Chez moi

Since many of you have asked me for either GPS coordinates or some  directions on how to Google Map my village, here you have it.


A little bit of Google and Paint can do wonderful things:

Summa Summa Summa Tiiime

Long ago, when your friend and humble narrator was just a wee lass, the prospect of summer brought with it a intoxicatingly sweet taste of freedom.

So intoxicating, in fact, that little Kelsey often lost focus in class and became even more scatter-brained than normal (Remember, Mom? Thanks for putting up with me!).

I'd forgotten just how overwhelming the approach of summer can be.


That is, until all of my students seemed to develop a very serious case of seasonal ADMAFLAYDUID.

Oh, sorry, in layman's terms that stands for...

Attention Deficit Miss Aicha, For the Love of Allah, You're Driving Us Insane Disorder.




Nothing is more ego-deflating than when your students find a piece of mouse poop on their desk to be more entertaining than you.  While all other classes had long since finished their coursework, I met with Terminale students right up until their national exams.  It was tantamount to an extra 30 days of torture for some. 

Then again, it was a necessary move, considering the national exams were moved up by a whole month.  Normally scheduled for late June/early July, the national Brevet was held May 27-June 1st, followed by the Baccalaureat June 6th-10th.  In order to allow the regional department of education ample time to prepare test sites and materials, this meant that all our grades and review sessions had to be launched into warp-speed so they could be finished by the first week of May.  In the midst of all this chaos however, both students and teachers maintained a surprisingly positive attitude.  I was slightly more frazzled, but then again, I'm the newbie. 

Here's a cartoon I doodled in my journal, which I think aptly captures my sentiments towards the end of April...

But hey!  They finished their exams and now we're all free for a few* blissful months!

* a few = June, July, August and September

What am I going to do with all the free time?

First things first, we're planning training sessions for the incoming stage.  My responsibilities include reworking the TEFL program into 9 sessions for our math and science teachers.  Since most everyone, regardless of their primary job description, winds up teaching English in some capacity at their site, we want to offer a basic introduction to language instruction and materials design.

Never thought I'd be doing this but, truth be told, I'm eating it up!




After training I'll be heading back to site for a few weeks and also training for the 1st Annual Tour de Fouta.


What's the Tour de Fouta?



Well, instead of France, we have the mountainous and beautiful and (partially) paved Fouta Jallon.


Instead of French, we have... okay, so that's the same.


Instead of Lance Armstrong, we have Geoff and Ben, and Carlos and Shane - our resident biking fiend duos.


Instead of steroids, we have Jus-Jus packets to add that extra little kick to our filtered and bleached well water.



While I will not be competing in the race from Mamou to Labe (some 144 km), I will be riding at a more leisurely pace with another volunteer throughout the 2 day tour.


Wish me luck!



Too late to 'polagize?

So, I’ve been a terrible blogger.

The first step towards recovery is admitting you have a problem, right?

Before you call off our friendship and close this window to go peruse stumbleupon or whatever new-fangled website they’ve come up with recently, let me share a story with you…

It begins in a quiet, picturesque village nestled in the heart of a fertile little valley.  National exams have just concluded and everyone is settling down to a much-deserved period of mental repose.  All except your friend and humble narrator.

Why, you ask?

Well…

BECAUSE OUR PROJECT GOT APPROVED, THAT’S WHY!!!!

The application has been sent, the forms have been signed, and the project is soon to be posted on the Peace Corps website.  We’re in need of about $1,800.00 to create a Learning and Information Technology Center, the goal of which is to provide a venue for computer literacy courses, and to allow students and teachers to access online learning resources.  

As things stand, our elementary and high school students have very few reading materials (and if they do, they were generally printed in the 1970s). Aside from helping educators inject some up-to-date classroom activities and literature, this will also give us a chance to connect students and teachers in Guinea with students and teachers in the ole U.S. of A.

If you’re reading this and thinking “Heck yeah!  How do I sign up??”, send me an e-mail!  

If you want to donate to the project, not only are you sure to earn some great karma points, but I will also personally write you an ode.

Seriously.  I’m getting pretty good at them.

In other “Life in Ditinn” news, Flo is a big, happy, and chub-ster again, thanks to the heaping bowls of rice my neighbor gives to her every day.  I’m going to have to up the mileage on our runs from now on, because right now she gets tired after running a couple circles around the cow in our compound (as opposed to her usual 12-20 laps).

All in all, life is going well.  The rains have set in once more, which reminds me of home.  Though generally, you don’t have sopping wet chickens blown into your living room when it storms in Tacoma.  Nor-Easters even pale in comparison to the intensity of these rains.  The other day while walking to school, I was caught in a storm (imagine, if you will, black apocalyptic-looking clouds appearing out of nowhere), and so was forced to run for shelter in a nearby “Credit Rural” building.  I spent the next half hour waiting for the rains to abate, in a dark room, sitting awkwardly across the desk from the manager as he filled out forms using a leaky pen and a sputtering flashlight beam.  I suppose that’s one nice thing about monsoons – they bring you into contact with folks with whom you’d otherwise have no real business interacting.  That, and they produce mangos the size of your face.

Note to the potential adventurer: Never eat an entire grafted mango before going on a 3.5 hour bike ride up mountains.  The idea of eating something that looks like a dinosaur egg is awesome.  Later feeling like a miniature velociraptor is going to rip its way out of your stomach is not.

Now that school has ended, I’ve been keeping myself busy with (you guessed it) home-improvement projects and in-service trainings.  On the home-improvement front, I have now successfully crafted a utensil-holder and a dog travel-crate, and I have also screwed innumerable screws in half and broken two hacksaws.  Guinea has apparently bequeathed me the strength and clumsiness of a she-hulk.  Go figure.


On the in-service trainings front, I just completed a 3-day conference called the Youth Entrepreneurs Training Program.  It was excellent, and I hope to begin offering courses this August!  The plan is to take on a student intern or two to help me run the LIT Center at our school.

As I write this (quite scattered) blogpost, I am sitting in a hot and humid office in Dubreka.  If you’ll recall, that’s where I spent the first 3 months of training.  Well, we’re getting ready to welcome the new group of education volunteers, due to arrive in July!  I’m psyched to begin training the language and technical teachers, and to help with organizing the new stage’s training schedule.  This also means that I will be around computers more frequently, and thus able to post blogs more than once every three months.

So, pretty please, don’t write me off as a complete blog failure yet.

Deal?

Peace and love,

K