Back to Guinea

Monkeys, Snails, and Banana Trees

2008-08-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

The following photos from Guinea are for all to enjoy but are especially for my former pre-school students. As many of you know, I taught pre-school during the 2006/2007 school year and somehow ended up with the most amazing group of 4 and 5 year olds. They kept me on my toes and left me with a ton of funny, crazy memories and stories. While I'm out of the pre-school teaching business, I will always consider them my students. It's almost impossible for me to imagine it, but, if my math is correct, they're all going to be first graders this year! I hope they haven't outgrown funny animal pictures.

But before posting the photos, here's a quick update: Matt and I are now back in Montana. This time in Helena. I arrived a few days ago and am still trying to find my bearings. I'm not yet sure how I feel about this town. It's odd to be in Montana and *not* be in Missoula. It's going to take some getting used to. I'm feeling very homesick right now, missing all of the family and friends in the various homes I've had this past year- Missoula, Guinea, and my family's home in California. Matt and I are working on the basics for the moment- finding a place to live, jobs, etc. I'll write a more complete update when we have some things figured out. I'll also let all the Missoula folks know when we'll be able to visit.

Okay, as promised here are some monkeys, snails and banana trees:

I'm scared of monkeys, but wanted to pose for this photo in order to share it with my students. Notice my shirt- this was a gift from the class and has all of their hand prints on it. The shirt has now been around the world- from Missoula to KanKan, Guinea, home of BooBoo the pet monkey. BooBoo is Amadou's family's pet monkey. He spends his days playing in the family's front yard area.

BooBoo climbing

BooBoo and a child from the neighborhood.

At night BooBoo sleeps here- in the family kitchen. For many families who live in this part of Guinea, their kitchen is either outside or in a hut like this one. They keep wood or charcoal in the hut to cook with. In this photo a pot of rice is cooking over the fire.

Most of the monkeys in Guinea aren't pets. They live in the wild. Matt and I saw a lot of monkeys when we were hiking. Here are a few photos of wild monkeys we saw on one hike.

We hiked to a spot with a view of a waterfall. We heard little screaming sounds from the top of the waterfall and when we looked closer we saw a whole bunch of monkeys in the trees. They were climbing in the trees and running across the top of the waterfall.

This monkey crossed the waterfall to get to this side of the trees. His family followed him soon after.

On a different hike Matt and I saw two giant snails!! I've never seen snails this big. A man from the village who knows a lot about the wildlife in this area told us that the snails were mating.

Here are some photos of banana trees. They're so huge that they provide shade on even the sunniest days. The leaves are between 5 to 6 feet tall. Notice how the bananas grow up-side-down.

The flower that hangs below each bunch of bananas is a beautiful, dark red color.

Here's Matt cutting some bananas from the tree. The bananas straight from the tree in Guinea are delicious- so sweet.

That's all for now. I've got more photos that might be of special interest to my former pre-schoolers. I'll try to post them in the next week or so.

Best of luck to the former Mariposa students as they begin first grade in a few weeks!

News from Guinea

2008-07-17T15:30:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I finally called Guinea. It seems silly now that I didn't call sooner. But since returning I've been worried that talking with Na and the kids would be too sad for me. I was dreading the possibility of the phone magnifying the distance between us. I was also scared about speaking Malinke on the phone. Would I even remember how to speak? How would I get out of a sticky language situation without relying on body language, context and smiles? And how would the fact that every minute is costing several dollars affect the whole experience? So I had been putting the phone call off since I returned home. Last weekend I visited Matt at his brother's place and Matt did what he often does- he brought me down to earth. He handed me the phone, told me he was going to the store and not to put the phone call off one minute longer. Translation: Ditch the fears and follow your heart. Connecting with people you love is worth all the baggage that sometimes accompanies it.

So I did it. And as it turns out, Malinke has not leaked out of my brain these past 7 weeks. And instead of feeling sad during and after the call, I felt better, joyous really.

It's hard to describe just what a miracle it is to dial a number, hear a ring tone and actually connect with someone in Guinea. Until this past weekend, establishing contact with Kerouane from abroad had been nearly impossible. In the five and a half year interval between our first and second trip to Guinea I simply couldn't contact the family. So I never imagined that someday I'd be calling the family. And that they would pick up. And that we'd talk.

Na was surprised and thrilled to hear from me. She and the kids were screaming and laughing on the other end of the phone. I could picture everything so clearly. It felt for a moment as if I were there. I can't tell you how how great it was to hear everyone's voices. I still smile just thinking about it. I spoke with Na for a few minutes and then talked with Max and Yai. Like my Malinke, Max's English was slower than a few months ago, but still there. Then Na and I spoke again for 10 min. or so. That's when she gave me some bad news. A day before my phone call her mother had died. Fanta, Na's mother (the woman who raised her, actually her step-mom) lived in KanKan with Amadou (Na's younger brother) and Amadou's two younger siblings. Matt and I spent a week staying with their family in late December. We visited them a few other times while we were in KanKan as well.

Fanta was always so hospitable and accommodating. Each time we arrived at her place she clapped and danced, truly happy to see us. No matter when we showed up she immediately sent her daughter out to buy us piles of oranges. By the time we were leaving Guinea she had traveled to another city to visit family. It's possible she went there because she was sick. While we weren't aware of anything serious, Matt recalls mention of an illness and cough that local medicine wouldn't cure.

