Orange Dresses and Fancy Shampoo

When I left Kankan my friend Halimatou and her family gave me a party dress made of orange "wax" fabric printed with a money-and-squiggles pattern. I've been meaning to put it on and take some pictures so that I can send them some thank-you photos showing how well it fits and how much I enjoy the the shoulder ruffles. It turned out that Chelsea, one of the other PCVs in Conakry for Close-of-Service, also had an outfit that she wanted to document, so yesterday we got dressed up and took some Guinean-style glamour shots in the yard behind the Peace Corps office. (Except that we smiled a lot. Guineans often avoid smiling in photographs.) It was fun, and some of the pictures turned out pretty well, even though all the bright green foliage gave many of the poses a very I'm-trying-to-sell-you-some-fancy-hydrating-shampoo look to them.

Natural Essences for Natural Shine! 

Also, awhile back we were advised  to make a list of the things we like about living here (so that we don't just remember the rough parts) and also of the things that we dislike (lest nostalgia trick us into forgetting the rough parts). This is what I have so far:

Things I Will Not Miss 

Trash fires, really terrible roads, worse bush taxis, blatant and unapologetic sexism, inflexible gender roles, appalling homophobia, how people just toss trash on the floor, fetid sewage puddles when it rains, being caked in dust when it stops raining, terrible beer, animal cruelty, being called toubab/fote/chinois/la blanche/le blanc when I go out, being told that in America everyone is rich and perfect, being crammed two to a seat in cars, worrying that there will not be any competent doctors nearby if I get sick or injured, everything starting two hours late...

Things I Will Totally Miss 

How far out of their way total strangers will go just to help me out, occasionally seeing monkeys in the wild, neighbors who are totally happy to consider me part of the family, having same-name tokora friends, delighting people with my little bit of local language, super green hills, being able to plan my own day, being part of the PCV community, never worrying about who will pay for my medical care if I get sick or injured, having clothes tailored, good peanut sauce, shopping for fabric, people handing me babies, always being invited over for lunch, T9 texting (I am so good at it now), picking ripe mangoes right off the tree, speaking in PC jargon, different kinds of bananas, constantly being seeing new things, the little old ladies who spent 20 minutes helping me find a squash, really feeling great appreciation for vegetables, hot showers, fast internet and other luxuries...

Welcome to the Peace Corps Palace!

Roadtrip!

Last week I went to Conakry for some meetings and a workshop held by Save the Children (SC). It’s a long and bumpy ride, but I was in one of the SC/Ministry of Health cars, so it was a much faster and more comfortable ride than it would have been on public transport – I got my own seat and everything.

The drive out wasn’t so bad. Once we’d cleared the flats of Upper Guinea there were low mountains and rocky cliffs to admire. Everything is excessively verdant this time of year, rivers are full, waterfalls spill over rock-faces, and there’s flooding in some lower-lying areas. (Looking at all the water made me think of the view from the airplane when I landed in Guinea in June – the approach to the Conakry airport starts over the Atlantic and then comes in low over a delta covered in serpentine loops of water and what looked like mangroves and deep mud, and it just goes on and on until you start to wonder if there really is a city and an airport and a runway.)

Aside from the scenery, the most striking thing about the drive was the number of broken-down trucks and wrecked cars, frequent reminders that my borderline phobia about in-country travel is not really so unreasonable.  Thanks to the nice car and good luck we made it to Conakry in about 14 hours, and I was very glad to get dropped off at the Peace Corps office/transit house to stretch, take a hot shower, and get some sleep. The rest of the week was mostly filled with meetings at the NGO Jhpiego’s Conakry office and at the Ministry of Health. The main event was SC’s presentation of the results of the Community-Level Contraception Access pilot project that they’re hoping to expand over the next few years, and it went really well. 

A Day in the Neighborhood

I'm starting to get to know Kankan, and other day went for a walk in the Airport Neighborhood, the part of town in which, as the name suggests, there used to be an airport of sorts.

It had rained the previous evening, so there were lots of puddles and muddy places, but it was pretty easy to get around without too much trouble. (Today is a different story; it poured half the morning and the street outside is basically a long, shallow pond at the moment.)

The other day, though, there were goats and a fair amount of kids out and about. I stopped by the Peace Corps office and took some photos from the rooftop, looking out on the neighboring lots and trees.

Because of all the rain most streets have these treacherous giant-gutter-drainage-canal-type things along the side of the roadway. Some are relatively small and narrow, like this one, and some are intimidatingly wide and deep. Sometimes there are little cement walkways, but more often people make little bridges out of planks or metal sheeting or whatever is on hand, and some of these improvised bridges are more stable and sturdy than others.

Roadside Drainage Canal-Ditches

Don't let the power lines fool you - municipal electricity is rare and unreliable. Most people or organizations who have the resources own generators and/or solar panels, and everyone else uses candles, flashlights, battery-powered lamps after dark. There are a few solar-powered streetlights downtown, and they seem to be working pretty well.

The area around Kankan is strikingly flat. It's less humid than the cast, though, and I like the red-dirt-green-grass color scheme of the rainy season. It will be interesting to see how things look in a few months.

Peanut Field by the Old Airport

Green on Green...

... is maybe what I should have called this blog. Oh, well.

The night before I left Conakry, the Peace Corps Guinea Country Director Julie (who has been extremely helpful so far) and her husband Paul (who's work extensively with Outward Bound) invited all the PCVs who were at Conakry office for one reason or another over for dinner. It was
delicious by any standard - black bean salsa and guacamole, cold beers and fresh lemonade, salad and lasagna, cake and cobbler - and I did my best to enjoy it, knowing that it would be my last such feast for some time

The next morning two PCVs, Shrey and Sara, and I started the two-day trek to Kankan. It was raining, but not too much, the road was rough, the car was good and the driver was fairly terrible, but we did manage to make it intact and with only one flat.

The scenery along the way was pretty much what had been described to me - lush, green, partially cloudy. The mountains in the middle of the country dwarfed the hills of southern Senegal, but aren't incredibly tall and the driver seemed to think that I was insufficiently awed by their grandeur -  according to Lonely Planet, Mount Nimba, Guinea's highest peak, measures only 1,752 m (5,748 ft), and it's hard not to compare that with California's Mount Shasta, which clocks in at 4,322 m (14,179 ft). They were very pretty mountains, though, and I was quite impressed by how impossibly verdant everything was.

On the second day (we spent the night in a hotel-type place a little over half-way) the landscape flattened out as we approached Kankan. It's in the Haute Region, where things are flat and open and green right now but will dry out once the rains stop. It definitely wasn't the worst drive I've ever been on - I had good company and regular stops at gas stations and vendor ladies - but I can't say that I'm going to be popping in to the Conakry office any more than I have to.

Waiting for the car to be ready on Day Two

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