Hey woman! Will you marry me?

\How can I even begin to sum up life here at site? Well, first of all, I'm posting this from my house in my isolated village that has no electricity. Explain that! Then there's my neighbors. They've all been super friendly and welcoming (or at least I think so). Since they only speak in Susu I could be totally wrong. I think they like me though because they will always drop what they are doing to try to help me, and of course laugh at my pathetic attempts to speak their language. My go to words are Adé (No) or Iyo (Yes). If it's a woman I'm speaking with I'll normally say Iyo, but if it's a man, I always feel safer going with Adé because they will usually ask if I'm married or if I'll marry them! Frustratingly enough, even those who speak French talk to me in Susu as if I can understand them. I also can no longer stand any sentence containing the name Albert. Sorry Dad! Albert was a European who lived here several years ago and spoke excellent Susu. Since we are both white foreigners they love to compare me to him and I definitely don't measure up!
Being that all my encounters are sufficiently awkward on my part, I spend a lot of time alone in my house. "You end up just talking to yourself a lot, which gets terribly boring because half the time you know what you are going to say next." In all seriousness, I've slowly been learning what's great to do alone, and what's not so great. Example, cleaning, reading (during my 11 weeks of training I read less than 100 pages, but read an entire book before two days at site were over), playing solitaire (I'm up to 137 games) and balancing things on your head are all great!
Some of the not so great things? Reading the health manual. It details all of the fun things you can get/catch here. (I've gotten more infected arm hair follicles here then I thought possible in a lifetime.) Who knew you could still get dysentery or that there are multiple types. While on the subject of poop, I have 3 additional things to say
A: Someone and by the size of it, an adult, took a dump on my front step! Is that a commentary on my presence here?
B: I'm keeping a "this girl has been diarrhea free for _____ days at site count. I'm holding strong at 13 which happily is how many days I've been here.
C: Kids are cute, but they aren't much different than the chickens. They will eat anything, poop anywhere, and they carry diseases. One doctor here can be quoted as saying "they are walking biohazards." They are also scared of me. All the babies at least. If I wave at them, they start bawling. The parents find this hilarious so they'll bring babies up to me to watch their reactions.
Elections finally came and went. So far no violence, mainly because everyone is relieved they are over. Three years is a long time to delay things! Perhaps the reader will find it interesting/amusing that the leader of the opposition party called me out saying I was an ignorant white person who can't speak the local language. Ironically, this was said in Susu and was translated to me. No, there is no mistake. I'm the only white person here making me insanely popular and easy to spot. Those who don't know my name yet still shout at me whenever I walk by. Some days all I want is to be invisible, but I stick out in the same way Zaphod Beeblebrox would anywhere on earth. (Sorry for all the Hitchhiker's references. I'm currently re-re-(re?) reading it.
I'm already frustrated by the work ethic here but not that of the women! A man told me that women have to drop out of school to take care of kids because "men don't have time." Well I don't know if any actually work because I've only ever seen them sitting around for hours drinking tea.* They are really serious about their resting time. It doesn't matter if the task is done because it will get done eventually. I'm anticipating this same reaction for the beginning of the school year. I'm sure I'll start teaching eventually!
Being here is such an emotional rollercoaster. Sometimes I'm ready to call it quits and other times I'm gung-ho about everything here (minus the bugs).** I'm either going to come out of this the emotional equivalent of a muscle woman or a slug! The thing that has been the most emotionally troubling is to see people sick and dying. My heart broke when I visited a little boy who is deathly ill with malaria.. I still haven't heard any news good or bad, but it's sad. I've been lucky that death was never a big part of my life in the states, but it makes it harder to come to terms with here.
I've been told that my decision to come here was either extremely courageous or extrememly stupid, or a combination of the two. Sounds about right, but even with everything my mind, body, and soul is going through, given a choice I'd do it again.

My mosquito fort and amazingly large bed!

My house :)

Where I'll be teaching for the next two years

Children at the training site

Practice school!

Climbing "Le Chien qui fume"

All of the different fabrics I've already acquired here 

My host brothers Sédiki, Ousmane, and Adolf (my husband)

Adolf and Raoul my oldest host brother

G-24! All of the volunteers from my group

Waterfalls near the training site

*Here I had to refrain myself from making another Hitchhiker's reference.
** I've battled spiders, beetles with 9 lives, army ants, maggots, roaches, and other unknowns. Plus frogs!

