Day 286 - So, what have I been up to? You ask. Where do I start?

Hi Everyone,

It has been almost 3 months since I last posted something on this blog. I hope you are all doing well. I hope spring is back in full force, greeting you with its warm air, blue sky and blossom everywhere, cheering you up after a grey winter as it always did for me.

Here in Guinea, we are still in the dry season, where when the sun is out, nobody wants to be out. It even feel stifling in my hut after sundown. We can go through a month without seeing a sliver of cloud in the sky, just the ever grueling sun. It finally rained once a week ago after about 2-3 months of no precipitation. The sound of stormy wind rushing through leaves never sounded so good to me, and I couldn’t get enough of the smell of the fresh moist air after the rain. I am sure all the plants agree with me.

So, what have I been up to? You ask. Where do I start?

I believe the last post was put up when I was in Conakry after IST (In-service training in Dalaba), and that was at the end of January. I had thought that I was going to write you again when I am in Senegal, but I didn’t end up going. I know it isn’t like me to pass up an opportunity to go and see new places. But I really didn’t want to break up my stay at the site into so many fragments after coming back from Conakry. If I went on the Senegal trip, I would have taught 2 weeks at the site in Feb, gone to Senegal for a week and half, teach another 2 weeks, gone to Boys Conference in Mamou for another week, then back at the site again. As it is, I am already behind on some of my classes with all sorts of school closing that pop up all the time It just didn’t feel right going off to Senegal this year. Besides there was a boy soccer tournament going on in Feb at my college, and an opening ceremony of a new hospital built by a partnership of Guinean-German NGO. I didn’t want to miss all the exciting events at my site.

The boys soccer games were much more exciting and dynamic than the girls’ and it lasted for almost 4 weeks. Each grade had a team and each team played with the other teams 2 games each. Despite of having over 100 boys in our 7th grade, they just couldn’t find 11 players to hold down the field, they never won a single game, and after they were shot out by the 9th grade in a match lost at 0-7, they gave up on the tournament mid-way. The 10th grade had quite a few good players, but had a bad lineup in one of their early matches that cost them dearly, despite of later winnings, when we added up the score, they just didn’t have enough to make to the final. The 9th grade team is just simply a solid good team, consistent in their performance, no surprise they made it to the final playing against the 8th grade team which is a fun, dynamic and energetic bunch. The 9th grade won by penalty point in the final game and took home the trophy.

I had wanted to write a blurb about what shoes the kids wear here to play soccer when I wrote about the girls soccer games, but I can’t remember if I did or not, so excuse me if I am repeating myself. It is no wonder why the africans can play so much better when they go out to the developing world with all the nicely trimmed field, best shoes and all. Here, they wear plastic sandle with strap with or without socks, run around in full force in a dirt field overgrown with short stuby shrub, dodgging goats or cows at times. But the kids have so much fun playing neverthless, and I love seeing the soccer ball taking flight in air against the blue sky, as it makes its way across the vast field.

I was pretty upset when Guinea lost to Senegal during the quarter final game in the African Cup of Nations 2006 held in Egypt, at the end of Jan into the first week of Feb. I doubt many of you have heard of it in the U.S., but it is like the Olympic game to the africans here. There is a video club in my village that bought right to broadcast the games, so I got to watch quite a few games with Guinean team. The whole village was almost in mourning and outraged at the lose of game to Senegal. Many of my kids felt that the referees weren’t being fair and might have been bought out by the Senegalese.

To close out the boys soccer tournament, the principal proposed a school fair during the day with the theme to elect Miss College 2006, which really turned out like a school performance put up by students. The election of Miss was really cheesy, it was simply just a beauty contest. The principal thought it is a way to emancipate girls, give them confidence, but the way he trained the girls (yes, he was the coach) to walk, to look, were all very unnatural. But at least he had a few students citing poems on encouraging girls to go to school, a few dance groups (the style is like the kids dancing to rap music in the U.S.), and I was in charge of working with a group of kids to perform a small theatre piece. I was against the beauty contest, but there was no way for me to go against the principal, at least the election is supplemented with other performances by students which is done here for the first time. The boy I took to Boys Conference with and I expanded a theme of a sensiblization we had done at the conference, a theme on drug where a father spend all his money on drugs and leave his family to starve. I got quite a few kids interested in doing it, and they were all natural and got really into it. I hope we can continue with this theatre group.

