Day 193 - Oh, please let me catch that chicken...

Oh, please let me catch that chicken...

I have to rate this one as one of the top funny moment of my time Guinee so far. Today I visited some students and their families who live about 30 min. bike ride away. I not only came back w/ 20 some oranges, but also a chicken. I tried really hard to refuse the chicken that one of my student's grandfather offered, because I know meat isn't in great abundance here, but it was one of those situations where it would be rude to decline. So I rode back with a chicken dangling upside-down off the handle bar. I stopped briefly to take a few pictures, but the darn thing somehow turned itself right side up and jumped off the handle bar still with its two feet tied up together. He then proceeded into the bushes off to the side of the road. You can imagine how panicked I felt. If I bought the chicken but lost it, okay, I am unlucky, but this one is a gift. Luckily there were four passerbies seeing my panicky gesturing an escaping chicken, all set out into the bush to round him up. Eventually they rounded him toward me and I caught him. The rest of the way, I just held the chicken by its two feet and rode home. Can't afford to let him escape again. 

„The Fete of Tabaski ˆ (l'Aïd-el-Adha or Aïd-el-Kebir)" (fete means festival)

The Fete of Tabaski is biggest of three fetes here in Guinea, where if each family can, they should sacrifice a sheep and share the meats with fellow villagers. The saying goes that God has demanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son to God, but when the axe came down, he sees a dead sheep on the ground, and his son is alive standing next to him. God sees Abraham's true devotion and granted his son to stay alive. The fete takes place th e 7th of the 12th month in the lunar calendar. Thank to the new principal with his seriousness to keeping school open as many days as possible, our school was only closed for 3 days instead of 1 week. The day before, the day of and the day after the fete. Again, people who can afford it make new clothes for the fete, girls getting their hair braided; boys got their head shaved. The day of the fete is again with everyone going to the large open ground for the morning prayer, then followed by visiting family and relatives in the village to wish everyone a good fete. Kids are again swarming around the main intersection asking for „sanmifo", pocket change kids usually get from adults during the holidays.; The extra entertainment this time is a local artist troupe with percussions, guitars and local drum called „Tamtam" outdoors in the afternoon. People will just gather around them and dance. They played again at the dance party at the dance club that night, and it was quite nice to hear live jazzy kind of music. It's been awhile.

A side note, so I would love to buy a drum and learn to play when I have free time at site, but I've been told by the counterpart who always worked with PCVs, that it is not a good idea. I think it has something to do with that it is always man who plays drum, and sometimes they play it to call the spirits, and that just not something women are allowed to do. I am quite surprised to hear how he strongly advise me not to play it at my site knowing that he is quite forward thinking compare to many other villagers. I guess I will just have to wait for now.

„Uncelebrated holidays"

As I was telling you in my last blog that was written on Christmas Eve, I decided to stay at my site for Christmas. I did the same thing for New Year's Eve. The last week of December was the yearly „end of the year one-week break" for all schools, so I didn't continue teaching, but did hold review sessions for high school entrance exam in the afternoon at my house for whoever wanted to come. I was surprised to have 5 students showing up for it. Of course, they are the students who pay a lot of attention already in class. New Year's eve happened to fall on a Saturday, where there is the weekly dance party at my site, so I went with one of my female student. People here just don't celebrate the beginning of a new year. Then 3 days late was my birthday which was a work day for me, other than cooking a little bit of fancy meal for myself, I didn't do anything else. I was too busy to invite students over and cook and eat with everyone.

I did cook with help of my host brother who is a 8th grader a week later during the Fete of Tabaski. We made two sauces and rice and had some students over. One sauce is Mafi Tiga, which is the peanut sauce. It is made with peanut butter, crushed dried fish, a small can of tomato paste, onions, salt, maggie, and stewed for a long time until a thin layer of oil appears on top of the sauce. People pour a couple of ladle of that over rice and that's a meal. The other sauce is soup sauce, which is almost always with some kind of meat. So, that's when I gave death sentence to the chicken I got. The kids of my family slit its throat, plugged its hair, and cleaned it out. You wouldn't find a teenager or a kid under 10 years old who knows how to do it in the states, but here in Guinea, they learn it from very young. I just watched, because I really didn't want to get my hands dirty. Here cooking is a group effort, because we have to do everything from scratch, and plus the kids don't have anything else to occupy themselves with. When there is food, everyone love to sit around and watch. When I cook outside, I will get an audience of 4 or 5 kids from my family or not, and I'd better make sure I have extra to share, otherwise it just doesn't feel right. So, back to the soup sauce, I started with lightly browning the chicken pieces in oil with onion, then add water, tomato paste, maggie, other veggie that's good for stewing if one can afford it, in our case was potato and tomato. Then we just left it over the fire for almost an hour. At the same time we also cooked up 2 large po t of rice. All these cooking took the whole morning. After we ate in the family, we just offer a bowl of rice and some sauce to whoever came by. The pot Guinean use a lot is a large cast iron pot.

