Rainy Season, Hot Season, Campaign Season

When I started writing this post a few days ago, Guinea's much-delayed legislative elections were scheduled to happen tomorrow, and the BBC had just posted an election overview in a Q-&-A format. As of this morning, the elections have been postponed until September 28th and the BBC article, while still informative, is already a little out of date. (Thank you, BBC, for knowing that Guinea exists.)

So far, election-related activities haven't really disrupted my day-to-day life here in Kankan. I went to the market yesterday morning and there were banners and streamers hanging here and there, but it was pretty much just business as usual. On days when there are rallies or campaign events I don't need to go downtown, since my place, the offices, and decently-stocked boutiques are all just down the street from each other. Very convenient.

There have been some problems in far-away Conakry, but the only upsetting election-related thing I've personally witnessed is that some people express support at political rallies by piling onto cars and motos and careening around, occasionally crashing and getting hurt and just generally disrupting traffic. I've seen three moto accidents so far - all minor, all from a distance - but I've also been avoiding all the main roads and round-points as much as possible.

Photo courtesy of www.thisfabtrek.com

Basically, picture this car, with this many people on it, swerving madly down main street, everyone yelling and clinging and one - sometimes two - wheels coming off the ground. It's a terrible idea, and, as one of my Guinean co-workers put it, "The candidates don't care if they get hurt! It's pointless, they'll fall and die and it won't change anything, the politicians will never even know. (Disapproving sound.)" It's dismaying, but I suppose it's not like Guinea is the only place on the planet where people express discontent and/or enthusiasm through reckless behavior.

In any case, one of the best things about Guinea is that people here are generally really nice to foreigners, and campaign season hasn't changed that. (Upon arriving at the market the other day, I realized that not only had I forgotten my bike lock, but I also had no idea where to buy flour in bulk, and, after watching me stand there awkwardly for a minute, a couple vendor ladies greeted me, asked me what I was looking for, offered to watch my bike, and pointed me toward the flour vendors. Very nice.) Peace Corps has instituted travel restrictions and daily communication checks, but they're not worried that PCVs will be the target of political violence, more that some hapless PCV could be caught in the path of an unruly protest (or a speeding moto) and get injured. For the time being, we're just being told to stay at our sites, go about our business, keep our phones on, and avoid rallies and other large gatherings of people, which is pretty much what we'd be doing anyway. 

Pizza Party!

Yesterday was PCV Kenny's birthday and he, PCV Michelle and I all got together to celebrate with pizza from scratch and cake from a box. (Cake from a box is one of those things that I never really appreciated until I moved to West Africa. It tastes like America.) It's really nice to have other Americans around for birthdays, since birthdays aren't really a thing in Guinea. Many people here don't know their exact birth date, and people who do know the date don't generally attach any particular significance to it. Celebrating a birthday is so individualistic, I suppose that in many ways it's a very American thing to do. 

In any case, it was only the three of us because all the other volunteers are stuck in village for the time being - Guinea's long-delayed legislative elections are scheduled to happen next week, and so we're all on "standfast." (Basically, that means that no one's allowed to leave their site without direct permission from Peace Corps, so that they know where we all are and can stay in communication with everyone. When I was in Senegal during their elections it was the same deal, lots of text messages and no one was allowed to leave site unless they had some sort of emergency.) 

So, it was a small party but we had a good time. The pizza turned out really well, the cake was delicious, and the power was on, which was a real treat. We're really lucky to have sitemates - being on standfast really isn't so bad when you have PCV neighbors to hang out with and cakes to bake. 

Ugly Ducks

While pets aren't really a thing here, people often do keep animals: mostly goats and sheep, chickens, and sometimes ducks. I see them waddling around the neighborhood, and I'm not sure what breed of ducks they are, but they are definitely not the sleek, adorable Mallards from Make Way for Ducklings. 

Despite spending all day hanging out in a trash-pile, these ones aren't really so bad, but some of the neighborhood ducks are really rough-looking - grimy feathers, feet caked in gutter-mud, misshapen wattles slowly taking over their faces. Poor little guys. It's sad to see a duck without a pond.

