New Year's Eve

Here are some photos of New Year's Eve! A bunch of Peace Corps went dancing, and we met up with my neighbor Halimatou and her friends, and even though the DJ was terrible it was really fun.

PCVs Michelle and LaRocha

PCVs Yé and Kenny and LaRocha

My neighbor Aissatou and I 

Me and Halimatou

Halimatou and Friends

Happy 2014 everybody! 

White Elephant Wallet

Since I'm catching up on photo uploads, this is the wallet that I got from Michelle at our Kankan Christmas White Elephant gift exchange. 

It wasn't a real White Elephant - there was no stealing and swapping of gifts - because no one wanted to take gifts away from people who seemed really happy with what they chose, like I was with this wallet. Michelle had it made by one of the local artisans, and it has that little map of Guinea. So cool! 

Kankan Christmas!

Here are a few photos from the wonderfully festive Christmas celebration at the Kankan house. Stacy and Carolina made the fireplace, and then Carolina and I made the Christmas tree, with a little help from pretty much everyone. 

I'm not sure why my hand is so shiny here - maybe glue? Or oil from baking cinnamon rolls? In any case, our Christmas Eve feast was magnificent, the gift exchange was fun (I got a really cool wallet from Michelle!), and, much to my delight, when we woke up Christmas morning all the stockings were filled with little candies and treat and nice things.  

 

Kankan Christmas, 2013

Most people are back from the holiday break, so the office power, water and internet are more or less back to normal, which is really, really, really nice. So, I'm off to read some e-mails and upload some more photos. Happy New Year! 

Friends & Amenities

I have some nice photos from Christmas and News Year's Eve that I would like to post, but the internet connection I'm currently using can't seem to upload or download anything, so that will have to wait.

With everyone out of town on their year-end holidays, the generator on my compound hasn't been turned on in over a week. This means no wifi, which is fine, there are cyber-cafes downtown. It also means that the water pump isn't turned on, which is more of an inconvenience. The water tank went dry nearly a week ago, and my personal water buckets ran out a couple days after that, so I'm back to fetching water from the nearest pump, just like I used to do when I lived in a village.

Happily, I still have a decent amount of electricity, thanks to the solar panels having been cleaned two weeks ago. The panels had been caked in such a thick layer of fine, red dust that they had all but stopped functioning, but now they're back to providing about eight hours of electricity every day, which is fantastic. (City power, which comes from giant gas-fueled generators, comes on about every third evening, for six or seven hours at a time.)

Hopefully my at-home internet access and running water will return next week, and in the meantime I'm enjoying the quiet afternoons, totally free of the roar of the generator. Happy New Year, everyone! 

Christmas Stockings!

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I will be celebrating with seven other Peace Corps Volunteers in Kankan. We're going to do a White Elephant-ish gift exchange, and cook a big dinner together, and lounge around and, electricity permitting, watch movies on the projector and listen to Christmas music.

As I type this Stacy and Carolina are decorating the Kankan house, and if it's anything like Halloween and Thanksgivukkah it should all turn out very festively. My contribution was making stockings for everyone out of fabric from the market and the edge of one of my nice white sheets. I was working on them out on my little patio area the other morning and a girl came over to watch me sew. After awhile she asked if I was making things for a dress and so I tried to explain about Americans and stockings and Christmas and, translated from the French, it went something like this:

"Well, so, in America when people celebrate Christmas they have these things. They are like socks but you don't wear them on your feet, like normal socks. People put them on the wall, near a little place for a fire if they have a little place for a fire. And then.... the story is that a big man comes in the night before Christmas and puts things in the sock things. Like oranges or candy. In the socks. Americans like it. You see?"

This explanation earned me a bemused smile, and she told me they looked very nice. (Once again, I strongly recommend this David Sedaris story about explaining Christmas in other countries.)

Sewing Time

They all turned out pretty well, I put everyone's names on them and am hopeful that come Christmas morning they'll be full of little bags of peanuts and green oranges and weird little candies and all the other things that qualify as stocking stuffers in Guinea. More photos to come, as internet permits.

In the meantime, I hope everyone's enjoying the holidays, where ever you happen to be. Merry Christmas!

UPDATE: Here's a photo courtesy of Michelle's iPhone:

Christmas in Kankan!

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.