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! 

Fancytown

Having spent the last couple years carrying water on my head and sleeping in a little mud hut, I had very limited expectations for my accommodations here in Guinea. I knew that even the capital city municipal electricity was erratic and unreliable and figured that running water and internet access would be just as scarce. I knew that the Save the Children (SC) office, like the Peace Corps office, was equipped with a generator and internet access, so I would be able to charge things and check e-mail at least while I was at work. Here's a view of the SC office buildings, plus the spare desk that I'll be using for the time being:

(I really can’t overemphasize how nice it is to have a desk with a chair of corresponding height. It's one of those things I never appreciated until I couldn't have it any more.) 

SC arranged for my housing, and upon arriving at chez moi I found that I had two furnished rooms and a bathroom, plus a little hallway. The bathroom has running water and the bedroom and other room boast solar-powered lights and outlets, complete with some sort of battery system so that they work in the evening, too. Fancytown. 

I've set up the other room as a kitchen/yoga room, and (other than discovering that the walls are painted cement and so it's nearly impossible to stick up pictures and things) so far I'm quite pleased.

 Before I arrived someone had given the bathroom a once-over, but it was badly in need of a serious cleaning. I spent most of Saturday dusting and scraping and scrubbing and bleaching and rinsing and repeating - I'm not sure the photos here really capture the before-and-after, but in my eyes (and to my nose) it was pretty dramatic.

Aesthetically, I preferred my old white mosquito net to this green one, but I'll just have to make do. I've already picked up some new sheets, and am going to continue to use my suitcase to store my clothes - on of the lingering effects of hut life is that I am slightly neurotic about bugs and mice and really like to make sure that food is kept in sealed buckets, clothes and things are kept in zipped up tight, and that everything stays off the floor. In my hut I kept my trunks elevated on little oatmeal-can legs, and will probably do the same here. 

Oh, also I have a very nice bike, complete with a decent lock and a helmet, which has made market runs pretty easy. I'll still miss hot showers and refrigerators and washing machines, but all in all, they set me up with more creature comforts that I could have hoped for - the solar is particularly fantastic, because it's cleaner than gas-burning generators, and also because it turns out that generators like the one they use to power the lights and internet at work are loud and not super pleasant to be around.