Day 027 - In General...

July 25th, 2005

In general - I've gained a better grasp of where everything is and how things work here after 3 weeks into training, also feel more comfortable around my family members. I can remember now about 08 - 10 people's names in the family. I look forward to going home for dinner everyday. Most of the time I get fish in different sauces and I eat it alone with rice. The fishes are small about hand length. I get spaghetti sometimes, but I prefer rice. I finally figured out, that my family eat much later than me, and they only have rice and some sauce, not too much meat. They can feed me better food because the Peace Corps gave them money for any food. There is no way they can afford to feed me w/o PC paying for it. Right now, one bag of rice that feeds a family of 05-06 for a couple of weeks cost half of a teachers salary. I've been having peanut butter w/ bread every morning for breakfast and loving it. I actually made peanut butter myself w/ a "machine" which looks kinda like the "machine" where you crank one side and spaghetti will come out the other. Pretty neat. I do wish I have more vegetables and fruits to eat through, but they are hard to come by in my town.

They must know that I'm used to small living quarters because I'm from New York. The room they gave me is about 6 X 8, a single bed w/ mosquito net, a table and chair, with my bike in one corner. I pretty much have no other space. It gets hot in my room, so I try to study in the living room most of the time, because there is a draft, and it's also a little brighter. During the day, my family is always outside. No one really stays inside unless they are napping. I think that goes with the fact that it is a more communal culture, so they can greet everyone that walks by, also it is more breezy outside.

I'm frustrated at the moment with my progress in learning french. My family all speak Susu among each other and while I'm in school, outside of the the classroom, we always congregate together and speak English. Sometimes I feel things are just not sticking. I wonder if I'm too old to learn. I sure hope not! I am going to force myself more to speak more to a family member who is a primary school teacher to improve.

Training Days - Training is very rigorous. Sometimes I feel my brain is totally fried and my tongue is numb from attempting French. With so many long and repetitive non-language sessions there is just not enough time (to clarify day light) in a day to study, write my journal, letters or simply just sit with my family and trying my broken French on them. It would've been nice if we had some study break during the 08:00 - 17:00 school day.

A typical day would be:
08:00 - 10:00 French
10:00 - 10:30 1/2 hr break
10:30 - 12:30 PCMO medical Session
12:30 - 14:00 Lunch (it's late here)
14:00 - 15:30 Cultural/Safety/Education system, etc.
15:45 - 17:00 French or Technical French

I usually get home around 17:30, eat and shower (Then, begin sweating again!). Sometimes I go sit with my family a little in the outdoor hut which is also the kitchen. My mom and dad pretty much spend their whole day there I think. In the evenings, my siblings will congregate inside and outside the kitchen hut also. I can never sit there for too long, because it gets hot. I'm still not too good with working by candles and headlamp yet.

Washing Clothes - Is a process! And if there isn't any sun on the weekend, you might as well just forget it. I would have 2 buckets, and have to change water a lot, rinse my clothes and there is no way I'm rinsing all the soap off. I feel bad for having so much cloth to wash and using so much water. I don't let my family help me with washing, partly because I worry my clothes won't last as long if they wash it using the washboard, also I feel that they have already done a lot for me. I could use some exercise anyway, since I don't have time to do much of it right now.

Education System - So there is primary school with grades 01 - 06, then it is considered college for grades 07 - 10 where I will teach at. Upon completion the Student's take an exam "brevet", where if they pass they go to Lycee which represents grades 11 - 13. Upon completion of the 13th level they will have to take an exam to graduate from Lycee, and then another if they want to get into the public university which is paid for by the government. To encourage women to study math & Science, the government has set aside 1/3 of allotted spots to women in those areas of study. It is still a big problem here that girls drop out of school early either because they are needed at home to work or they are married off at a young age.

Regions - There are 4 regions here in Guinee:
Basse Guinee are mostly populated w/ Susu, it is coastal and humid where I am right now.
Moving east, it is the Foute region, (the Mountaineous region), cooler and very picturesque, supposedly the best place for hiking in all of West Africa. Puel populate the region here and they speak Pulaar. I just found out today that my site is in the heart of Foute region, so I'm glad to be out of this hot, humid sweaty climate soon. I heard the Average temperature is around 70. Can you Believe it!?! I can't wait.
East of Foute is Haute Guinee where mostly Malinke live here. They are very lively people who like to dance and sing more, but it is very dry hot there. I wouldn't mind having a site here but the physics site in Haute got cancelled.
The 04th region is forest region which PC isn't sending any volunteers because of earlier refugee situation from neighboring countries.

