Sunday, April 7, 2013

Peace Corps Meets the Land Before Time


HEY!  



I had a stellar Spring Break in a magical place called Doucki.




Go ahead, get the poop-jokes out of your system before you continue...









I posted a bunch of pictures on the "Guinea Ginge in Action" photo thingy-ma-jig, but thought I'd share some of my favorites with you here!






There were 7 of them in there. Thankfully, we didn't have to use the same taxi.  





Overlooking the valley





First waterfall of the trip






Your voice could echo for miles here 






Yup.  Land Before Time.





 We climbed all the way down and back up this beast.





Phone home, anyone?





Apparently Doucki is also the land of mutant bananas.





This is part of the "Indiana Jones" hike...

... my favorite, obviously :)







He's like a monkey, that one :)


A funny thing happened on the way to the luumo...

10 months in Guinea, and a number of funny changes have occurred.

1 _ While I may have arrived in Guinea with the intention of drastically developing race relations for the better and spreading oodles of knowledge about the United States of America, I've found myself gawking at pale-skinned people passing  through my village along with the rest of my community.  The other day, I stared at a pair of American-looking folk (the fanny-packs and croakies tipped me off) who were sitting at a booth in our weekly market (luumo).  When I realized what I was doing, I snapped myself out of it, strolled on over and very tactfully initiated conversation with...

"Hi.  What are you doing here?"

So much for manners, Kelsey.  (Sorry Moma and Gramma, you taught me much better than that.)  I gracefully recovered with...

"I mean, um, well... It's just that I don't see many white people out here.  Hi.  My name is Kelsey."

Smoooooth.

Thank goodness my new-found friends were gracious conversation partners.  They smiled, nodded, and explained that they were Christian missionaries who'd been working in Guinea for over 18 years.  We chatted a bit, but on account of the sun beating down on my poor, un-sunscreened scalp, I bought an English-French-Pular phrase book from them and retreated home.

I'm beginning to understand how strange it is to be a part of such a visibly apparent minority.




2 _ Remember how I used to joke that it would be really cool for my freckles to fuse together?  Haha-well it doesn’t seem to be as much of an impossibility anymore.

Folks, it’s HOT here.

I’ve been taking care to hydrate and lather on the sunscreen, but poor Flo is having a rough time of it.  I took her out for a bike ride (sadly, no, she can’t reach the pedals so she has to run alongside me) that lasted about 20 minutes.  By the end of it, she was running from spot of shade to spot of shade, flopping on the ground, and then lugging herself back up to catch me once I’d gotten far ahead.

When we arrived back home, I left her on the porch and went inside momentarily to get her some water.  When I came back out, I found her passed out with her muzzle still in her water bowl.

So you get the picture.  Luckily, this heat will only stick around for another month or so.  For Spring Break, I plan on going to a waterfall-filled valley in the Fouta with a couple other volunteers.  Swimming will be a welcome luxury.



3 _ In my former life, I must have been a carpenter.


        Yours truly built this rickety shelf...



...and just last weekend, converted a busted table into this lovely clothing shelf.





All this accomplished with sandpaper, a piece of re-bar (no crowbar available), hammer, nails, and a Swiss Army knife saw.


  IKEA, 
          eat 
                  your  
             out.


You might think I'm bragging (ok, maybe a little bit), but what I really want to call attention to is that I still have a good amount of time on my hands.  I've finally put forth the grant proposal for our computer center project, so all there is to do now is wait.


4 _ My students continue to delight, amuse and frustrate me every day.  Absences, tardiness, and general teenage-hormone-induced surliness makes me want to douse them all with a cold bucket of water sometimes.  Truly, I'm amazed at my high school teachers - you all must have had more patience than Mother Theresa.

Despite the frustrations, my spirits are frequently lifted by their enthusiasm, earnestness, and unwittingly absurd (and often poetic) statements like these:

"I burned my journal before she read it."

"She left me before I hated her."

"I ate my father last night."

"Ronaldo was angry because you slept with Roberta."

"If I go home, I will cook my wife."

"I dream to earn a lot of money, to fly a plane to Jamaica, and to promote full racial equality for whites and blacks in America."  (We'd talked about Martin Luther King the previous week.)


And, when I caught a student cheating on a test and took away half of his total...

"FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO NOT DO THIS." 

They're a good-hearted bunch, and they can sure make you smile :)


That's all for now.  To sum it all up, I'm doing well, staying healthy, and trying to come up with a plan of action for this summer.  It will most likely include many art projects (MURALS!!!), working out the details on my computer project, and beginning a waste-removal and recycling initiative in Ditinn. 

I'll keep ya posted.

<3