The boys conference was just like the girls conference, talking about all the important issues facing the young generation and how they can empower themselves, and spread the positive messages to their friends back at home. The atmosphere of the boys conference is different to girls conference, in term of the mindset of boys are much more forward thinking and more interested in improving their future. One other volunteer said it the best that the goal of Girls Conference is to instill confidence in them, where the goal of Boys Conference is help them to direct their confidence and to encourage them to become leaders in the future. I am much more happy with the choice of candidate this time than the girl I have selected for Girls Conference. I interviewed 3 boys before selecting a boy who is quite good in French and well respected by his peers, in fact he is the one who always correct my french (stuff I write on the board) during classes. No, I don’t mind at all when they correct me. I always tell them we can learn from each other.

I still feel more comfortable around my boys students than girls students when they are in a group. With girls I feel more pressured having to speak their local language and inadequate when I can’t, but with boys I feel they are more forgiving and they can also speak better in French. Also, I have more things to talk to boys about where with girls, they don’t have much interest discussing state of the country and problemes outside of their home.

So despite of me wanting to stay back to teach and gave up on Senegal trip in Feb, the workers of Guinea decided to strike for a week after my supposed Senegal trip. Eventhough I didn’t teach for a week, but with the opening of the new hospital in the village, I had enough excitment to stay. The new hospital is a continuation of a joint effort between a guinean doctor who had worked in Germany for many years and returned to Guinea, and his old German colleagues to improve his village. They formed a small NGO in Germany, and have worked here since 6 years ago, already opened up an elementary school, and a factory to make flour or process rice, and now a hospital. It’s amazing what they have done and all the hard work they have put in. They were able to collect a lot of school supplies, toys and old bicycles in Germany, monetary donations that helped them to pay for shipping all the material. The NGO founded by a small group of 6 or 7 doctors who has their regular full time jobs and take on this NGO work as a second job. I am amazed at what they have accomplished and admired their dedication despite of their disappointment when they see how little the kids really learn at the school. They were here the week of the strike and I talked to them quite a lot and helped out getting the hospital ready for the opening ceremony. We were talking mostly in English and French, and we exchanged many “growing pains” on trying to make a difference here. It’s great that they built a school and a hospital, but the lack of human resource is still such a big problem. As of right now, they still haven’t found a doctor and a nurse who is willing to come to the countryside to work. Plenty of doctors and nurses are looking for jobs in Conakry, but none is willing to come to a village. The class size is still too big for the kids to learn well.

An appaling exemple is one of my host sister who is a 4th grader at their elementary school, I was astonished to find out she can’t even write out all 26 letters of the alphabet. How did she even passed onto higher grade year after year I don’t even know. She can recite all the letters, but put the sound of a letter with writing is very difficult. With their first lanuage is more of a spoken lanuage, not written much, they grow up with seeing so few things in writting, except at school, not having the habit of studying at home and having parents who are illiterate, so many factors contribute to a single problem. I have started to work with her and two other first graders in my host family on simple ABC, but even I find that I don’t always have time everyday to work with them or not knowing the best way to teach them, so they will remember things.

So yes, us development workers face so much frustration and disappointment, but little result, so little that sometimes hard to justify with the effort and finance we have put in, that’s just the harsh reality. I remember questioning all the effectiveness and methods used by the developpment agencies when I was back in the U.S., but I have learned that finding a good solution is very hard, especially when it comes to changing peoples’ thinking, we have to constantly adjust to the local situation, mentality, difficulties, going through many trials and tribulations. Like not every marriage works out, but we neverthless try.

So the strike was very organized and parallyzed the country for 5 days in Feb. I think the government and the union finally reached an agreement and the union will hold another strike if the government doesn’t follow up. The last day of the strike, I was visiting some of my students who live about an hour away from school, and all the sudden a Peace Corps vehicule came, took me back my hut, grab a few things, “evacuated” me and two other my neighbor PCVs to our regional capital. There were some incidents going on in Conakry, and since we don’t have radio contact in our sites, the PC office decided to come collect us just in case. Of course, the alert was lifted the day after.

Teaching continue as usual, except I am having a stand off with my 8th graders. My problematic class. I finally walked out on them before the “spring break”, and not sure if I will continue teaching them for the rest of the semester. I don’t know what is with this group of 8th graders, a few bad apples really spoil the whole class. They are scared now that I really will abandon 8th grade and ask me to reconsider, but I am going to have to think of something to really punish the undisplined kids out 80 students in my 8th grade. I will keep you posted.

