Last Week

When I arrived in Kankan there were five Peace Corps and Response Volunteers in Kankan proper, but as of today I am the only one left. A few months back Katie K. had to go home for medical reasons, and then, in December, people started to COS (Close-of-Service). Sarah J. left in December, and then last week Kenny D., followed yesterday by Michelle. This is my last week on Kankan; next week I'll be in Conakry, filling out my COS documents and making sure that I get all the many kinds of clearance (Medical, Financial, Property, Administrative, etc) that one is supposed to have before leaving the country as an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) or, in my case, an RPCRV (Returned Peace Corps Response Volunteer).

Photo courtesy of Michelle

Happily, I am still not alone - pretty much everyone at the office is back from their holiday break, the daughters from the Sidibé family down the street are back from Conakry, and PCVs Sara T. and Yé don't live too far from the city of Kankan and will be by this week. Also, the trainees (known around here as stagiaires) that will replace some of the departing PCVs in the region are out on their site visits right now, and will come in to visit Kankan at the end of the week.

So, the coming days will be all about wrapping up loose ends, saying good-byes, giving farewell gifts, packing things up, and just generally getting ready to hit the road. I hadn't been looking forward to making the rough, dusty, two-day bush taxi trek to Conakry by myself, with all my baggage. (It wouldn't have been the end of the world, but it wouldn't have been a day at the spa, either.) Luckily for me, one of the PCVs has family visiting and they'll be headed back to Conakry this coming weekend and offered  to let me ride along. It will still be a rough, dusty, two-day drive in a rented bush taxi, but there will only be a few us in the car, instead of the usual nine (plus babies plus sometimes chickens), so I'm pretty happy about it. 

Pizza Party!

Yesterday was PCV Kenny's birthday and he, PCV Michelle and I all got together to celebrate with pizza from scratch and cake from a box. (Cake from a box is one of those things that I never really appreciated until I moved to West Africa. It tastes like America.) It's really nice to have other Americans around for birthdays, since birthdays aren't really a thing in Guinea. Many people here don't know their exact birth date, and people who do know the date don't generally attach any particular significance to it. Celebrating a birthday is so individualistic, I suppose that in many ways it's a very American thing to do. 

In any case, it was only the three of us because all the other volunteers are stuck in village for the time being - Guinea's long-delayed legislative elections are scheduled to happen next week, and so we're all on "standfast." (Basically, that means that no one's allowed to leave their site without direct permission from Peace Corps, so that they know where we all are and can stay in communication with everyone. When I was in Senegal during their elections it was the same deal, lots of text messages and no one was allowed to leave site unless they had some sort of emergency.) 

So, it was a small party but we had a good time. The pizza turned out really well, the cake was delicious, and the power was on, which was a real treat. We're really lucky to have sitemates - being on standfast really isn't so bad when you have PCV neighbors to hang out with and cakes to bake.