- Bonnie

Day 014 - First week of Homestay

Hi Everyone. I know it has been a long time. By the time you read this, I would've been here probably for a month. The first week was absolutely hectic and I had neither the energy or time to write anything substantial. I'm actually writing at 4am in the morning on Tuesday, July 12, 2005.

I've been getting up much earlier here. Why? you ask, especially because I always had trouble making it to work on time? That's because I go to bed @ around 9:30 or 10pm. A whole 2-3 hours earlier that what I used to sleep. It gets light out @ about 6am then it gets dark @ about 7:30pm. Since we are close to the equator (10 degrees North of it). There is no such thing as long day light anytime of the year. There is a power line in the town I'm in right now, but electricity has been out a dew months and people have a very laid back attitude, so they just let it be. I'm told if this is happening in Freetown (Sierie Leone) or Monrovia (Liberia), there will be a riot. Guinean take much of the "ce la vie", "such is life" attitude coupled with knowing how destructive violence can be from witnessing neighboring countries, so they just let things be. I suppose that's good and bad.

After a week of "vacation" or pre-service training orientation, well it looked like a vacation now to me, we are adopted to our home families here in a town by the coast. There was a n adoption ceremony on July 04th appropriately setup @ the cultural center in the town. There was dancing and drumming and we also got pulled up to the front of the room to dance with the locals which turned out to be our various family members. Then there were a series of speeches which I can hardly understand, and I must mention it felt so long, because it is so hot here by the coast of Guinea. I much preferred the mountainous region which is middle of lower Guinea where our "vacation" spot is. Finally, the speeches were over, we each met with our host family. I was greeted by 2 tall brothers and had a picture taken with them in front of the stage. THen I met my host mom and 2 other younger brothers. There is one brother who is kind of the point person in the family for me, he speaks the best French also with the most education probably besides the dad. (I must add I hear the morning prayer call right now). Each of us was then ushered out of the center, with a huge family walking around is down the street toward each perspective houses. I felt like a new bride being paraded though the town.

Before getting to our host family, we were told much about what a family life is like and what some clashes we might expect, especially the part that they don't give us personal space, meaning that they worry about us if we stay in our own room for too long. anyways, my family has had volunteers before, so they are pretty good with letting me be. The first day after I got in my room, I came out straight away to "talk" to them, well, it was more me with a huge grin on my face (trying anyways) and lots of hand gestures, and 10 + other people in a small living room eager to see another "white person" or just learn about me. Yes, I'm called a white person here. I hat to take out a piece of paper and have my brothers write down each person's name age constructing a family tree to keep everyone in sight straight. I only just figured out the other day, I have 6 brothers @ sisters in my immediate family, there are lots of other family members like sons and daughters of other wives of my dad, my uncles, and aunts, etc. There is a relations of some sort between lots of people here in this town, so it seems, and they are all told to lock our doors even when we go use the bathroom. I'm lucky with the fact that "my" bathroom is indoors. I don't know if anyone else uses it, perhaps my parents, because there is a lock on the door. Really small children just go outside in the yard or in a chamber pot. My toliette (okay my spelling is going down the drain, cause it is getting mixed with Francais more & more) is a pit latrine in one corner and some space for bucket bath. The room is about 2' X 3' big I think. It is quite dark, not a place I look forward to go often, lets just put it that way. I don't mind the cool bucket shower though, very refreshing after school in the hot weather. Yes, I have a bucket of well or pump H2O, then I have a scoop to use to pour H2O over me, then lather, then scoop H2O again to rinse. Viola! You get a spanking clean Bonnie or as I'm now called "Aminata" :-) (My Guinean name). I also got my hair braided on Sunday by my sister. It is much cooler this way, keeping hair out of my face and I don't have to wash as often which takes a lot of H2O. One girl in my group has hair longer then mine, shaved her head! Same thought crossed my mind as well, but then I thought what if I get posted to a cooler site. Hmmm, I'll keep my hair for now.

First I was fed with Salad which included tomato, cucumber avocado (in abundance & cheap), onion and hard boiled egg. Oh boy, did it make me sick, but actually now that I look back, it wasn't really diarrhea, just my body getting used to the food here. (Yes, you can decided to stop reading this post if my further and future discussions of bowel movement disgust you). It's all part of a wonderful experience about living in a foreign land. Constantly worrying about eating not so clean food, have almost zero speaking ability & not being able to sleep well the first few nights as I would sweat again after my bath had made things quite difficult. The first few days, all the French I knew totally went out of the window. I was speaking like an idiot, not making much sense at all. But I think my emotional state is definitely in direct correlation with how my stomach feels. I would say ES=SS(-3) which is Emotional state (ES) is Stomach State (SS) raise to the power of -3. Yep when there are little people doing cartwheels in my stomach, my emotional state goes way down. I hit a real low the second night here, can't sleep cause too hot, afraid to eat, not have the energy to focus in class, speak like a 2 year old. I felt despair for a few hours thinking what if my stomach doesn't make it, I'm not going to master the language skills I need. Ala tantu (Grace to God as here they say in Susu, a local language we are also learning), those little people got tired, and left me at some point. Things have been rather quiet for a couple of days. I hope they stay that way.