Relations between Na and her family were strained. Like most family feuds, this one stretched back decades and decades. And while I have plenty of stories and information from different members of the family, I can't pretend to fully understand the dynamics of Na's relationships with her mom and siblings. I know only that the situation was, at times, tense and that it involved two of my favorite people in Guinea- Amadou and Na. This made getting together with both of them at the same time a bit tricky. In any case, it is clear to me that the passing of Na's mom is sad for the entire family and community. I get the sense that it has also inspired in Na some mixed feelings. When I spoke with her she was preparing to travel to the city where her mom died to offer condolences and participate in burial rituals. I asked if Amadou will remain in school in KanKan but she wasn't sure. I worry about Amadou and his younger sistesrs. They have lost their mother and their futures are now in limbo.

To honor Na’s mom, Fanta, I'm posting some photos we took with her in December. Keep in mind that photos are serious in Guinea, especially for the older generation. It took a long time to get Fanta to smile and laugh. Matt actually had to resort to making fake fart noises (which by the way, sound different than the fake fart noises kids (or, in this case, thirty-one year olds) make here). So, yes, in case you were wondering, potty humor is indeed bringing people together around the world.

Here's to Fanta- Allah la hinala (May she rest in peace).

Fanta with her son Amadou

Fanta and Amadou

Me and Fanta laughing

Photos: Our Last Week in Guinea

2008-07-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

I've been back from Guinea almost a month and I've just now looked at the photos I took from our last week there. It's difficult to look at them. They're recent enough that they actually invoke visceral memories. Something in my stomach is still there when I see these images- that sick butterfly feeling I had before leaving. It's a mixture of dread and disbelief and uncertainty-that pre-goodbye feeling you get when you're not sure when you'll see someone again and if it'll be the same when you do. For me, this feeling is magnified when it comes to saying goodbye to children. While a few years away from an adult friend or family member seems long (and it is!) reunions are usually more about catching up on details and life events as opposed to getting to know a new version of that person. But with kids it's different. Leaving a 6 year old and then finding them again at, say, age 12 is pretty dramatic. Suddenly this person you knew so well has been magically transformed by forces other than you. And it pushes questions of memory to the limit- do they remember me? From what perspective? A six year old's? A twelve year old's? And is memory even relevant after so many years?

I know from this time around, though, that memories are collective. Max knew me from photos and family stories even though he hadn't actually remembered me himself (I left Guinea in 2002 when he was only 5months old). And it reassures me to have experienced first hand the presence of a type of intangible essence of someone that never goes away. I couldn't have imagined the child that Max would become or the kid that Yai would grow up to be, and yet, upon seeing them again this time around it all made sense. "Of course that's Max!" I thought when I saw him in December. It couldn't have been anyone else. I had only known him for 5 months and yet, somehow, it was enough. And I still know him. And I still know Yai and Papice and Bijou. That won't go away. It doesn't make looking at these photos any easier, but it brings me some comfort.

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These first few photos are from the day we said goodbye to Na and Max. The two of them accompanied us to KanKan and spent our last 5 days there with us at our house. We took these photos right before we all walked to the taxi park our last morning there, right before we sloshed through all the thick red mud and puddles, our baggage sliding off our heads and backs, right before we waited for hours at the taxi park and ate meat on a stick and steamed cassava and right before we got in the car to Conakry and said goodbye.

Max and me

Na, Matt and Max

Na and Max

A few photos of those last few days at our house:

Max taking a quick break between crazy kung-fu moves

Max and Matt doing kung-fu

Moussa (left) and Amadou the night before we left KanKan.

I'm including a few photos of Moussa for my friend and former site mate Josh who was the Peace Corps math teacher in Kerouane when I was there. Moussa was a kid back then and was Josh's student and friend. Josh would probably describe their relationship differently (more humbly) but it was obvious to me that Josh was Moussa's mentor and inspiration. Moussa is all grown up now and just finished his 2nd year at the University of KanKan where he is an economics major. Through our communication while I was back in Guinea Josh was able to give Moussa a scholarship for summer computer classes at the cyber cafe Matt and I frequented in KanKan. Matt and I did the same for Amadou. Most people don't have access to computers in Guinea so this was a huge deal. I know it will help them with future career opportunities and self-education but I'm just selfishly hoping they learn how to email soon.

Moussa

Moussa and Amadou

A few photos from our last few days in Kerouane before traveling to KanKan:

Bijou and Yai. The three of us went on a nice walk on my last evening in Kerouane

The two game boards that Matt had made! Matt and Sekou Toure playing backgammon in the background and Papice and Jiba playing African Checkers in the foreground.

Matt and Max chill'en with their matching bandanas

More photos to come. And I really hope to be able to call the family in Keroune soon. I'll let you all know as soon as I do.

For now I'm in California with my mom. She's recovering quite well but still has a ways to go. I've decided to stay here most of the summer to help out. I'm taking two summer classes at the local Jr. College while I'm here. Matt was here last week and is with his brother right now. I'll go visit them next weekend.

The fires here are really bad. I'm going crazy cooped up in the house. It doesn't seem to be doing much good seeing as how the smoke has somehow made it into our house. I can't stop coughing. Reminds me of August in Missoula last year. Is the smoke following me or am I following the smoke? Stay tuned for smoke and fire photos from Lelouma, Guinea where, apparently, slash-and-burn never goes out of style.

