The Double R

My Peace Corps Service began when I arrived in West Africa in March 2011, and today I officially completed my Close-of-Service (COS) and am getting ready to head back to the United States of America as a Returned Peace Corps Response Volunteer (RPCRV).

Three stops, two plane changes, 9,500 miles (15,200 km)

Finishing with my Peace Corps service and leaving West Africa is bittersweet, but I'm also really looking forward to seeing family and friends back home. My paperwork is done, my flights are booked, my good-byes have been said, I'm mostly packed, and I feel ready to go.

Adieu, Peace Corps ~

And now I'm somewhat at a loss as how to wrap things up. I feel grateful to have so many wonderful and supportive people in my life, and could devote an entire blog to thanking everyone - relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues, drivers, host families, Volunteers, complete strangers - who has helped me out, mailed me things, fed me, given me gifts, sent me messages, kept me company, or wished me well. So many thank-yous.

For now, I'll just say that I hope you enjoyed the blog, and I wish you and your family good health, good luck, safe travels, and a very happy year. À la prochaine!

Weekend Update: Sunday

Here's a blog post that I wrote last summer but has been sitting around in my draft folder ever since:

On Saturday evening it started raining, and it rained all night long. By Sunday morning the thunder and lightning had subsided but it was still raining steadily and so laid around reading, took my time making breakfast, and then puttered around, watching TV and going through the newsletters and paperwork that Peace Corps sent out and wondering if it was just going to rain all day long.

It did stop raining by late morning, so I finally got dressed and sunscreened, picked up some tea and sugar, and headed over to visit Halimatou, a young woman who invited me over last week. I've seen her a few times, hanging out with the ladies who sit on the corner, selling roasted peanuts, fried plantain, fried fish, and shiny little packets of cookies. I stop by there pretty regularly to buy roasted peanuts, and occasionally some plantains, and a few of the women speak Pulaar. My Pulaar isn't that great, but Halimatou  was sufficiently impressed/entertained and so she pointed out her house and told me to come by on Sunday for lunch, so I did. I brought some tea and sugar with me, we hung out on the porch, chatting about this and that in Pulaar (and, when I was stumbling with my words, in French) and drinking sachets of extremely cold water and watching the little kids enthusiastically but inefficiently draw water from the family's well-maintained pump. Sarah, the other Response Volunteer in Kankan, came over too, and stayed for what turned out to be an extremely delicious lunch.

Me and Halimatou

They gave us a ridiculously large plate of steamed rice and a small vat of amazing peanut sauce - the kind that's rich and savory and full of vegetables and fried fish balls. The fish balls were the good kind, too, made from fresh fish pounded with peanut meal, onions, garlic and spices and, best of all, completely free of the wiry little bones that most people don't bother to pick out before pounding everything up. It was the best peanut sauce I've had since I arrived in Guinea, and I happily accepted an invitation to come back again next week.

Celebration!

The Peace Corps Volunteers of Kankan are big on celebrating holidays, especially American holidays, and few things are as quintessentially American as Thanksgiving. Except for maybe Thanksgivukkah. 

We improvised a menorah on the second night of Hannukah and then celebrated with latkes, an improvised menorah, and an entertaining re-telling of the miracle of the oil. The evening's festivities included an inflatable turkey and plenty of palm wine (which turned out to be far too vinegary for anyone's taste) but we waited until Saturday for our big Thanksgiving-style dinner 

All the shopping and cooking went well because Carolina handled all the planning, and because there happen to be a lot of good cooks in Kankan. I was in charge of frying onion rings, which was a sweaty job made much more pleasant by bringing the gas burner outside. Since we were inside the walls of the Peace Corps office compound we were all free to wear running shorts and above-the-knee skirts, which also helped with the heat. Deb helped serve the onion rings, which, despite being non-traditional, were a big hit. 

All in all it was a really pleasant day, everyone helping out and having fun - very Thanksgiving-ish. The menorah and turkey decorations were set up right next to the spiderwebs and ghosts left over from Halloween, and then we added some sparkly Christmas decorations that had arrived early to the ones that were still on the shelf from last year, and the whole place started to look like a party were the theme was just Holidays. Thanksgiving dinner turned out amazingly well - roasted chickens, mac n' cheese, garlic mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce and stuffing, salad and cornbread, pumpkin pie and brownies... the only disappointing part was how we all got so full so fast - Thanksgiving fare is so much more dense, so much more filling than rice and sauce! We did the best we could, and by the end of the night most everything perishable had been eaten, which is good because we don't have much in the way of refrigeration and it'd be sad to see it go to waste. 

So, Happy Belated Thanksgiving, everyone! Also, here are a couple photos from last month, while we were in Conakry. On the left, Lane was re-heating some polenta that had been gifted to us by the Country Director, and we got creative with it. Sarah J. and I are on the right, enjoying a lovely sunset on the beach immediately behind the Conakry office. Good times. 

Note: Despite the photographic evidence, I don't actually wear that blue-and-white t-shirt every single day. I do happen to be wearing it right now, but I'm going to change before I head out to the market later.

Photos courtesy of Sarah J. and Lane G.

Gone with the Wind

I had a pleasant weekend. On Saturday I made pancakes, did yoga, cleaned up a little, and read Gone with the Wind.

This was on the cover of the copy that I read.

(Spoiler alert in case I wasn't the last person ever who didn't know anything about Gone with the Wind.)