The “spring break” or Easter break (since we follow the French school system) is from the 4th of April to the 11th of the April, and then Ash Wednesday is a holiday to them, 17th of April is Easter Monday another holiday, so really we have 2 weeks off from school. For the first time, I felt that I needed to get out of my village, it was finally time. So as we have talked about, my neighbor PCV and I headed out to the forest region in Guinea, which is the southeastern part of the country that borders Sierre Leone, Liberia and Ivory Coast. A region once was off limit to traveling when it was flooded with refugees resulted from civil wars in the neighboring countries. PC Guinea is still evaluating the current condition to decide whether we will reopen posts out there soon.

It took us 2 days and a 3rd day morning just to get to the regional capital of forest region, N’Zerekore from Labe. The distance between the two cities is only about 700 Km, which is about 500 miles. Normally in the states, with good road, unweighed down car, a day should cover the journey, but such isn’t the case in Guinea. Each of the first two days we got to the taxi station, bought our tickets at the 8am in the morning, we didn’t leave until 1 or 2pm in the afternoon, because we have to wait around for other passengers to fill up the car. There is no such thing as reserve ahead of time, or a car leave at a certain time with or without enough passenger. A car will not leave unless it is filled, which usually takes 5 or 6 hours after you’ve got to the taxi station. Once they got enough passengers, they load up the top of the car with 3 feet high of baggages, sometimes strap live chickens and goats along with it, if they can’t fit in the trunk. I have yet to see a cow, but that might just because it is too much trouble to lift a cow over a car. A corpse in coffin can also be sent on top of a taxi or minibus along with baggages. So, tons of baggages, with at least 9 people in a car that is made for 6 people plus a driver really can’t go very fast up and down the pothole ridden mountaineous roads. After the car is loaded up, the driver will go get gas and make a few last minute repairs before heading out, and that takes another hour. It gets me why they don’t do it before, but I stop asking some of the questions. Once we got on the road, we usually stop at least 5 times, to fix here and there on the car. The cars are so beat up by the bad road, and unbelievable amount of weight it has to carry compare to our standard, they needs constant repair along the way. The worst stuffed ride we had was in a station wagon, with 3 ladies and 4 small kids in the back seats; 2 really fat ladies, me and a man in the middle seat; the driver in his seat, a man stradled the gear shift, my neighbor PCV and another man with his son in his lap in the front; 4 live goats piled up on top of each other behind the rear seats; and of course tons of baggage on top of the car. The whole 10 hours ride I sat at the edge of the seat not able to lean back, so people next to me can fit. Now, you understand why I travel with my bike as much as I can, and not eager to go anywhere here because the way they stuff you up in a bush taxi.

So would I recommend the forest region, hmm, that’s hard to answer, yes, if you can afford to hire a driver and a good car (preferably 4x4) to go wherever you want to go, but if you can only afford the bush taxi ride like the rest guineans, I am not too sure. The problem for me is there is no basic tourisme set up and activities for people to do (I wasn’t about to just walk in some jungle on my own), and in someway, the pain of getting out there is just not worth it. There are plenty of potential to develop tourism, but Guinea isn’t ready for it and it wasn’t worth developping it during last 10-15 years of civil war in the neighboring countries. The landscape isn’t that much different from my region, except with more bigger trees and tall palm trees. I guess the region was more impressive before the influx of refugees and subsequent result of deforestation. But it was neverthless nice to get out to other parts of Guinea, experience what other guineans go throught however hard it is, ate lots of ice cream and yogurt in N’Zerekore, having fried fish and plantain, buying up lots of traditional masks, and splurged on a really nice resort type hotel the last day there. A hotel used mostly by NGO workers, equipped with a european style restaurant, a large outdoor pool and a classy dance club. So, we treated ourselves the last day there before heading back to reality. The trip also drained a big hole in my pocket, with the cost of transport that takes up 1/3 of my expense, the other 1/3 is on souvenirs. The money I spent in one week on vacation can last me about 8 months in my village. Yes, I feel quite guilty when they are people in my village only eat one meal a day. I really don’t know how I should think sometimes.

So, I should be heading back to the village in a couple of days, and probably will stay there till the end of school year which is probably end of May, or sometimes in June, nobody really knows for sure.

So, keep well and until next time...