Two Worlds

2008-06-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

I’ve been in California a little over a week now. At first being back was jarring. Now it’s a bit unbelievable. Was I ever in Guinea? Did that actually happen? It seems a different world, another lifetime. I’m scrolling through old posts on this blog in awe. There I am in a Guinean boubou. There’s Matt with the Kerouane kids. It's been documented. We were there. Our time there was life changing in so many ways and yet it’s hard to get my mind around the idea that that world exists at the same time as this one. I haven’t called the Kerouane family yet. Each time I get ready to it’s not the right time there. And I’ve been busy. Maybe those are just excuses. It’s hard to think of hearing their voices from so far away. I’m here now, not there. My leaving and the uncertainty of my return are bound to hang in the air during any conversation.

It’s been easy to avoid thinking about my friends and family in Guinea and what it means to be back because I haven’t had much time to think or do too much. I haven’t even completely unpacked yet. Two days after arriving in California my mom had knee-replacement surgery. Since then my brother, Matt, my brother’s girlfriend Julia and I have all been putting in a lot of time at the hospital and rehab center. This past week I’ve been there on average about 8 hours a day. My brother has been working a lot with her on physical therapy and I’ve been preparing meals for her and for all of us visitors (the food at the rehab place doesn’t smell too good). I get home late and am exhausted and so haven’t had time to even consider what the heck the next step for me is. The important thing right now is that the surgery went really well. For those of you familiar with my mom’s knee situation you know what a big deal this is that she finally took the plunge and decided to have this surgery. Our family couldn’t be happier. She’s been working really hard and can now move her knee/leg much better than before the surgery. She’s walking with a walker and is able to do most things on her own. She’ll be coming home on Sat and will continue formal and informal physical therapy here. (And by the way, I had never seen physical therapists in action before. They are amazing! I now have an enormous amount of respect for the work they do!). She’s still got a long way to go for a full recovery but we’re all very proud of her motivation and the progress she’s made.

In terms of readjusting to being back, all this time in a hospital setting has been quite interesting. It’s one thing to experience the abrupt change of airport environments (from the parking lot full of students looking for light and the swarming mosquitos in Conakry, to the food courts and perfume shops of JFK in New York), but quite another to go from a village hospital to a brand new Kaiser Permanente hospital in California. I still feel dizzy thinking of the contrast. I visited the hospitals in Kerouane and Lelouma several times. While in Guinea the first time around I was actually sick enough to go to the hospital in Kerouane as a patient. I wouldn’t recommend it. Some people in Kerouane have told me they prefer *not* going to the hospital when ill because of the lack of cleanliness, beds, medicine, etc. When I left Kerouane a few weeks ago the director of the hospital asked if I could somehow get them some microscopes and blood pressure cuffs (along with any other available supplies and resources). As you can all imagine the new Kaiser hospital here has got all kinds of machines and contraptions and staff, and yes, microscopes and blood pressure cuffs. Matt pointed out the spotlessly waxed staircase banister. My favorite detail, though, is the fact that each hospital room has a little anti-bacterial dispenser right inside the door. Everyone entering or exiting the room need only touch the little dispenser button and a dollop of goop that kills bad things skirts out and makes everything good (or at least sterile). Surely you get my drift. It seems mind-boggling that this reality exists. How can standards of care here and in Kerouane exist in the same world?

Now, to be fair, not everyone here "gets" to go to Kaiser (thank you to my aunt for reminding me of this detail as I raved about that little soap thing-ie). As someone walking around this often dangerous world with no health insurance I understand this all too well. I would be turned away from Kaiser if I tried to receive care there. Issues of access are important, life or death even, but my initial awe and confusion with the difference between hospitals is more basic. It’s as simple as this: This state-of-the-art hospital exists here. It was planned and built and paid for somehow. There is nothing comparable in Guinea (and yes, I have been to hospitals in the capital). So that’s a tiny window into my confused mind struggling to come to terms with the distance between two worlds that are, remarkably, only 14 airplane hours apart. Maybe once I can wrap my mind around all this I’ll find the time and energy to unpack. Maybe.

On the sleep front things are looking good. I can now say that I have finally found *the* perfect sleep conditions. My mom’s house is quite and at night, dark.. Her guest bed is literally all feathers- feather mattress pad, feather comforter, feather pillows (4 to be exact). I crawl into feather bliss and I’m lost. I don’t think an intruder would even be able to find me. The first night here I slept over 12 hours.

It’s great to be back.
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Still no plans yet. For the moment I'm here helping my mom with her recovery and Matt is now a few hours away with Charlie. Stay tuned. I hope to post Guinea photos soon.

We're Back

2008-06-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

The good news is that we're back. The bad news is that we haven't slept. There was, of course, that hour of fitful sleep I had on the airport floor in NYC (why florescent lights?!! Why seats with arm rests that don't lift?! Please, let me design an airport based on sleep deprivation!). Then there was the 7 hours of shifting uncomfortably in the plane next to the traveler who fell asleep with his overhead reading light on. Oh, how I struggled with the moral dilemma- Is it wrong to turn it off for him? Should I respect his right to have it on even though he's not using it? Such are the thoughts of someone desperate for the perfect sleep conditions. Around hour three of the flight I turned it off. Big shock, it didn't help. That, of course, sparked the next moral crisis. Do I take my seat belt off even though the seatbelt light is on? Maybe you're getting the idea. I was and am a mess. It has been over 36 hours and I haven't really slept. We flew out of Portugal yesterday (at least I think it was yesterday...June 8th, whenever that was). We got to New Jersey and then went to NYC where flights were delayed because of bad weather. We hit the middle of the night in the time zone we had just left and thought, okay, this is uncomfortable but perhaps useful in terms of adjusting to our new timezone. Surely, we'll be tucked in nice and tight for bedtime in the Pacific time zone. Not so. In an odd flashback to flight 720 out of Dakar to Conakry back in November, our plane arrived several hours late. We arrived in San Francisco at 3:00 am. Charlie, who deserves an award for putting up with us, picked us up around 3:30. We got back to his place around 5:00am. Just in time to start a brand new day.

