Kankan Farewells

 My last round of good-byes in Kankan started with PCV Michelle's going-away party. Ethan, her replacement, happened to be in town for his site visit, so it was really more of a Farewell-Michelle-and-Welcome-Ethan celebration, and, because Michelle's host family and work partners really love her, it was really good party. Three were chubby babies, ladies singing and dancing, plates of meat and bread and fried potatoes, and lots of amusing photos of how Michelle is very petite and Ethan is very tall.

There was also this little kid (one of Michelle's host brothers) who was really, really into arranging and re-arranging all the rented plastic chairs, and we thought it was great when he lined them all up in the courtyard, so we took photos and told him how cool he was. He was very pleased; it was adorable.

 

A few days after Michelle left Kankan, it was time for me to say my own good-byes. I gave my nicest buckets and little decorative coffee mugs to the lunch lady down the street who has always been kind to me, and gave most of my clothes and sheet and towels to the ladies next door who washed most of my laundry. I brought my stove and gas tank and things over to the Peace Corps house for one of the new Public Health Volunteers, and I gave most of the rest of my things to the guards at the Save the Children office. Finally, I bought tea, sugar and kola nuts for the office staff and the guards, as a little farewell gift.

On the day that I moved out of my rooms I put on my best complet outfit, made from indigo fabric given to me by my Senegalese host family, and posed for photos with pretty much everyone at the office. There were a couple guards who weren't in that day, and I realized too late that I don't have any pictures of them, which makes me sad - they were really great, always helped me out with whatever I was trying to find or fix or move.

Adama, Adama, and Fatoumata

Save the Children, Kankan, Guinea

Everyone repeatedly complimented my outfit and told me that I should dress like this all the time, and said they were happy to see me looking like "a real Guinean." On behalf of the office Fatoumata and Adama presented me with a bunch of fabric and wished me all the best, saying that they hoped that I would be blessed with safe travels, good health, much happiness, and a handsome husband. (Adama said that last part and then she giggled a lot.)

Fun fact about indigo: It turns your skin quite blue when you sweat. Like Smurf-blue, and you really have to scrub to get it off.

Once I'd said my office good-byes I went over to the neighbors' house, where my friend Halimatou lives. They've fed me, helped me find tailors, and always been happy to have me over to hang out, so they're the closest thing that I had to a host family in Kankan. They fed me rice with Guinean leaf sauce (not my favorite - look at all that orange palm oil! - but I appreciated the gesture) and we took a bunch of photos and they told me to call when I get to America and it was all very bittersweet.

Pular Ladies in Kankan

Halimatou said that they had a good-bye gift for me but that it wasn't ready, so she'd bring it by the Peace Corps house later. The gift turned out to be more fabric and a really cool orange dress that, miraculously, fits perfectly, and I will try to get some photos of that up soon. 

Upgrades & Updates

While I was settling in to my rooms I pondered various keep-everything-off-the-floor strategies. Oatmeal-can furniture legs didn't seem appropriate (or tall enough) and commissioning tables just to hold up my suitcases isn't included in my living allowance. Then I realized that there was a whole fleet of chairs in the conference room and under the stairs, and that solved my little problem quite nicely. 

Chairs are much classier than old Quaker tins. 

Also I put up some photos and postcards and color swatches cut from the Pantone stationary set that I bought on my way out of California but have not yet used for any actual letter-writing. Maybe this weekend will be the weekend that I find the post office and send some test letters to see if the U.S. has started accepting mail from Guinea yet. 

In other news, I am not sick (knock on wood) and had a nice time over the weekend, reading, doing yoga podcasts, and checking things off my to-do list. Ramadan kind of puts a damper on things en ville, but the Catholic Mission was open for business, and I met up with a few of my PCV neighbors for dinner there. I had loko, which is fried plantains, and a “hamburger”, which turned out to be a hard-boiled egg wrapped in spiced ground meat (beef?) and thoroughly grilled, like a barbequed Scotch egg.  We were joined by another American I met last month in Conakry; she's doing a three-month internship in Guinea, working on the same maternal health- and family planning-focused MCHIP project as I am, and came through Kankan during a field visit trip. It was nice to talk shop and good to hear about what she's been seeing at health structures around the country, as unpleasant as some of those things are.

Things are starting to pick up around the office, which is nice. I've got documents to read, people to meet, Peace Corps reporting files to fill out, and things to prepare for upcoming meetings and conferences. Office life is about as exciting here as it is anywhere, but wondering how long the power will stay on keeps things interesting. 

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.