This is Not Your Parent's Africa

From talking to everyone back at home, and from my perception of Africa before coming here, I've realized that much of the world continues to look at Africa through the lens of films like Born Free and Tarzan. While elements of that time are permanently woven into the culture, it's so much more than a savage and wild jungle with people running around in loincloths (or nothing at all). There is a marked lack of information because not much has made it out of Africa post colonialism. Here I've experienced a hodge podge of culture with everything from talismans against sorcery and the continuation of female circumcision, to skinny jeans and cell phones in almost every hand. With the rest of the world rapidly developing and moving forward, Guinea is struggling to balance their rich heritage with “western thinking.” So many things like electricity, water, taxis, etc don't work here, but thinks like community are something they have that much of the modern world has lost. I'm interested to see how life works in my village, because I've had a skewed view living in a larger town. The villages tend to be much more primitive, but again, with most people owning cell-phones, information travels rapidly and they are not as primitive as we once would have considered them. I would also like to point out that those films mentioned above gave me unrealistic expectations about seeing awesome animals like elephants and lions wandering around. Instead all I've seen is chickens, ducks, sheep, and the occasional cow!

“God made water, fire and the earth but it's the women who make the food!” My five year old host brother declared this the other day and it speaks volumes about what they think of women here. From the age of six or seven girls are expected to help around the house with cooking, laundry, cleaning, and the list goes on. Once they start going to school, they have to balance school with all the work they have at home. They have no time to study, and a lot only stay in school because it's a break from their work! I won't even get started on an education rant because I have two years to work on that one! Sadly, the women who have worked hard to pass school and go to university then can't find a job, and no one wants to marry them because of the fact that they are educated. I know two amazing (and beautiful) women here at the training center who try to do what work they can but don't have the support of a husband. They are proof that women can do it, but for now, only the strongest can be expected to follow through with it.

So, I know I've mentioned training a ton. What did it do? Did it work? Well it was long I can tell you that! Overall, I think it was pretty useful. In July I didn't think I could ever teach a math class to real Guinean students! Now, I've done three weeks of teaching, feel a lot more comfortable, and I think my students have been learning. Unfortunately, during practice school I would have classes with around twenty students, so I don't feel ready to face my 91 students at site! Language training didn't go as well as one would hope. The program is amazing for those coming in with no French. Their capacity to speak and express themselves in amazing, while I don't feel that mine has improved much, if at all. There were also a lot of dry sessions that probably had important things in them, but most of it was lost on us. I know a lot of the sessions are required and give us a basic knowledge of things like community development, PC policies, and corruption, to name a few. It's been a tough three months, but I think it was worth it, I know I've learned a ton, and I am eager to apply everything I learned.

This will most likely be my last weekly post. From now on, expect monthly ones! I swear-in as a volunteer on Wednesday, and leave for my village Thursday. There I will have no electricity and no running water. I may or may not have access to internet that runs off the cell-phone tower (on va voir). I've heard the moment you realize you are really here in Africa doing this is when the Peace Corps vehicle drives away and leaves you all alone at site. Naturally, I am pretty nervous about this because I will be alone in a village where I don't speak the local language, and the locals don't speak much french! I know for a fact I will get really good at hand gestures, and will suffer for many awkward moments. Until next time!  

short and yet somehow not very sweet

 Well I had quite the eloquent and thoughtful post in the works for today, but I couldn't bring myself to finish it. Part of it is the heat, part of it is the meds, and part of it is pure exhaustion. Summarizing what I'm going through has been getting harder and harder. So far I  haven't had the time to interalize what's happening to me, so sharing it with others is pretty difficult. Because I leave for site in a week, this week or next week will most likely be the end of my weekly posts. That being said, I will do my best to come up with something awesome one next week. Until then, I am alive and mostly well! Thanks for keeping up with my life :)

Thoughts on Practice School

Well here I am, half way through l'école practique, with exactly two weeks until I become an official Peace Corps Volunteer. While there have been a few rewarding moments, practice school been a really exhausting and frustrating experience. In a typical day, I'll have to turn students away at the door for coming in late, kick them out during the middle of class, make students move around, and repeatedly say TAISEZ-VOUS or DU SILENCE without much of a result. After teaching, I'll then have to spend hours planning the lesson for the next day and trying to figure out how to get the kids to behave. Once that is over, it's feedback time from the trainers which is always really discouraging because they won't have liked the way you changed the example from the book, or they will tell you that you smile too much. Even if you have done a great job, they will always have criticisms. It gets even worse on test days due to the cheating. In one exam I took away a notebook a kid had hidden in his desk, five minutes later, I took a cheat sheet away from the same kid. Finally, I ended up ripping up two exams ten minutes before the end of class.