I'm sorry for leaving everyone hanging with that last post. Thank you so much for all of your well wishes and worries. We left Conakry with no problems. A new strike was/is scheduled for the 11th I think. I don't have any updates on that front as of yet. In any case, we felt fortunate to get out of the airport when we did without any hassles. It was a stressful few days leading up to our flight but thankfully, the flight itself was uneventful.

One side note on the airport: When you enter the airport parking lot in Conakry, you often see a ton of people sitting or lying on the pavement and curbs, notebooks in hand. These are students. University students. They're there studying because there is always electricity at the airport, and large streetlamps lighting the parking lot. There has to be or else international commericial carriers probably wouldn't be so keen on flying in. The electicity in the rest of the city is at best, shoddy. This creates problems for motiviated students hoping to study for exams. The fact that these young people have come up with this solution is both inspiring and sad. Here are people taking control of a detail that is part of a larger situation that the government is neglecting. So what does this say about the state of Guinea? It's future? Are unlikely safety nets like the airport street lamps allowing the government to cruise a bit longer? Or is the students' initiative opening up a space for creative solutions and long-term change? A lot to think about.

In any case, we left Guinea and its students and airport and impending strike. We also left Max and his family and friends and characters who we laughed with and shared days and rice and dreams and games with for the past 7 months. Airplanes make travel easier (though not easy) but they also makes for fast and superficial transitions. A week or so ago we were in Kerouane and now we're in an apartment in the Silicon valley trying to figure out what the heck we're going to do. This is jarring to say the least. We spent three days in Lisbon, Portugal before starting that last long leg of our long, sleepless journey yesterday. Our time there, while a bizarre change of scenery, was also a breath of fresh air. We walked through those long twisty streets and alleyways and talked and talked, doing our best to figure out what our time in Guinea meant and means and how to best transition back. We happened upon a group of Guinean men on a street near our hotel. Matt heard them speaking Pular and stopped to ask where they had come from. Labe. They showed us a Guinean restaurant up a steep and windy alleyway. Our last meal in Portugal was a Guinean one. Rice and soup sauce and meat eaten with forks and knives and napkins on our laps. Guinea out of Guinea. If that's not the beginning of a transition back home I don't know what is.

So now it's time to figure out our lives. We've got a lot to think about and decide. We intentionally left so much behind when we set out for Guinea. Now it's time to think seriously about what we want as we start over. For the moment we're headed to my family's home north of here. My mom will be having surgery soon and we want to be there for it. We'd like to go back to Montana but we don't yet have details.

I hope you'll keep reading this blog for a bit longer. There are still a ton of photos and stories I'd like to share. Now that I'll have better, more consistent access to the internet I'll be able to post a lot of the stuff I've been wanting to post for a long time. I've been so focused on practical updates that a lot of my favorite stories about people have gotten lost in the shuffle. I also plan to keep you all updated about our plans.

I can't wait to be in better contact with you and to see a lot of you soon. Thanks for all of your support over these past 7 months. You could have called us crazy but you didn't. Instead you followed along as we stumbled through this experience. You have sent your well-wishes and have shared in the ups and downs of our time in Guinea. You have asked about our friends and families in Guinea with such concern and respect that it's clear you've become a part of this whole extended family. And you have never doubted that we'd come back home. Thank you.

For now, sleep.

The Longest Day

2008-06-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

It started with mud and goodbyes and ended with getting robbed at 4:00am at a police\military checkpoint. All the parts in the middle were spent in a bushtaxi. That was yesterday. Or today. Actually both. We haven't slept in over 24 hours so everything is sort of blending (that's my disclaimer).

We woke up to a wonderfully cool post-rain KanKan full of mud. We sloshed through it slowly, with huge sacks on our backs, holding Max's hand to keep him from slipping. Walking to the taxi park in deep, fresh mud with 20 to 30 pound backpacks on, and a child to look after is tricky. It takes time. Bottom line: we missed the first taxi to Conakry and had to wait until noon for the next car. For people who've traveled in Guinea you know exactly what this means: a painfully late (or, in this case, early morning) arrival in Conakry. This is bad. No one wants to spend the night zooming through the countryside in a bush taxi instead of sleeping. But it's not just that. No one wants to show up in Conakry (or any big city) when it's dark out. Especially if the security situation is shaky. So you can see how one thing led to another, the mud, the missed car, the late/early morning arrival, the eventual theft....

But let me back up. We decided to take a chance on Conakry. Our flight is scheduled to leave in a few hours. We've confirmed its departure and our seats and so, while I can't be competely sure, it seems our gamble might just pay off. The word around KanKan throughout the weekend was that the situation in Conakry was cooling down. In fact, the conspiracy theory circulating around town is that the unrest was actually staged by the dictator and his military "government." The theory is that after he sacked another minister the trade unions and general population started discussing dates for a national strike. They settled upon May 31st. The military uprising in the camp near the airport in Conakry sort of trumped the whole plan. A classic distraction strategy according to the conspiracy theorists. So now that things have calmed down, a new strike has been called for June 6th. If all goes well, we'll be following the news from Portugal and the states. In the meantime everyone is talking. We spent 14 hours in a bush taxi yesterday listening to the passengers' heated discussion about the state of the government. We heard the words "rogue state", "revolution," and "suffering" over and over again. It feels like this whole nation is really on the cusp of something. It has been facinating to be here inside of it for a bit but nerve-racking as well. I'm relieved that the airport is open again, that we didn't opt for the 3 day drive to Senegal and that tonight we can start our journey home.

