"Race for Survival"

As a part of Save the Children International's global EveryOne campaign Save the Children/Guinea organized a "Race for Survival" event to raise awareness of child survival issues and to advocate for policies that benefit maternal and child health, such as increasing national spending on health and supporting access to essential health services. 

While a lot of progress has been made of the last decade, Guinea still has a relatively high infant mortality rate. For every 1,000 children born in Guinea, 126 will not live to age five. For comparison, in the United States, about 8 children out of 1,000 will not make it to age five, and in countries like Sweden, only 3 out of 1,000 children will die before age five. (UNICEF, 2011) So, there's a lot of room for improvement. 

The first day of the "Race for Survival" in Kankan consisted of a gathering of decision-makers and prominent community members, including the Governor, the Head of the Health District, representatives from various NGOs and partner organizations. The guest that everyone was most excited about was the official representative of the First Lady of Guinea, accompanied by a man from the First Lady's charitable foundation. 

The "Family Photo" from the Day of Advocacy

I didn't take any of these photos, but the guy who took my camera did a good job, and seemed to be completely comfortable about getting in there for close-ups. You can see me, or the top of my forehead, anyway, it the upper left of the doorway in the photo above. Below from left to right, we have the representative of the "Parlement des Enfants" children's group, giving a speech for the local radio, my supervisor, Fatoumata D., who is fantastic, and my colleague and same-name "tohoma" Adama D., who was in charge of getting the Day of Advocacy together. 

 

Below, left to right, are the Honorable Governor of Kankan, me, and the Official Representative of the First Lady. (They both were very polite but we didn't actually talk much. 

The Fancy Table

(One of the things that I love here is that the floral bouquets that are generally used to decorate tables and offices and whatnot are usually made with fake fruit instead of fake flowers. The little blossoms above are actually small, fake, upside-down peaches. There were two others made with apples, and in the market I've seen everything form chili peppers to bananas - someday I want to buy a mixed-fruit bouquet, but they're actually kind of expensive.)

The next day the relay-style "Race for Survival" was held at the Kankan stadium. (Save the Children held similar events were held in countries all around the world on the same day.) Local school kids raced from prizes, local officials showed up, there were radio and TV reporters, and some of my Peace Corps friends came. Michelle, below right, even got to hand out some of the prizes! Cellcom, a mobile phone company sponsored part of the event, which is why there are big red umbrellas out on the field for no practical reason.

There were speeches made about child survival and maternal health, t-shirts were given out, a military band played, the kids were all really happy, their parents were all super proud, and everyone had a good time. 

Fun fact: Lily, on the left in the photo on the right, was the wonderful who brought my fancy shiny new computer with her when she came to visit her friend (my neighbor) Michelle.

Hey White Girl!

Every single time I leave my compound, someone calls me some variation of "white girl" or "foreigner" at least once. Usually more like four or five or thirty-seven times. If I stay in my immediate neighborhood it's mostly just friendly little kids calling out "toubab" or "toubabou." A few of them even call me by my local name, Adama, and it's either cute or mildly annoying, depending on number and persistence of the kids that day. (When PCVs talk about this amongst themselves they refer to it as “getting toubab-ed,” as in “Oh, everyone in that village is so nice, I didn’t get toubab-ed at all while I was there.”)

When I bike around town or go over the market, I get lots of "toubabou!" and "foté!" and "la blanche!" and, every once in awhile, "Hey white girl!" in plain English. (Either some people legitimately don't understand that yelling "Hey white girl! Come here!" is not enticing in any language or they have nothing better to do. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.) For the most part the toubab-ing is pretty low-key and blends into the background noise, people seeming to call out toubabou out of habit or boredom or, very occasionally, inexplicable delight; the cat-calling is just as gross here as it is in America or anywhere else in the world.

Lately I've been increasingly noticing that some people call me "chinois," meaning "Chinese man." I do wear pants and I don't mind being perceived as Asian, though I doubt most of the hecklers really understand the concept of "Asian" because my blonde sitemate also gets called chinois pretty regularly. However, I really hate it when they follow it up with "ching-chong, ching-chong!" or a high, nasal "hii-hoong, hii-hoong!" like one of the moto-guys in the market today did as I passed up the stand of moto-taxis. Even little kids seem to know they’re being intentionally obnoxious when they do that. (And also it is SO INCREDIBLY RACIST.) It also really bothers me when some people question the American-ness of Volunteers who aren’t obviously either white or black, which - even as a bystander, even when it’s coming from a lack of education and not hostility - is still way more galling than I would have expected.

In any case, being constantly toubab–ed is mildly irritating – or, on a bad day, mildly infuriating - but still generally pretty easy to ignore or dismiss. It’s not generally malicious, and there’s no associated threat of violence or oppression - if anything, being called a toubab could be an accusation of over-privilege. Most of the time, though, it just feels like statement of the annoyingly obvious, a reminder that I’m conspicuous and foreign, and it’s something that I definitely will not miss.

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.