I arose at 8:30am, after an unusually long night's rest, made breakfast (rice porridge and bananas), and then prepared various buckets, washboards and soaps to do laundry.
I exited my house, set down the buckets on the ground outside and was immediately greeted by a chorus of disapproving clucks and sighs. Looking up, I saw my host family neene shaking her head and chuckling to herself. I put on my best innocent foreigner face and asked meekly "Ca va?"
Matron Bingui dutifully set down her breakfast tea and bread, marched over to my porch and told me that there would be no laundry-doing or even body-washing today. Looking up at the sky, I expected to see the four horsemen of the apocalypse galloping down with umbrellas in hand because of the impending hurricane of cataclysmic proportions, but there was not a cloud to be seen.
So, I asked "Et... pourquoi?" Matron Bingui explained that a baby had been born in the wee hours of the morning today. Thinking that perhaps this was some sort of Ditinnois custom, I nodded and very sagely added "Oh." But friends, Matron Bingui was not finished. She continued to explain that upon exiting his mother's womb, the baby spoke, and thusly decreed that there should be no washing or pumping of water today.
. . .
I have no analysis of the anecdote above because, in the event that this child is in fact a divine being, I don't wish to incur his wrath by questioning his very first proclamation. Furthermore, in the immortal words of Thumper, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all."
Oh, I found out later that the baby wasn't born in Guinea, but in Cote d'Ivoire. The parents are somehow related to people in Ditinn, who are somehow related to people in a village about 100km away where two other volunteers reported being similarly forbidden from pumping water. News travels fast, but only between kin since apparently we were the only volunteers put under such H2O restrictions. Suffice it to say that this is perhaps the most bizarre story I have heard to date.
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Friends, it's only been about a million and one years since I last posted a blog. I promise this won't become a regular occurrence. How can I promise such a thing? Well, because this blog post is comin' at you from the sunny, windy, and rain-sprinkly valley that yours truly calls home. That's right, kids. I'm interwebbing from the comfort of my own home (thank you, internet key)!
Remember how I was worried that summer would be boring? Ha! Let's run through the past 3 months...
July 4 - July 28: Helped out with Pre-Service Training for the new group of education volunteers.
August 12 - August 31: Taught a Youth Entrepreneurship Class for high school and college students who were spending their summer vacation in Ditinn. Also worked with Alimou on Ditinn's electrification project!
September 1 - September 3: Went to Conakry to buy laptops for our high school!
September 4 - September 18: Returned to PST to help out with Practice School, G24's swearing-in ceremony and subsequent installation.
For the past 4 days I've been familiarizing myself with the computers and with Windows 8...
Please help me, I seem to have become technologically inept.
Also finished illustrating the children's book I started a while back. The title is "Finda and Djak Learn About Malaria." Here's a little sampler...
My friend, Alpha, translated the French into Pular. Now all that's left is drawing, coloring and laminating!
* Fun fact: "lamination" is "plastification" in Guinean French. Makes sense, huh?
I understand that it's not the easiest to get news on Guinea, so let me give you a little update. Legislative elections were originally scheduled for early July, then they were postponed to September 24th to allow ample time for negotiation between the political party leaders. In my understanding, the main points of contention are whether or not to count votes cast by Guineans living abroad, and which organization will be charged with ultimately tallying the votes. Now, September 24th has come and gone, still no election. However, it seems that Guinea is getting closer to carrying them out in a fair and organized fashion. The U.N. has sent a representative to work with the major political leaders, and the general attitude (at least in Ditinn) seems to be becoming more and more positive towards the election process. Now the election is scheduled for September 28th.
(At the time of this posting, election day has passed uneventfully, barki Allah.)
But enough of elections! I have exactly 1 year left in my contract. 15 months have taught me many things, two of which I've been reflecting upon quite a bit lately: human touch and the art of talking to strangers.