But it's not that easy. Saying goodbye to Max and Na yesterday (or rather a few zillion hours ago it seems) was heart-breaking. Max tried so hard to hold it together but as we got in the front seat of the car he just stood there and finally lost it. He was sobbing and there was nothing we could really say other than that we love him and will come back to see him. Another passenger in the car was so sad for this kid she didn't even know that she opened up her pocketbook and gave him 5,oooGuinea Francs. This is about $1 but here it is actually quite a bit of money. I've never seen a kid Max's age with that much money. The last image I have of Max is of him sobbing, holding out this blue Guinean Franc bill as if it were a piece of garbage he weren't sure what to do with. I don't know if there's much worse than leaving a kid you love behind. And there's the guilt of it all as well. Who would want to cause a kid such sadness? On top of that, I'd be lying if I didn't say that I'm worried about Max's well-being. I can't possibly go into it now (I've got a plane to catch!) but I feel like the environment in which he is living isn't healthy. This isn't about financial resorces or lack of toys or any such nonsense. It's about how he's being treated. Of course, culture and money and place and time, and everything else go into what ends up being a kid's home life. It's a lot for me to process and navigate (culturally and ethically) but for the moment, I'll say what I feel in my heart: I feel uncomfortable leaving Max in the situation he's in. If all goes well, he and his sister will move to KanKan in September to start private school. I have a lot of hope that this move will make a difference, though we can't be positive it will happen.

So the goodbye was hard on all of us. And then 14 or so hours later we arrived in the outskirts of Conakry in the largest, most infamous military/police checkpoint. Long story short A guy reached into the car window, grabbed my shoulder and took my cell phone and then ran. Matt jumped out of the window but the passengers told him it was dangerous to go after the group of three guys who were running. Meanwhile I was screaming and screaming. I just didn't see it coming...not at all. I'm still a bit frazzled by the whole thing.

But the day didn't end there. It's stilll going actually. We have to be at the airport at midnight tonight for our 3:00am flight tomorrow. We're packed and ready but still in the daze of post-goodbyes and lack of sleep. Tomorrow at 11:30pm if all goes well, inshallahaw, we'll be in Portugal.

It's an odd thing to leave Guinea like this, at night, at what could be the beginning a new chapter for the entire nation. But it's time for us too. And with that last image of Max in my mind, I'm as sure as I can be that we'll be back.

Limbo

2008-05-31T06:09:00.000-07:00

We had planned to leave KanKan today in order to get to wherever it is we're going before a strike cuts off our transportation options. The problem is that we don't know where we're going. Here we are with plane tickets out of here and no place to go.

Yesterday was a rollercoaster. I'm just now calmed down enough to write about it. The embassy told us not to go to Conakry. The airport was shut down and flights were cancelled. A millitary barricade was set up right outside the airport. The man at the embassy told us to look into flying out of another airport. Royal Air Maroc, however, was not very helpful on this front. The woman at the international call center said she was "100% sure" that by June 4th (the date of our departure) all the problems in Conakry would be solved. Hmmm....Meanwhile we learned that trying to fly out of Mali (our closest option- a 24 hour bush taxi ride) would require a visa and one can only get a Malian visa from Conakry. Great. Other major airports are in Senegal and Ivory Coast. Both are several day car rides away and Air Maroc cannot guarentee that we'd be able to fly out from there. The man at the Malian visa didn't understand our situation and said to just "get a visa." The embassy in Conakry understood our situation but didn't know what to do about it. We're still waiting for the head of the consular section to call us with some sort of magic solution. People around town were talking about an impending strike. Stories coming out of the big market here were that merchants were locking up their shops, trying to secure their merchandise, etc. We learned that a Peace Corps volunteer in our neighborhood was evacuated from her home because it's near a military camp. This seems excessive as KanKan is calm and quiet at the moment. It was disturbing none-the-less.

So yesterday we were running all over town burning through cell phone calling cards to get information and advice and trying to visit our friends here to say goodbye. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Meanwhile we're hosting Na and Max. As is customary we're expected to greet Na's family and friends here. So we were out with her past dark, flashlights in hand meeting her family, cheerfully explaining that we weren't sure when or how we were leaving. I'm not sure I've ever been this stressed. And I'm prone to stress as many of you know. Around 6 pm. we gave up the good fight and decided to do as the wise, politically savvy folks at Air Maroc had said- "Wait it out." So we're here. We had already packed so today I had to dig through the entire backpack just to find a clean pair of underwear. Things were so hectic yesterday that really important things like old journals were on top and underwear was on bottom. On Monday I'll pack again.

The good news is that today we've heard that negotiations have started and the conflict *might* be coming to an end. Still no word on the status of flights today.