I've never seen the movie, but I'd absorbed enough information from crossword puzzle clues and just living in America to know that it’s an epic romance about a pretty lady on a plantation during the Civil War. I knew there was a part about Atlanta burning, something about curtains, a house called Tara, and Clark Gable not giving a damn. I figured that there would be a lot of picturesque landscapes and racism and accounts of historic battles and people falling in love under difficult circumstances.

As it turned out, there were indeed long and captivatingly yonic descriptions of the countryside, and the tumult and history of the war and the deterioration of the social order all made for good reading. I was distracted but not surprised by the racism, both depicted and inherent, and kept being reminded of a part of this David Sedaris short story called Six to Eight Black Men that goes "history has proved that something usually comes between slavery and friendship, a period of time marked not by cookies and quiet hours beside the fire but by bloodshed and mutual hostility." 

The thing that caught me off guard was the ending. I just wasn't expecting “the greatest love story of our time” to finish with a fatal miscarriage and the post-mortem of a broken marriage. Tomorrow may be another day, but I still closed the book feeling slightly gut-punched. 

In any case, I found myself reading so much of the novel from the perspective of a Public Health Volunteer - I liked how often dysentery was mentioned, interested that diarrhea was given a place of prominence among the many undignified ravages of war and poverty. I liked that the notion that women invariably possess a “maternal instinct” was thoroughly dragged through the mud. I liked that reproductive health issues kept coming up – the unmet need for reliable contraception, the burden of unwanted pregnancies, the many forms of prostitution, the grim dangers of childbirth and back-alley abortions. (I feel compelled to point out that these are still very real problems for women and girls around the world.) I couldn't help but think that modern contraception and obstetric care could have saved Scarlett from resenting motherhood and Melanie from suffering horribly and dying. I feel like Scarlett would have been all about birth control. 

But I suppose that if Scarlett had been on the pill and Rhett had just talked about his feelings then maybe they would have figured things out and built a happy life together, but it wouldn't have made for such a dramatic saga. 

Also, I now really want to read/watch 12 Years as a Slave. I've been hearing wonderful things about how harrowingly good it is, and I feel like it would be a good counter-balance to Gone with the Wind's rosy portrayal of slavery and the whole master-slave relationship. 

New Computer!

Yesterday my replacement computer arrived in Kankan and I am super delighted. It's so giant (compare to my netbook) and the screen is so clean and shiny and crisp. I keep feeling like my eyes are over-focusing. 

Getting a new computer in Guinea can be a bit of a challenge - the postal system isn't reliable enough to ship anything of value, and you can't buy them in Kankan. I hear that you can buy computers in Conakry, but they're exorbitantly priced, on account (I assume) of the limited demand and expense of bringing them in to the country.

As it happened, my neighbor's friend was planning on coming to visit Guinea, and she very kindly offered to bring stuff with her. So, my mom sent her the computer (and I had a few things from Amazon sent to her house) and she packed it all up and brought it with her.

This morning I gazed at my impossibly clean computer while I enjoyed a lovely breakfast of leftover cinnamon rolls (we cooked a lot this weekend) and Malarone, and vowed to be more careful with this one. I've downloaded Skype and am starting to get the hang of Windows 8 (which has many new features, some of them completely infuriating) and am happy to one again have a portable laptop.

Stray Cats and Google

Even amid the ongoing saga of Guinea's legislative elections, the United States Government shutdown has garnered quite a bit of attention around here. Peace Corps and Peace Corps Response Volunteers are considered "essential" (insert joke about what-are-they-going-to-do-stop-paying-our-salaries-ha-ha), as are Peace Corps medical and security support staff. The most direct impact that the shutdown has had on my daily life (other than inspiring worry that by the time I get back to America there will be nothing left but stray cats and Google) is that people keep asking me to explain why my country is such a spectacular mess and I keep not even knowing where to begin.

On Sunday I went downtown to buy soap and vegetables and whatnot and lingered in a boutique to watch an early-afternoon newscast about the slow-motion circus-train-wreck of current American politics. After the segment ended, one of the vendor guys turned to me and, in a bemused voice, said "What is the matter with them? Don't they want people to have health care? This is going to be really bad for the economy." I sighed and shrugged in agreement and said "Pffft... politicians..." and was met with sympathetic murmurs; Guineans know what it's like to have a dysfunctional government, more than I ever will, probably. I think they're often just slightly aghast at how a nation as wealthy and privileged and well-established as the United States seems embarrassingly unable keep it together. As are we all, I suppose.

P.S. You may have already seen this delightful hidden message from the National Weather Service. Secret acrostics are an underutilized means of communication. Can we please pay them already?

Up in the Clouds

At this very moment I am 31,000 feet (9448.8 meters) over Mississippi. So fancy. 

In Denver I went through a relatively uneventful bag drop (some minor redistribution of shoes to keep all my bags under the weight limits) and a double security check (I mistakenly left a pocket knife in my carry-on bag and had to go back to the Post Office to mail it back to California for safe keeping) and boarded my flight to Atlanta. If all goes well I'll continue on through Paris to Guinea's capital city, Conakry, where I'll spend a few days being oriented and prepared before heading out to the region of Kankan, an area which, according to Google Maps and several friends, is verdant and lovely and exceedingly difficult to traverse. 

And now we're about start our descent, so I have to sign off.