In other news, I managed to hook up a spare monitor from the Peace Corps office and am now starting to catch up on work stuff. Nothing spectacularly exciting, but it's nice to be busy again. 

Technical Difficulties

I'm sad to announce that there was a small mishap this week and now my netbook screen has gone the way of my old iBook and more generations of iPods than I care to remember. (My track record with electronics is why I tend to buy inexpensive, used iPods. They're more easily replaced.)

At first the lower right quadrant was still functional, so I could drag windows to the bottom corner of he screen, but the damage spread until the whole screen was useless. Fortunately, the hard drive still works (for the time being) and so this morning I was able to borrow the office projector to get online and a get a few things done. I still have my iPod Touch, si I can check e-mail and Facebook and get podcasts, it's just slower and less convenient, and it's hard to get any real work done on a tiny little screen. 

I'm going to look in to getting a replacement netbook, and in the meantime I'll just have to check my e-mail on the big screen.

Could be worse.

Weekend Update: Saturday

After all the time spent on the road last week it was really nice to have a weekend in Kankan. Saturday I caught up on podcasts and cleaned up my rooms, and then went over to have lunch with Fatoumata, my work counterpart, and her family. It turns out that her compound is really nice - a large courtyard with mango trees, orange trees, banana trees, and palm trees, an overgrown garden and a big covered porch. Fatoumata's worked with Save the Children for years, and her husband is also quite successful, so they have two cars and a well-furnished living room decorated with porcelain knickknacks and family photos. Fatoumata's co-wife and all of the kids were really nice - the younger ones a little wary of me at first, but they warmed up to me after awhile. (It didn't hurt that I'd brought cookies.) Fatoumata and a few of the older girls were cooking an enormous tureen of sauce and several smaller pots of fonio (a delicious couscous-like grain) over small fires beside the main house while her co-wife was looking after a couple smaller kids. (Cooking fonio is a lot more expensive and time-consuming than cooking rice, but some of her husbands relatives are in town, so it was a bit of a special occasion.)

Photo of harvested fonio
courtesy of Ecotours-Senegal

Photo of fonio prepared with onion sauce
courtesy of Intrepid Herbivores

I hadn't realized that Fatoumata has a co-wife - she's well-educated, successful and to me seems very modern and Western, so I guess I just assumed that it was just her and her husband at home. I was thinking about it and can see that there are a lot of benefits to a polygamous arrangement for modern Guineans, especially given that they generally grow up with very rigid gender roles and polygamy as the norm. Since women run the household, having co-wife means that daily tasks are shared, that there's someone to watch your kids if you get sick or travel for work, and that you have the status boost of being married to a man who's wealthy and successful enough to have multiple wives. It's not very romantic from an American perspective, but if you think of marriage as a primarily practical institution it does make more sense, and it's also just how things are for a great number of people. I do think that polygamy is an inherently unequal and unfair system, but I don't think anyone here wants to hear my opinion of their marriage any more than I want to hear what they think about my not being married. (I've never had someone make unsolicited comments on my marital status in a way that made me like them more or think more highly of their opinions; without exception it has had the opposite effect.)

In any case, I was totally pleased to be invited over to a comfortable house filled with fruit trees, kids running around, good food, and pleasant people - they even remembered that Americans tend to be particular about water sources and gave me a large chilled bottled water before I had a chance to get out my own warm canteen out of my bag. I sat on the porch and gave kids high-fives for awhile as they ran giddily around in circles, I watched half an episode of the Ivory Coast version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire with Fatoumata's husband and we chatted about important English is for NGO work (his English is very good), and I ate most of a generous plate of steamed fonio covered with a very good meat-and-vegetable sauce. After lunch all done Fatoumata gave me a ride back to my place (on her way to drop off two big lidded pots of fonio and sauce with her in-laws and friends) and I spent the rest of the afternoon running errands in the market and reading and watching TV shows on my Netbook while impressive-looking storm clouds rolled in from the horizon. Not a bad day.