The last time we left West Africa was in 2002. We were scheduled to leave out of the Ivory Coast but there was a coup. The whole thing was a mess and involved a ton of fancy footwork- travel to Ghana, a flight out of Togo and someone finding our passports in a trunk in the Ivory Coast in time for our flight. A nightmare really. But I've remembered the whole thing as a crazy adventure. Maybe my memory is off. Maybe I've romanticized the whole thing (Bosnian gunfire style). All I know is that I'm not enjoying this latest installment of "adventure." Not one bit. Yesterday I felt sick. I can't imagine ever storing this in my memory as a crazy, fun adventure.

We're here at the cybercafe with Max and he's hungry and bored. Time for rice. I'm feeling much better today. It's a relief to not have to take action until Monday.

I'll keep you updated.

The Latest from BBC: "Guinea Troops Cause Airport Chaos"

2008-05-29T05:24:00.000-07:00

We got back to KanKan last night after a ton of horribly sad goodbyes to most of our friends and family in Kerouane. We were able to postpone two of what we expect to be the hardest as Na and Max came with us to spend our last few days in Guinea with us, sign Max and Yi up at the private school (Yes! The parents agreed!! More on that in a future post) and to see us off at the taxi park. We're frantically trying to run around town to get everything done, say goodbye to everyone here while at the same time hosting a six year old and his mom, both of whom wish to spend every second of our remaining time here with us. We're touched and happy and super stressed. But all the packing and last minute business and goodbyes seem like child's play compared to our worries about the situation in Guinea right now. In Kerouane we started to hear of some stirrings in Conakry. Men gathered around radios at cafe's around town every afternoon and evening. Each day there was something new- another minister sacked, a new protest in the military camp, etc. The local warden from the U.S embassy called and told us to start thinking about changing our flight in order to fly out of Bamako, Mali instead of Conakry. We're going to call Royal Air Maroc (Morocco in English) right now. We'll keep you updated. In the meantime enjoy the following article from BBC Africa entitled "Guinea Troops cause Airport Chaos." Lovely. We thought we were getting out of here just in time. Not so. Hard to get too worked up though when you're hanging out with a six year old who has left his village for the first time. He's looking at everything with such awe. I've never seen such wide eyes. We took him to his future school today and I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head. A whole world outside of Kerouane awaits him. I think he's ready.

Wish us luck as we try to leave Guinea. We're all hoping for the best for not only our departure but also for Guinea. People here want change. We just hope the price isn't too high.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7425219.stm
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On a Time Diet

2008-05-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

We're now back in KanKan after an exhausting voyage from Labe. With the price of fuel rising there's not much traffic between Labe and Kankan. We waited at the taxi park from 8am to 7:30p.m. for the car to fill up. Once 9 people have bought tickets (the cars here fit 7 comfortably), the baggage is attached to the top of the car, the driver gets gas and then the trip begins. You can imagine the frustration of not knowing exactly when you'll be leaving. We got used to it when we were here before and we've grown accostomed to it again. I've had some long waits in the past but I don't think I've ever eaten breakfast, lunch, AND dinner at the taxi park. This would be the equivalent of eating three meals at the Greyhound station. Not advisable. So I began the 12 hour ride with a stomach ache. The part that bothers me the most about such a long wait is that it usually means you have to travel through the night. This makes me nervous to say the least. Our driver seemed tired and rushed. There are a lot of potholes and torn up asphalt on the highway here and while most drivers navigate these roadblocks carefully, this guy went full speed ahead. He stopped in a town an hour from Kankan to sleep for an hour and we arrived in Kankan at 7 in the morning. I almost kissed the ground when we got out. This is the type of travel experience that one might chalk up to bad luck (though with a happy ending). It's seeming more and more, though, like the norm. Our trip from Conakry to Labe took 24 hours. We spent eight of those hours on the side of the road waiting for the driver to find a new car for us. And then there's the gas fumes. Charlie can tell you all about that. We've packed so much travel into these last 7 months that I think we've gotten a pretty accurate picture of the current state of travel here. It's not looking good.

We're now in our last three weeks in Guinea. In that time we've got three taxi trips left. Kankan to Kerouane, Kerouane to Kankan, and Kankan to Conakry. Exhausting but doable. The goodbyes sound a lot worse. Tomorrow we're off to Kerouane for our two-week goodbye there. Saying goodbye to children is never easy. I can't imagine what they must think- here are these two crazy foreigners who show up one day out of thin air. And then they leave. I wish I could make them understand how much they'll be missed.

All of a sudden it feels like there's so much to do in such a small amount of time. For the first time here we've got lists. Lots of them. There are things to take care of in Kankan, Kerouane, and Conakry. And we're now on a strict schedule. We tend to be quite liberal with our time. A two-week trip to Kerouane can easily morph into three weeks. It just takes little Max looking up at me and asking me to stay. He's got our number for sure. But now we're on a time diet. It feels painful already. We've got so much to do here in Kankan and yet we know we've got to get in a taxi tomorrow if we want to spend two weeks with the family.

I always fool myself into thinking that the last few days or weeks somewhere will be normal. It never is. The idea of leaving a place seems to hang in the air, changing the smallest of interactions. Matt and I are now talking about our time here in ways we haven't before. We're already looking back at what we've learned, what we'd do differently and what we're proud of. It's an odd thing. I'm trying to prepare myself for this phenomenon in Kerouane.

We said goodbye to Matt's host mom Nene Delanda in Lelouma and it went well. Nene is an amazing woman. She has six adult children and they're all living outside of Guinea. She's familiar with goodbyes and handles them quite well. We've been fortunate to spend so much time with her. Matt and I feel satisfied with our visit. It seems Nene feels the same. This made for a pretty upbeat goodbye. We both know that we'll do our best to come back to see her.