For the first couple of days of practice school, I was really timid because I'm not used to having that much authority and being able to exercise it. Now, even my stone cold trainer has said that I'm am finally becoming strict enough. Every night before I go to bed, I spend hours feeling guilty and thinking about how I treated the kids and whether the kids I kicked out really deserved it. I know that I am here to help the kids, and I've just been trying to keep that in mind. Hopefully once I get to site and get to work with the same kids for more than a week, I'll be able to gauge whether or not I am making a difference.

So what happens once I'm actually a volunteer? After I swear in on the 18^th, I'll head to my site the next day. There I'll be sitting tight until school starts the first or second week of October. Due to the upcoming legislative elections (not presidential), all volunteers have to stay at their sites and won't be able to visit others, go to the regional capitals, etc. As with most things in Guinea, you just have to wait and see what happens and hope that violence doesn't break out. The town of Dubreka has been buzzing with election stuff. Most of you heard that I saw the President several weeks ago. In addition to his visit, the candidates have been campaigning all over town which means lots of extra people, an increased military presence, more noise than usual, and lots of electricity! We've gotten electricity at least once a day for the past week which is a vast improvement compared to the once a week max I've seen throughout training. While I am slightly nervous to be here during elections, it's been really interesting observing everything tied to them and hopefully good things will come out of them! Until next time,

Kadiatou, Yama, or Umu (ooo-moo)

(I'm still working on picking out a Guinean name to use at site!)

August 28th Blog

What do the words palm tree, plastic bag, loose monkey, and cement brick have in common? Unfortunately all of those words summarize my most recent babysitting experience. My host mom left me with my host brothers and some random neighbor children. Within five minutes, one was climbing a palm tree, and another one had a plastic bag over his head. Once I finally got the kid down from the tree, and had the plastic bag situation under control, they all ran out into the middle of the road to chase a loose monkey (and an angry one at that). Once they returned from that adventure, Sadiki picked up a cement brick and was about to hurl it at Ousmane, I don't think I've ever reacted as quickly as I did then. Between my scream and my glare, Sadiki stopped dead in his tracks and started laughing. After that, all I could do was wait for my host mom to get back and get things back under control. Babysitting is hard, but it's even worse when you don't speak their first language and you are in a culture where yelling is perfectly normal and no one really pays attention when you do it.
Aside from that terrifying experience, I find myself with little to say. This week has been pretty demanding with all the preparation for practice school and the feedback that goes along with practice school! As per usual, my french has been fine, but I'm nowhere ready to be a Guinean teacher. Since the teaching that they are used to hasn't really helped them to think critically or even really grasp the material, I've been trying to explain things in creative ways. However, the trainers (who are Guinean) don't like when I don't teach from the book. So for now, I just have to suck it up,  teach it their way, and deal with the criticism for the next three weeks.
On a positive note (because it is always better to end with that) I bought lots of colorful fabric that I just dropped off at the tailors. I'm pretty excited for not only my first tailored outfit, but my first African one as well! I know that I'm going to look absolutely ridiculous, but I'm not too worried about it. I really apologize for the lack of motivation this week! I'm going to leave you with a list of other notable things that happened this week that didn't really work into the rest of the blog post.

- Saw the president of Guinea! His helicopter landed right behind the training center, and so almost everyone got to see him get out the helicopter and greet the wonderful residents of Dubreka
- My host brother is convinced that I'll go crazy living alone and that I will talk to myself (or to my bike which he has nicknamed Christine)
- My host brothers went on a 15 minute rant about how the toothpaste in Dubreka is more doux than the toothpaste in Conakry (yup. It was as ridiculous as it sounds)
- Exploited my first petite! I sent him to by me laundry soap
- I was so cold while sleeping last night that I dreamed it was snowing
- One night this week my host mom served me pastel colored chips with the consistency of Styrofoam that were somehow made from prawns, and peppers so hot they melted the chips on top!
- Almost got attacked by a ferrel monkey that also tried to eat my friends puppy

Hopefully the internet will work tomorrow so I can post something else. Inch'allah!

When in Guinea...

Well here is the blog I was supposed to post yesterday! I tried to connect to the internet for over an hour with no success but finally succeeded today!


