what was going on and they told us that we had to pay to go up the mountain which of course is ridiculous! He told us that if we wanted to go up the mountain, we had to pay 30 mille each. When we scoffed at that, he lowered his price to 28 mille each. We argued with the man for a long time. We in no way thought his claims were legitimate, but we didn't want to get into any trouble. Finally, we told him that we would pay 5 mille per person and he said he would guide us. Well his definition of "guide" was to show us the trail head and then go back to the village but at this point we just wanted him to leave us alone! Obstacle number 1 was a river that we had to cross. Once did that, it was a pretty serious and steady climb up the mountain during which I realized that climbing a mountain the day after being sick is probably a bad idea. I didn't pass out, but I came pretty close! Thankfully there were some awesome volunteers that hung back with me until I could finish the ascent. With the worst over with, we set about to finding the trail that would take us to the summit. Sans guide, this was much easier said than done and we actually never made it to the real summit. We came close, and we could see it, but by that point it was so late that we had to start heading back down the mountain. The real adventure was in our attempts to find the trail. We ended up scaling trees, bushwhacking some new trails, and we all ended up with a various assortment of scrapes, scratches, bruises, and sunburn. In total, we spent about 5 hours trying to find the summit, 2 hours descending the mountain, and another hour or so walking back to the outskirts of Dubreka to find a taxi to take home. My family just started at me when I returned because my clothes were muddy and soaked and I probably looked like I had just come from living in the wilderness. It was such a great day!


Problems a first world native has in a third world country : The wallet I brought with me from the US is too small to hold all of my money! [I currently have over 300,000 francs, but don't get too excited because that's about $42]


So the very first night I arrived in Dubreka, I was given a sheet of paper titled "You know you're in Peace Corps Guinea when…" so here we are in week 3, I figured I'd see just how far I've gotten.
12) You know of and/or are a member of the Oopsie-Poopsie club [Yes, I know of it, but thankfully membership has eluded me!]
11) It's tough to distinguish between tan lines and dirt lines, no matter how many bucket baths you take [VERY true. I haven't been able to get my feet clean since arriving here and I'm getting some pretty bizarre tan lines on the rest of my body as well]
10) You put heaping spoonfuls of piment and/or mayo on everything, and love it. [This one does not yet apply to me. I have been avoiding the mayo]
9) You respond to almost every question with the ambiguous head nod/shake and "hmmm grunt" [I'm still not here yet either. I'm guessing this will happen once at site where I don't speak the language]
8) You have more negative feelings toward sheep than you would have thought possible [Getting there! They are VERY annoying…especially when they wander in the classroom during French]
7) You prefer squat toilets to Western-style toilets [YES, this is actually true. Although I miss sinks like nothing else]
6) Selon toi, 5 passengers in a taxi is spacious, and if the car has door handles, it's fancy. [My taxi experience so far has been somewhat limited, so we will have to wait on that]
5) Drinking tea and staring at your friends is one of your favorite pastimes [YUP especially the Senegalese tea my family makes]
4) Bare breasts no longer phase you, but skin showing above the knees makes you feel uncomfortable. [At this stage, I'm still uncomfortable with the first, but feel scandalous when others can see my knees]
3) You haven't seen a white person in over 3 weeks, and when you do your first thought is "What's that foot doing here?" [N/A because I still see at least sixteen other white people at least five times a week]
2) Tu ne peux plus formuler les thoughts in English, and can communiqué most effectively en Franglais. [À juste titre]
1) Watching an epic battle of daddy long legs vs. ant for an entire afternoon is time well spent [Still haven't gotten to this yet, but I know it will arrive]

As promised, I started working on this post before my internet hour started. However, this was sort of a problem because I ended up having two drafts, sort of like those "choose-your-ending" books. The first being, if site has been announced and the second being if site has not been announced. That being said…I FOUND OUT MY SITE ASSIGNMENT. I'll be spending the next two years of my life in the Basse Cote in Coliah speaking Susu [which I can already greet in]. My brain is going a hundred miles an hour and I still have to process everything.  I'll have pretty big class sizes, so I'm nervous about that. Sadly, I will NOT be living in a hut, and won't have to deal with as many bush taxis' so I'm not sure if I can say I am getting the full Peace Corps experience!

Training: Week 2

Hello once again!

I don't have too many things to say today because it has been really hard to condense all of my experiences and put them into something short. Someday maybe I'll try writing out my post ahead of time instead of trying to chug it out during my one hour of internet time.