I'm also getting better at spending quality time with my family. At first I would feel bad because I got up in the morning, my mom has breakfast ready for me, I get back from school, dinner is waiting for me, I need to showed, my brother or sister go get water for me. And these are little kids who can carry what must be 30 lbs of H2O on their head walking an avenue block. I insisted on carrying my own H2O at the end basically holding a huge gas-plastic container of H2O in front of me with both hands and having to stop after 10-15 steps. Hey at least I get some exercise. And that's the thing, between school, homework and can't do much after dark, there is no time for exercise right now. I have to take advantage of precious day light of 1 - 2 hours after school to do homework and study what we learned. So I'm learning French and how to teach In Guinea. We have to follow the French system here and work with very limited resources, plus learning technical language to teach. I am told that as a physics teacher, I'm their teacher for physics, math and French, because there are more definition and word comprehension involved. I'd better study hard! Also, I should expect my class size to be about 60. Just not enough teachers. What does education do for them if a lot of time kinds can't afford to go to school as they are needed at home to do housework, you ask? Well, I don't know for sure what the answer is either. I know that every year 5,000 top students get to go to university and that's 1 in every 6 I think who are qualified to take a national exam, the government pays for these 5,000 students college fees. And yes, there might not be jobs when they come out, or they find a way to go overseas, but they've always send money back to help out the family, not doing so would be a surprise. Does that help the country as a whole? A lot of time is needed, and lack of education is crippling, just to think, China had a huge outpour of brain in the 80's, some of them went back, and there is also much more focus on education and information exchange. it helped foreign investment also it is getting richer and stronger, well there is a moral vacuum existing with the people more focus on money in China, but I'll save that for another time. Guinea has it's own problems and that's what I am hopeful to find out. If nothing else, I will come away with why things do and don't work.

Anyways back to my family. They are trying very hard to feed me well. I've always had some meat in each meal, but I may not had wanted as of stomach trouble at first. I feel bad though, I eat better than the rest of the family. peace Corps does give each family some money for our food & H2O. For carb, it is mainly rice & baguette, spaghetti also. My mom cooks over a camp fire outside a open hut. It is open on the sides to let out fume, but cover on the top so no water leaks through. She used some charcoal to cook on Sunday when I helped out. I think that's rare. Anyway, there is just 1 or 2 pots, start with half a bottle of oil, she would fry fish or chicken, then eggplant, manioc (a root veggie denser then potato), peppers, then pour in either tomato paste or peanut butter paste, (this is yummy). Taste is on the spicy side and OILY. My goodness Carb and Fried! I'm glad for occasional stomach problems and cheap fabric and tailoring here. Although I'm eating considerably less here, about 1/3 to 1/4 of what I eat in the U.S. There really isn't any green veggies, the one they have I don't recognize. That will be tough, I love green veggies! Should have brought some seeds. (If I'm repeating myself, you must excuse me, I've written 3 pages front & Back. Michael must be cursing me at the moment) (Note from Michael: It really didn't look that long at first, but my fingers are starting to hurt).

Well, where was I, yes, my mom does so much, besides cooking for the family, she also makes extra food to sell by the house, fried dole(?) slightly sweet, quite good. Again fried starch, and I can eat as much as I want. My dad is a retired veterinarian in early 70's, like I said he is a bit sick, so my mom pretty much runs the family. I don't know who else contributes to the family financially. I guess it is a team effort, to make food and selling them. A current volunteer tells me there is no such thing as tax, so I guess there is no such thing as social security, pension, whatever. Cooking is a long process here because tools are limited and one has to fan the fire to keep it strong. The whole family pretty much congregate in and around the hut, day and night, it is cooler and you can talk to everyone that comes by. And I have to greet so many people everyday. I do it now in local language. And never shake hands with left hand, or eat with it. It's because Guinea use the water method here to clean themselves after #01 & #02 instead of toilet paper. They take a kettle in right hand, use left hand to clean, so one use if there is a kettle with H2O in a toilet instead of paper. I don't think ever can do without paper...

It is rainy season here, and when it rains it pours. It my room it sounds like the sky is falling. The roof is tin, there is a ceiling in my room. The sound is compounded by rain hitting the metal roof, it sounds like the sky is ripped apart, a ocean is pouring down, absolutely ominous but mesmerizing at the same time, it is incredible to hear the strength of nature, feeling absolutely useless/helpless. It pours then it dries quickly too if sun comes out. actually it gets cooler when it rains so it is pretty nice. Kids would still go out to play in the rain, but moi, I stay in.