Within the past 2 months, I started an e-mail exchange with a group of students at a school in Maine. Peace Corps has this nifty "World Wise School" program that connects currently serving volunteers with students in the U.S. Also got in touch with one of my professors from BC, who is running an awesome high school program that focuses on cultural awareness/global proficiency. So in an effort to introduce myself and share some important aspects of my service here, I've been writing, rewriting, deleting, and writing letters all over again.
Turns out that it's rather difficult to put this thing into words. Then again, maybe Mefloquine is just muddling my diction. (Kidding, Mom! Apart from the vivid dreams, Meflo has had minimal side effects.) One of the questions posed to me was about the invisible aspects of culture. Immediately, I thought about touch:
Upon my arrival in Guinea, the first cultural difference that really struck me was our perception of touch. The first few days in-country were a whirlwind, and before I knew it I was sitting alone in the dimly-lit salon of my host family, a steaming plate of rice and fish staring me in the face.
After evening prayer, my host father, mother and sister joined me for dinner. Within a couple of minutes my host brother, Ahmed, came home with his friend, Boubacar. They explained that they'd already eaten, and proceeded to sit down on the couch to watch the news (it was one of those rare evenings when the electricity was actually functioning for longer than 5 minutes!). After a while I looked over and noticed that Ahmed and Boubacar were holding hands. Now, if we see two teenage boys cuddling up next to each other in the U.S., we generally think that they're boyfriends, n'est-ce pas? However, homosexuality being illegal in Guinea, I knew this couldn't be the case. Since my French was nowhere near developed enough to allow me to pose a question tactfully, I decided to wait to ask about it later.
As training progressed, I noticed more and more hand-holding, cheek-kissing, and cuddling between men and women (most often same-sex, male-female hand holding was rare). I was introduced to the insanity that is a bush taxi ride, where you cram between 10 and 14 full-grown adults into a miniscule car and proceed to speed down unpaved and pothole-ridden roads. On such a ride, the majority of your time is spent in someone else's lap. At first, I was horrified. Everyone else in the car was perfectly content, to my surprise. Babies were often taken by strangers to make extra room for bags and buckets of food (sometimes a live chicken or two), arms were draped over arms, heads leaned against unfamiliar shoulders, and so on. It became clear very quickly that Guineans simply do not have the same concept of personal space that I do.
In our culture, where touch is often sexualized to an extreme, it seems that people often fear even the most accidental brushing of arms. I know that I've apologized for touching someone's hand in the checkout line at the grocery store, and I ask you, what on earth was I apologizing for? More often than not, touch in Guinea is something nice, warm, well-intentioned, and a pure and simple necessity when it comes to public transportation. It's taken a bit of getting used to, but I'm now comfortable walking hand-in-hand with my friends, my coworkers, and even my supervisor.
As for talking to strangers, well, I will confidently challenge most anyone back in the States to a stranger-conversation competition. Yes friends, talking to unfamiliar people no longer makes me break out in a cold sweat. Living in a place where everything is new and different has taught me how to craft a story out of nothing, how to be comfortable simply staring sometimes (mainly at children or the batty old lady who always asks me to cook ridiculous things for her), and how to inseminate a pregnant silence with a question that, with time, will give birth to a marvelously interesting dialogue (e.g. "Why do children fart?" or "How do sorcerers hypnotize people?" or "What if dogs could talk?"). Of course, sometimes my best efforts fall flat and I end up tongue-tied and blushing red from embarrassment, but thankfully these instances seem to be more endearing than not to my neighbors.
That's all for now, folks.
p.s. I'd like to take a moment to thank Matt, Claire G, Claire R, Dima and Michelle, Natalie, and my parents for sending me care packages and letters. I've written you all replies, but am never certain that they'll arrive in a timely fashion.
p.p.s. A big WELCOME to Alicia M and Travis B (sorry Alicia, it's a little belated for you), who have recently joined the Peace Corps family! They're in Namibia and Cameroon, respectively. If you know these two spectacular human beings from BC (or elsewhere I suppose, I just don't know how we could all be connected but that's neither here nor there), PLEASE send them some e-mail/handwritten letter/care package love! Though we may be hundreds or perhaps thousands of km away, I'm happy to be on the same side of the ocean with you two.
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