The long awaited sickness that visits all volunteers here in Guinea finally arrived! Yesterday I spent several hours throwing up while my host family would stand on the other side of the door and repeatedly ask me if everything was "ça va".  I guess it's good to know that I have people rooting for me. Thankfully the vomiting has now stopped but the other end of the spectrum has just begun! To re-hydrate my body, I've started taking Oral Rehydration Salts… and they taste like bottled up sadness (very, very, salty). On top of sickness, we got more immunizations today which brings the count to five in the past two weeks. By the by, I also have malaria in my body. The malaria meds that we take actually don't kill the parasites until they try to leave the liver and head throughout the bloodstream. Just something else to worry about.

The rainy season here is really rainy! We get rain at least once a day. Actually, once a day is quite a relief. When it is not raining, it's extremely sunny. Because of this, I got my first sunburn on Sunday from spending several hours at the port. I also have yet to make my first million. So far, I've been walking around with 250,000 francs and even that feels pretty awesome.

I'm starting to get really sick of the imperative which seems to be the preferred tense of the Guineans. Christine, eat! Sit down! Come here! Leave it! Take more! Eat! (Yes, my family is trying to fatten me up and marry me off) It is part of the culture that people don't seem to ever ask you to do anything, and you are never really supposed to ask for anything.

Some good news…I think I officially became Guinean on Saturday afternoon. I ended up walking around 5 miles with Raoul, in FLIP FLOPS, in the rain, and through some wonderful dirt/mud roads jumping out of the way whenever motos zoomed past.

It's only been two weeks and I already feel so disconnected from the world. Simple things like changes in Facebook's layout remind me that I'm here in Africa living it up bush style! My apologies, but I am still not able to upload pictures :( The internet is much too slow.

Hello world! I am alive and well although I didn't expect it to take this much time before I had access to the internet! That being said, I will have to try to condense the last week and a half into a few words. The journey over was pretty crazy, FIVE different cities, FOUR different countries, THREE different continents, TWO days, and ONE epic chocolate bar later, I arrived in Africa. I spent the first couple of days in the capital, Conakry, at the Peace Corps Headquarters. We were right along the ocean, and the weather was absolutely perfect (for me anyway)! The couple of days we spent in Conkary were filled with info sessions and crash language courses. I learned my first couple of phrases in the tribal language SUSU. So, I can now great the wonderful people who shout foté [white person] at me.
I am now over a week into training and living quite comfortably here in Dubreka. My host family is pretty great and they all speak French! My host family consists of Rose, the mother, Alexandre the father (who doesn't actually live there), Raoul who I THINK is Rose's brother and his is my age, Ousmane (who also doesn't live there), Sadiki who seems to be about seven, and Adolf who I think is around three. Rose is a great cook - I am loving the food here! She has made me pasta twice - something I never thought I'd eat here. Thankfully I have yet to experience the lovely side effects of the food and water although I know it's just a matter of time. I've even managed to avoid being sunburnt!
So I consider it strange that half of my family is catholic and half is muslim, but I guess that is very common here! I've been watching the family observe Ramadan, but I haven't yet participated. I was worried about finding a church here, but since some of my family is catholic, I go to church more often here then I did in the states! (3/week)!
Although I have many funny stories, the one that keeps coming to mind is that of the mosquito's. The first night I was there, I was bitten NINE TIMES! So I was sitting on the porch with my host brother and his cousin and a mosquito tries to bite me. I exclaim, "ugh. Why do mosquito's love me so much?" Well they thought this was hilarious and proceeded to explain that since I am white mosquito's can see me, and since they are black the mosquito's cannot see them!! My family is also quite concerned about my hiccups (which I get every day). I had spent the whole night with them on the porch, but they were convinced that I had been drinking! Drinking, along with knee-revealing, is a big no-no here. Although strangely girls walk around with their boobs hanging out.

Several notable firsts since my arrival
- my first husband! His name is Adolf. (I got through all of college without someone asking me out, two days in Dubreka and I am married! Don't worry though, he is three and I don't think he takes it too seriously)
- my first bucket bath
- my first time using a squat toilet (and I don't mind it at all)
- my first time washing all my laundry by hand


In my mad rush to get over to the compound to use the internet, I forgot my camera's memory card, so pictures will have to come another time. Hopefully the internet situation will work itself out. That's about all I have for now! I miss everyone and if anyone wants to come visit me, you are more than welcome!