In a land where men have no fire:

 

In case you’re still with us here at Guinea Ginge (us being Kelsey, Arnold the mouse and various monstrous caterpillars lurking around in dark corners), here’s a little update for you!

Last week, my neighbor Dawan, came to Ditinn to pay me a visit.  (He’s only 26km away… that’s child’s play in Guinea!)  It was a wonderful surprise to peep outside my classroom and see a fellow volunteer smiling back at me.  We took a trip to the Ditinn waterfall, which I am happy to report, is nearly tame enough to frolic about in!  Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure…

Everyone, meet Dawan. 

Hi, Dawan!

And we all know this crazy ginger...



There is many a river to be fjorded here,

even in the dry season.

 

And now, here's a video for you...

 

We fancy, huh?

Along our route, Dawan and I discussed many a topic, including but not limited to Guinean history, U.S. vs. Guinean teaching methods, future plans, the natures of romance and marriage, and livestock.  Which brings me to my next point: 

If ever there was created an official scale of stupidity based on animal behavior, the basest insult you could ever sling upon another human being would be to compare them to a sheep.

      I’ve seen goats eat plastic bags. 

         I’ve seen cows stare down oncoming semi-trucks. 

            I’ve seen moths fly straight into open flames repeatedly. 

Let me assure you, sheep take the fattest slice of cake that there is to be had.  (You know, it’s one of those pretty plastic and Velcro kinds of cake that you used to play with as a kid, but at least you knew better than to eat something with a Fisher_Price label on it?)   

A car legitimately ran over a sheep the other day (it was unharmed, I assure you) because the animal plain old didn’t feel the urge to move.  This evening I had my moment of epiphany, however.  As I was cooking dinner (bean, lentil, potato, patate, okra and peanut soup!  Sounds questionable.  Tastes delicious.), I heard a noise in my yard.  Now, as stated before, I had a fence recently erected to keep animals and unruly school kids from traipsing into my house.  As you can imagine, I was a little anxious to see just what in the blazes was making the racket.  I poked my head out the window and saw a sheep there, just… staring off into space.  My gate was shut and there were no gaping holes to speak of in the fence, so, although puzzled, I decided to let the situation develop on its own.  A few hours passed by, and the sheep didn’t budge, except to stick its head through a crack in the fence.  Once night fell, I decided to help it out.  I opened the gate and made some shooing noises, and what did the sheep do?  It looked at me and plunked its head right through the fence again. 

So I chased it away from the hole. 

It ran a couple circles around the fire pit, then headed towards the gate. 

“Yes!”  I thought.  “Victory is at hand.” 

But instead of going through the huge opening directly in front of it, the sheep thought it better to ram its noggin right back into the crack in the fence.  Now, faced with a waggling sheep posterior and a herd of bleating livestock gathering to witness this spectacle, what’s a girl to do but laugh?  This whole process repeated itself for a few minutes, but happily, after a tense stare-off, the sheep turned around and (accidentally, I’m certain) made its way through the doorway to be reunited with its fellow peanut-brained family members.

Speaking of brains…

Mine is practically burstin with Pular.  Aliou has turned out to be a super resourceful tutor, and I’m having a wonderful time employing (read: embarrassing myself in) the language around Ditinn.  Why, the other day, I was walking down the path from school to the center of town, when I found my path blocked by a sheepling (A ewe?  Sheepling sounds better…).  I tried going around it, but saw that it was, well, drooling uncontrollably.  Not a good sign in sheepdom, I gather.  A tantie (older lady) passed by and greeted me in French with a “Bonjour, Aicha! Ca va?”  She then turned to the sheepling and said “Eh!  Mbaali.  A nowni buy!!” which means, “Sh**, you’re one sick sheep!!”  Which I understood!  IN PULAR!

So, good news: I’m improving little by little. 

Bad news: I have no idea if there’s a vet around these parts.  Poor sheepling.

This not so neatly segues into my next topic: PULAR blunders.

I’ve been trying to acquire some quips to use in the big cities when taxi-moto drivers make crude remarks to us volunteers.  So far I can say “What do you want?” and “You lookin’ at me?”  While useful, they’re not exactly what you’d call zingers.

So I asked my friend, Juliette for some help.  She said she had the hardest time trying to master the phrase “Are you blind??”, meant to be used if someone on a moto/taxi cuts you (or your taxi) off, or runs over your foot, or smooshes your pile of vegetables/fruit/bread/fish/sunglasses/flip flops on the ground.  It translates to “You have no eyes?!”

So for a couple months, Juliette was sassing right back at the motorists, saying “A maraa yiitee?!” where it was deserved.  She was confused by their reaction, which always seemed to involve patting their shirt/pants pockets, then shaking their heads “no!”

Finally someone kindly informed Juliette that the word for eyes is “giitee”, and that “yiitee” means fire.  She’d been unwittingly asking haphazard motorists for a light all this time, yelling  

 

“Have you no fire??”

It’s way too easy to mix these things up.