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!