We have 3 first year PCS (Peace Corps Volunteers) with us 16 PCT (Peace Corps trainees) and 4 language trainers, 2 PCMOs (Peace Corps Medical Officer) and a few other staff. The whole program is setup very well, covering all aspect of integrating us into the life here. Language, cultural exchange, ways to stay healthy, safety precautions, teaching style and methods, etc. I am quite impressed. having the first year PCV here is a tremendous help. They answered a lot of our questions & concerns. Just to think I'll be doing that to the next batch of PCT in a year.

We are also each given a bike and we rode around the town for a little while. It is really a village in my opinion with some mountains to one end, lots of very green fields around. Quite pretty.

I definitely feel like I'm going back in time, though I am not experiencing too much cultural shock, perhaps because I grew up with a lot of similar physical conditions & family life style. I played cards a few nights with my brother and sisters. They all like gathering around me when I'm out of my room regardless of what I'm doing. I better enjoy being a rock star now before the novelty wears off.

I must have tried for 30 minutes to phone my parents the other day from the post office without success. I don't think there is any internet access here.

Well, I must end here, 4-2 sided pages later. My hand is giving in I think. Please, Please, Please, S'vI vous plait, (* version in Chinese I'm guessing it says Please - Michael), write to me. About anything, with you or that little bird who likes to sit on your window sill, I miss you all and made the mistake of looking at your pictures the other day, it just made matters worse. I want to hear everything. I know I have been here for 2 weeks, but it's already feels like a life time, such a different world here, I can't explain it. Please include an extra letter stamp and an envelope with your letter if you can. I don't think I brought enough.

Love you all and wishing you all the best.

Bonnie a.k.a. Aminata

Day 003 - It is like a summer camp so far

Our flight was a bit delayed leaving NYC, stopped over Brussels, then switched plane to fly to Conakry, with a stop at Dakar.

Dakar looked quite dry in around the airport. Conakry on the other hand is very green and the earth looks quite red. It was drizzling when we landed. The rain brought out the lush color of the vegetation even more. We were greeted immediately by PC staff in Guinea and loaded bags and bags of our belongings. The airport is quite small, just one terminal. We were cheered on by lots of PCVs who started a year ago when we got out of the airport, almost like a receiving line. They wanted to provide some comic relief for us since we were traveling for a long time. Conakry didn't shock me much at all. Perhaps I am feeling numb from some past traveling to third world countries and my readings so far on Africa. Off the main road, lots of 1-story cement buildings with tin roofs, many people walking about and selling food and household items on the street, lots of trash everywhere, there is no traffic lights, some round abouts when there are two major roads intersecting together.

The PC transit house is a place for PCV to stay when they come to the capital. There are rooms with bunk beds, a living room with lots of books (mostly pop novels), and a video room with a pretty nice TV. The CD's house is in the same compound and we were invited to his home for some munchies in the evening. We met more current PCVs and other PC staffs. The house is very nicely decorated with lots of African motifs. The first night sleep was okay, not too hot, we had to sleep inside a mosquito net. Lots of tropical trees around the transit house and the ocean is just beyond the trees. The next morning we had a brief formal meeting with all the staff at the PC headquarter in Conakry, then we set out to a mountaineous region for a few days of orientation before our pre-service training (PST).

The site of our orientation is beautiful, lush green vegetation everywhere. It is much cleaner in the countryside, quiter and peaceful. The air is so fresh. We are at a school site, staying in dorm rooms and sharing public bathrooms. There are only latrines, but pretty good and clean ones. We are fed three meals a day. For breakfast we usually have baguetts and tea, lunch is salad, rice and a stew of some sort with beef, potato and carrots, for dinner we had chicken and peas. All pretty good and I have no problem adjusting to the taste. I feel like we are being quite pampered. The weather at this site is very pleasant, feels like in the high 70‚s. It would shower really hard for awhile, then bright sunshine would break out. Orientation sessions are everyday morning and afternoon, but so far they have been quite interactive and fun.

I feel very peaceful here. We played frisbee with some kids yesterday. They just had so much fun and it was very hard to stop playing with them when we had to get back to our sessions. Everything feel just right here for me, no emotional rollercoasters yet. I am feeling quite calm. I even got to do some yoga yesterday outside.

Most of us are feeling rather sick from something we ate last night. I hope it will all pass soon. I must sign off now, as I am having quite a hard time focusing with this bad headache.

I miss you all and hope you are all doing well.