Rained Out

A few of the PCVs and I had big plans to go to the bank and a supermarket today, but it rained heavily last the night and torrentially all morning, flooding the streets and foiling our errand-run. 

Balcony-view of the rain

Also, in transportation news, my departure for Kankan is now tentatively scheduled for Sunday, so I should have all day tomorrow to take care of items on my To-Do list. I've also been reassured by several Peace Corps Volunteers currently living in or near Kankan that pretty much anything one (assuming one is a PCV) could need  - from olive oil to nice buckets to curry powder to hair conditioner to coffee - is available for purchase there, which is nice to hear.

It's later in the afternoon now, and it this is still pretty much exactly what it looks like outside. I'm definitely glad that I brought that nice rain jacket and those rubber boots. 

The Cost of Living

It can take a little while to get a handle on how much money is worth and how much things should cost in a new place. I'm starting to get the hang of shopping here, but when I'm asking about prices at the market I'm still constantly converting Guinean francs (GNF) to Senegalese francs (XOF) and American dollars (USD), trying to infuse the numbers with some sort of sense of value. 

There are the official conversion rates... 

1.00 US dollar = 6,908.58 Guinean francs = 504.68 Senegalese francs

...and then there's the actual purchasing power; 6,900 GNF goes a lot farther in Guinea than 1.00 USD does in America. 

Here are some things that I bought yesterday:

                                     

Five small yellow bananas: 2,500 GNF
They turned out to have an odd, mouth-drying, sour residual aftertaste. I think I'll go with the bigger, greener ones next time. 

                                        

Two pieces of fried sweet potato with spicy stuff: 1,000 GNF
Hot and crispy and delicious.

                                             

Two bags of peanuts: 1,000 GNF; four eggs: 6,000 GNF; two tomatoes: 2,000 GNF; three onions: 1,000 GNF
I thought the peanuts were roasted and salted but they turned out to be sugared. Oh, well.

Big and small sheet: 50,000 GNF; three place-mats and a dishtowel: 20,000 GNF

Generally, things seem to be significantly cheaper than in Senegal, but for the most part the things being sold are the same - rice, dried fish, Goodwill clothes piles, greenish-yellow oranges, phone credit, mangoes, bread, palm oil, etc. There are a lot more avocados for sale here, too, and popcorn and lots of fried banana patties, which I'd almost never seen in Senegal.

Rooftop Weekend

Since most of what I have to get done involves the office, (which won't be open for business until Monday) I have the weekend free. This suits me just fine; I've had ample time to do laundry, sleep off whatever fierce microbe turned my stomach inside out the other night, adjust to the sweltering humidity, and take in the scenery.

Still life with shadow and mosque.

I called to greet my Senegalese host family and had a short-but-super-pleasant conversation. (When it comes to international cell phone calls, talk is not cheap!) I've been thinking about Senegal a lot, and pretty much constantly comparing here and there. So far, many things in Guinea are the same as they were in southern Senegal - the Pulaar vendor ladies selling rice and sauce, the constant greeting, the smoldering roadside trash fires, the nightmarish traffic, the free-roaming goats. Here most of the small children (and some of the grown-ups with nothing better to do) call out “fode” instead of “toubab” when they see me, but as in Senegal, most everyone is really nice. (I haven't been on serious public transportation yet, but I hear it's an extreme version of the usual rickety unpleasantness.) 

Inland View

Coastal View

When they can afford it, people seem to favor using brick-red tile or painted metal sheeting to roof their houses, which is different than in Senegal, and there are more trees, here too. More trees, more plants, more humidity. Kankan will be quite different than Conakry - it's far from the sea, out in the savanna on the other side of the mountains - and I'm hoping it will be a little less humid up-country (as they say here).

Rooftops View 

Landscapes and Stomachaches

I just got back to Conakry after a few days at the Peace Corps training center, located about an hour (without traffic, so two hours) from the capital. Despite the smoke-belching trucks, ridiculous traffic, and gaping potholes, it was a nice drive out to the training center. The countryside is beautiful - verdantly dense foliage, lots of houses roofed with red sheet metal, little kids everywhere, very tall hills jutting up into the sky, the waterways on the edge of the mangroves reflecting the sky. Just like you picture it when you think of visiting Africa.

Batik wall hanging in the office

I roomed with some (extremely cool & welcoming) Education PCVs who are there preparing for the upcoming arrival of a new group of trainees. I got a few sessions of French practice, a crash course in Maninka, and a session on the history of Guinea and its regions, which was interesting.

All was well until last night, right around midnight, I got sick. Suddenly and intensely sick. Just like you picture it when you think of visiting Africa… Thankfully, whatever it was seems to have passed, and today I’m much better, a little exhausted but no worse for wear, and am very much looking forward to taking a hot shower and sleeping in a cool room. 

Bienvenue en Guinée

My connecting flights all arrived and departed more or less on time (I would have been pretty thrilled to be stuck in Paris for a day or two, but c'est la vie, quoi) and I arrived in Conakry with all my luggage intact.

The airport experience was pretty much as I'd imagined it would be - it was crowded and sweltering, and several fancy ladies (intricately embroidered complet outfits, gold glitter in their elaborate hairdos) accompanied by a small crowd of children in little suits and frilly dresses were ushered to the front of the line, so it took awhile to get through customs. All my papers were in order and everyone was really nice - various gentleman bystanders and security ladies helped me get my heavy suitcase off the luggage belt and through the x-ray machine at the baggage ticket checkpoint (as you leave they verify that the bag-check stubs you got at check-in match the suitcases you're taking). It was fun to hear people speaking Pulaar again, too.

As I left the baggage claim area I was welcomed by Sean, a current Peace Corps Response Volunteer (PCRV), and a Peace Corps driver, and we were off to the Conakry Peace Corps compound, which serves as an office and transit house. A group of current Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) were hanging out and cooking dinner (chicken and vegetables and rice, delicious) and again, everyone was really nice, and overall quite happy to be in Guinea, which is heartening. The whole place feels very comfortable, the compound has a generator, air conditioning, a computer room, hot showers, and, much to my delight, the books in the living-room are arranged in rainbow-gradient order.

A Literary Spectrum

I slept well and woke up feeling pleasantly un-jetlagged and discovered that my Swiss Orange SIM card works here. Impressive. (They'll give me a Guinean SIM today or tomorrow, but it's nice to have a functional phone in the meantime.)

Now, in just a few minutes, I'll head over to the office to start getting oriented. So far so good. 

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. 

Peace Corps Response

In just a few hours I'll be headed to the airport, on my way to begin a Peace Corps Response position with Save the Children, serving as a Health Program Specialist in Kankan, Guinea. It’s a nine-month assignment, and I’ll be supporting the current Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP) that’s being funded by USAID and led by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Jphiego.

Kankan, Guinea, West Africa

MCHIP activities focus on strengthening family planning services, increasing local capacity for reproductive health services, and increasing the quality of care provided at the community level. As a Health Program Specialist, my main responsibilities will be to provide regular monthly updates on program activities in Guinea in English and French, to work with local staff to improve work plans and budgets, and to help coordinate the development of a Public Health and Nutrition Program. It will be a big change and a lot of responsibility, but I’m really excited about working with Save the Children, about spending some more time in West Africa, and about eating avocados for breakfast every day. (Among other things, Guinea is renowned for having beautiful terrain, nightmarish roads and absolutely fabulous fruits and vegetables.) 

I should have regular internet access in Kankan, and will be doing my best to update this blog regularly. That's all for now; I'm off to savor one last breakfast in America, triple-check that I have my passport, and get on that plane.