Matt's host brother, Nene's son who lives in Senegal, surprised us with a visit while we were in Lelouma. We've been trying to coordinate seeing him since we got to west Africa. He works a lot, though, and wasn't sure he'd be able to get the time off. We had started to resign ourselves to the fact that we wouldn't get to see him. So it was quite a surprise when he showed up at Nene's gate one evening, straight out of a bush taxi. We were all overjoyed. Nene cried. She hadn't seen her son in over 6 years. The reunion turned out to be an odd one for us. We're still trying to process it. We had looked so forward to seeing this person again and when we did it was clear that things had changed between us. Things aren't easy for young men here. Unemployment is very high and the cost of living is rising everyday. It's easy to take advantage of employees, people who *do* have jobs and want to cling to them. All this to say, Matt's brother is working hard and feeling frustrated. We've seen all kinds of responses to the situation here. His was extreme. He is angry. It seems logical that it would be easy to direct his anger at us, two people who are able to do things that he feels he can't (travel abroad, get a college education, help Nene out with money). None of this seems fair to him. And it's not. There's so much that's not fair. I'll leave it at that. You can imagine the rest. It was an uncomfortable week with him. Luckily, we had a lot of time with Nene and our friends in Lelouma. And of course, we got to hike.

Here are some photos of our time in Lelouma.

Matt and his host brother at Nene's house

One of our favorite places to hike in Lelouma. This is a giant waterfall. We saw a ton of wild monkeys playing in the tress and crossing the top of the waterfall. We went crazy taking photos of them. I'll try to post those photos when we get back from Kerouane.

Matt and me playing backgammon across from the waterfall

Matt and his host brother planting corn in Nene's garden. We were in Lelouma for the first big rain of the season. The day after, everyone in town plants corn. Everyone just knows. The market was virtually closed that day. Everyone was at home in the garden.

Matt and his host brother

Nene planting corn

For now, we're off to pack for our trip tomorrow. We're excited to give the family the giant backgammon board that Matt had made by a carpenter here. It's so big it can't be packed. We'll have to sit with it on our laps in the taxi.

We hope you're all well. Despite being focused on all these goodbyes, we're counting down the days until we reunite with all of you.

Our Plans: Decisions, Tickets, and Goodbyes

2008-04-24T04:17:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry to have left people hanging after such a dramatic last post. Things here change so quickly and without constant access to the internet it's difficult to get the latest news up before it's old news. My apologies. Thank you all for your well wishes and worry. Matt and I are fine and so is Guinea and all of our friends and family here.

As predicted by many, the strike didn't happen when it was scheduled. After having postponed our plans for several weeks we decided to just go ahead with our plans to go to Conakry, a place we were avoiding as it would be the epicenter of any chaos if any stikes or demonstrations were to take place. We made it to Conakry safely and were able to get all of our business done in four business days (a record I think!). We tried our best to get in an out as soon as possible. While Conakry has pizza and ice cream, it also has traffic jams, noise, scams and general craziness. Plus, we were paying each night to stay at a hotel. Aside from the money, we were a bit antsy to get out of the hotel as it was right next door to a night club that, from what we could tell, is rock'en until around 4am. It was also a little disconcerting to find out that our hotel has rooms that are available by the hour. But techno versions of "I wanna be your hero" and creaking beds in the rooms next to ours at all hours of the night were much preferred to any political strife or violence. We're relieved to have found Conakry in one piece throughout our visit. I got the feeling, though, that things could change any time now. The global food and fuel crisis is really coming down hard on Guinea. We had several conversations (or actually, we listened to several monologues masquerading as conversations) with young Guineans (mostly university students) who talked about the dire need for political change in their country. They are angry and frustrated with the lack of accountabilty and leadership as the national highway deteriorates along with the school system and health services. And then there's the price of rice....It goes on and on. I got the feeling that people are reaching some sort of tipping point. (As a side note on the rising rice prices, there's an article on BBC Africa right now about a new trend in Liberia. Liberians are starting to eat pasta because they can't afford rice. With pasta comes the need for forks and the steep learning curve involved in that whole fork twirl technique. It's a lighter take on what is a serious and sad global reality right now ).

For awhile now Matt and I have been talking a lot about our plans for the rest of our time in Guinea and for our eventual return home. While in Conakry we made a pretty big decision (relatively speaking, of course). We're coming home. This decision was at once easy and painstakingly difficult. Aside from the obvious heartbreak involved in leaving our loved ones here, deciding to come home this summer means that we will not be able to host a dear friend of ours from Missoula who was planning to visit us in June and July. We have thought long and hard about letting so many people down and ending what has been a joyous, and important journey for us. This trip, though, is coming to its natural end. Just as it was obvious to us that we needed to come here, it's now clear that it's time to leave. It's also clear that we'll be back (Back to Guinea II?). So much has gone into this decision- the political situation here, our relationships with our Guinean families, our lack of jobs, our desire to see all of you in the U.S....We came here to be with our families and yet we're finding that we can't be with everyone at once. We're traversing the country over and over again to be with people, and all the while we're not actually finding our own place in this community (impossible when you're spending so much time in bush taxis and your brain cells are drowning in gas fumes...). Our families here are confused about our job status and hurt that we're not staying with them throughout our time here. And then there's my host dad who has been trying to figure out when to plan our going away party since we arrived. His enthusiasm for an all-out festival in honor of us is slowly dying out. But there's more, so much more. We also came here to find some clarity and direction in our own lives. This time here has been such a gift. We're anxious to get back and start the next chapter of our lives. Our goal is to come back to Guinea in a few years with a clue about our own lives.