August 21st,

Well this week started out pretty normal, but it didn't take long for crazy things to start happening. For example, yesterday I woke up to one of those mutant cafards (cockroaches) crawling on me. I had been exhausted and was going to stay in bed for a few extra hours, but after that horrifying experience, I was WIDE awake. I swear it must have been right outside my mosquito net and scurried in when I turned off my alarm. Speaking of mosquito's, they also continue to terrorize me. Even under the net, I get at least five new bites every night localized to my feet. Some nights, when I want to be sneaky, I remember to put on my socks. However, this means the bites move to my legs, or worse, my wrists and elbows. These critters sure know how to drive a person crazy. Between the anti-malaria meeds (which make you crazy) and the mosquito's themselves, insanity becomes almost inevitable. Since writing this, I actually have what I hope will be good news. I'm going to be switching my anti-malarial meds, so hopefully these won't bother me as much! Another crazy thing that happened was when I accidentally walked outside in my short-shorts. *GASP* I know. I didn't realize until about five minutes in that I was doing this and by that time the damage was done. Oh well, I'm sure I've already done so many shocking things that my family will get over it.
Today we had another one of those medical sessions that will go down in history. We were given 14 different case studies and had to diagnose each case. That led up to a list of over 50 different things that volunteers often suffer from here in Guinea. From tapeworms, to UTIs, to carbuncles, to pink eye, there are plenty of strange problems to go around!
Yesterday Chris' host mother died, so all of the volunteers went to her funeral. Basically, the women sit inside and wail, and the men sit outside. When you go over to the house, you greet everyone outside, then go inside and greet everyone. It's a lot of praying and a lot of sitting. The burial will happen this afternoon (no wasting time) but women aren't allowed to go to it so I'm not sure how the rest of the process works.
Hmmm what other problems?! Oh, the sad story that is my diet continues. The other night my host mom gave me popcorn for dinner. Malnutrition FTW! Other standard meals have become a baked potato with laughing cow cheese, or better yet, beignets and bisap.
I'll leave you now to work on my lesson planning! Practice school officially starts on Monday and so I'll be pretty busy. With the exception of Thursday, I'll be teaching two one hour chunks of math lessons to 10th grade. Thursday I'll have a 2 hour block of english classes with Terminale students.

I DON'T LIKE TO THINK OF THEM AS WORMS

"I don't like to think of them as worms. Instead, I prefer to think of them as little friends." The number of places you can pick up little things like worms and amoeba's is pretty ridiculous (water, food, and even petites) however it's just life here in Guinea. You learn to accept it and move on. It also turns out I have been worried about all the wrong things. No electricity? Pas grave. Squat toilets? Pas grave! Being sick? Pas tellement grave. Things I didn't worry about? All of the mold. Moldy clothes. Moldy books. Moldy everything. With the combination of rain and humidity, nothing here ever dries all the way out. The only times clothes do actually dry is when they are laid out on the road. However, at that point you are sacrificing clean clothes for dry clothes because your clothes are now on top of child and goat poop. I also didn't worry about how much I would miss the freedom to make my own choices and have some degree of control over my life. I can't wait to move into my house where I can cook for myself, get my own water, etc. I also hadn't worried that much about my interactions with other volunteers. However, I frequently find myself embarrassed to be an American, and am not sure how often I'll want to leave site to hang out with the other volunteers!

Given the downs, this weekend was still quite a treat. Some of the volunteers staying at the regional capital took a trip to Port Kamsar and let me tag along. Kamsar is where you find all of the foreigners who invest in the bauxite and iron industries. While I was warned that there were white people in the city, I was quite taken aback anytime I saw one that I didn't know. It's things like that that I never thought I would be surprised by! Probably the most exciting thing about Kamsar is the supermarkets. I found everything from Delallo's olive oil, to mountain dew, to cans of Great Value food, to Heath ice cream bars. While everything is pretty expensive, I can't wait to come back after moving to site and stock up on yummy things like chickpeas and lentils.

I'm about to pass several big milestones. Starting August 15th (which is also Blaze's birthday) every day I spend in Africa is one day longer than I've ever spent outside of the US! Secondly, tomorrow I'll teach in front of Guinean students for the first time! I'm very nervous because it's for 50 minutes and it's concerning co-linearity of vectors! Just like everything here in Guinea, on va voir! Finally, I braved the big market here, and amazingly enough found a shop I had been to before and bought my first bit of African fabric! It's pretty, but don't get too excited, because it's basically just a wrap. I'm saving the crazy outfits until I'm all comfy at site and have outfitted my house.

Until next time…and thanks to everyone who is still reading this! If you have any suggestions (eg. are more interested in certain choses/want me to stop talking about something, just let me know and I'll see what I can do). It's been thrilling to watch my stats grow exponentially with each post!