„Explanation of prices here"

People back in the U.S. always ask if I need any money or I can afford things. I feel very comfortable at my site. I can most things I need and they aren't expensive. After a few months at site and back to Conakry again, even though I have the money to buy some of the things, I cannot bring myself to buy them. Because the price difference between locally grown food and imported food are just so drastically different. I broke down and bought a large can of peach (my favorite canned fruit) and it cost almost 7000 GF. I've been feeling guilty ever since, because that's enough money to pay for rice and all the condiments to make a peanut butter sauce or leaf sauce for my family of 8 at the site. So, although there are a lot of western products I can buy here, I can no longer justify buying them. 

„Soccer"

Despite of the low turn out of girls, attendance for the training, we were able to gather enough girls to complete a two-week tournament, which ended last Saturday. It almost didn't happen because my principal from day one wasn't too supportive of just a soccer tournament for the girls without the boys‚ soccer tournament happen at the same time. He is very serious with straightening out the school but when it comes to girls empowering type of activities, I don't think he fully comprehends the need of them.

During the tournament, I run into some problems with girls showing up late for game or love to dispute the rulings in the field, or try to substitute players from outside of the school to play for the college. I was a bit annoyed and feeling that girls whether wanted to play or not, behaved in a way that they aren't appreciative of the effort we put in to organize this tournament. My co-originator Saidou who worked with the last volunteer was more patient, calm and forgiving than I am. He is still a university student, here on break. I could learn to be more patient like him. He also did more work than I to make this tournament happen, partly because he has more experience, also we as PCV are suppose to assist Guinean to help themselves, not just doing things for them, so I was very happy to stay in the background and follow his lead. We gave out prizes to the winning team and held a dance party to close the tournament the night of the final. The money we made at party was perfect to reimburse the cost we each incurred to run the tournament. Another funny moment is when we had to count out the money of the ticket sale (I was in charge of selling tickets) for the party, we did it in the bush by the club, squatting down in the moonlight, with a couple of flashlights, laid out wads of money on a handkerchief, counted the money and divided it between the DJs and organizers. I felt like we were like drug dealer making some deals in the shadow. Pretty funny. This is doing business Guinean style in the village, no offices, no electricity.

So it has been exciting to follow the African Cup of Nations soccer tournament that is held in Egypt. So far Guinea won 2 games and will play Tunisia next, and qualified for quarterfinal. I hope I can watch at least one more game with Guinea when I get back to the site. I just love the energy people have for this game. Every game Guinea plays is like a super bowl game.

„Miscellaneous"

So our inter-service training coincided with semester final exam perfectly, which is why I can come to Conakry to have a mini vacation and not have to worry about missing classes. The days leading up to the training was hectic with finishing up the tournament and write out 4 exams for physics. The way they arrange kids to avoid cheating is sit two students of different grades at each table. We have too many kids and not enough teachers, tables and classrooms to do one student per table. For 7th graders, we have over 200 of them, so they are split up into 5 classrooms. So for 7th gr ade, I have to handwrite out the exam 5 times for each of the teacher who proctors the exam to copy it on the board. No, we don't have copy machine here to provide a copy to each student. It was a pain because I had to do similar thing for the other grades.

I wonder how much the kids have cheated though, because they can still try to sneak in cheat sheets or write out stuff on their cloth and body. My neighbor PCV said that for some exam they took over an hour just to „frisk" students for cheat sheets and settle everyone into their seats before starting the exam.

A few elementary schools in my sous-prefecture receive food from World Food Program where they provide lunch to kids and give 2 bottles of oil to girls in 4th-6th grade. Oil is expensive and they are hoping by giving oil to girls will help keep girls in school. Unfortunately the teachers in one school have been stealing food from the students and were found out by the parents. The teachers are mad that they are found out and taking it out on the kids. The kids in my family go to that school, so I am pissed off as well. How is the condition ever going to change here if people steal from their next generation? I am hoping to assist the WFP in my site to monitor the schools periodically, to avoid things like this from happening again. Which bring me to think how much there is to do here and how little time I have left, just a year and half. Some might think it is a lot of time, but things move so slowly here, so a year and half isn't very long to see the fruit of your labor. I am not ruling out the possibility of staying for a 3rd year and get some experience in working with NGOs.

I've got a lot of work ahead of besides teaching, like continuing HIV/AIDS education and reaching out to parents to educate them on importance of school and what they can do to help us. So I will leave you here and report to you again soon.

Take care all!

Bonnie