But before our next reunion, there's the inevitable, and now, fast-approaching goodbyes. And because we've had no idea when we were going to leave, these goodbyes are going to come as a surprise to many here.

So when are we coming home? When I told my family in California that we were coming home in June I expected a yelp of happiness and excitement. Don't get me wrong, they're relieved and overjoyed (as are we, we miss all of you a ton). But as my brother put it, "can't you get a flight out of there before June?!!!" It's a good question. There are indeed flights, and it's tempting to jump on one today now that the decision has been made. But we've got business to take care of here. Goodbyes can't be rushed. And travel to the places where our loved ones here live will take up a good deal of time. We've also got a proposal for the family in Kerouane that, if accepted, will take some time to arrange. We'd like to send Max and Yi to a private school in KanKan. This idea is worthy of a post of its own (which I promise to write in the next few weeks).

The details: We found cheap tickets out of Conakry for June 4th. The reason the tickets are cheap is probably because the flight leaves at 3am and involves a 13 hour layover in Morocco where we're not allowed out of the airport. (How many games of backgammon and cribbage is that?). The perk, though, is that we have a three day layover in Portugal where we can leave the airport. We'll be back in the U.S. by June 8th if all goes well.

But first, the tough part. For the moment we're in Labe at a cybercafe, our backpacks at our sides, waiting to get into a taxi headed for Lelouma where we'll spend a week saying goodbye to Nene Delanda. And then KanKan and then Kerouane...

We're on our way.

Still in KanKan

2008-04-07T07:50:00.001-07:00

*Scroll down for photos at the end of this post*

We're still here in KanKan. It feels like we've been here a very long time. We rented a house here with the intention of making it a passage house. Hotels here are expensive and the idea of having a place of our own when we need privacy and independence sounded good (and it is!). I didn't imagine, though, that this particular stay would last so long. We've been here for a month. At several points we've made plans to go to Kerouane to see the family or to Conakry to get some business done. The possibility of a national strike has changed our plans each time. Raising global food and gas prices are hitting Guinea hard. People who were struggling before are now simply not able to feed their families. Gas prices have increased by 30%. This is restricting the normal movement of goods which in term means less business for merchants and therefore less money and goods for everyone else. Everyday prices are going up. People are getting angry.

This sounds to me like a receipe for short-term disaster and possible long-term positive change. However, the national strikes that shut the country down last year and led to violence in all the major cities (including this one) really affected the general population. Based on conversations we're having with folks here it seems some people don't think the strikes were worth it and therefore would not support another one. Meanwhile the national trade unions keep making deadlines for the government,threatening another national srike if their demands aren't met.
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The first deadline was March 31st. We postponed travel in order to be in this city in case we needed help from foreign NGOs. Then the strikes got pushed back to April 8th. Again, we changed our plans. Yesterday we decided that we'd go to Conakry on the 10th (tomorrow). When we got to town, though, everyone was abuzz with news of a strike for (you guessed it) April 10th (tomorrow). This time it seems sure. It was announced as a peaceful protest and a two day national strike. While we hope that's the case we can't shake our memories of reports of the peaceful protests of last year that were met with violence from the government, looting from sectors of the population and the burning of governement builidings in this city and others.

When we voice our concerns to people here they laugh at us. That's right. They laugh in our faces. "Of course it will be peaceful" they say. "Nothing to worry about" they chuckle as if we're children afraid of monsters in the closet. Hopefully they're right and we'll laugh at ourselves in a few days. Remember that time when we thought Guinea was going to shut down and explode and then we were wrong? Ha,Ha, we'll laugh as we sip drinks on the island off the coast of Conakry.

For now, though, we have no choice but to take it seriously. We have no kitchen set up in our house since it was supposed to be a passage house. So we'll buy some canned food today just in case. We've contacted Peace Corps volunteers in this city as well as missionaires to find out what their plans are and if we can count on their help if push comes to shove. While they've been nice, they smile at us as if we're a bit paranoid. I sigh and think "It must be nice to have a big 'ol organization looking after your well-being. They'll do all the worrying and saving and evacuating for you." Oh, well.

More than likely we *are* being paranoid, but the stakes are too high NOT take this seriously. And to rub salt in our worried little wounds, the water didn't come today. We were hoping to stock up in case the water supply is shut off during a strike. Of course wells and pumps wouldn't shut down, but we have none near our house. We'll just have ration what we have until things blow over and we either get more or are on our way out of this town.

Here's hoping that my next post is one big laugh about what fools we were to take threats of a strike seriously.

In the meantime, here are photos of our time in KanKan. When we're not in our mosquito net you might find us:

eating beans and bread for breakfast on our mat. We've eaten this for breakfast everyday for a month and, despite the look on Matt's face, it hasn't gotten old. We buy the beans from a bean seller down the street. She's very friendly and her beans are delicious.

doing projects in our home. Matt had a HUGE backgammon set made by the local carpenter to give to the family in Kerouane as a gift (assuming we get back to Kerouane). Matt did all the painting.

visiting with my host brother Amadou who now lives in KanKan. He visits every few days and it is always wonderful to see him. Here Matt is showing him the little XO computer that Charlie gave us. This is one of Amadou's first experiences with computers (we took him to the cyber cafe a few weeks ago). It's very exciting to see the look of awe as someone sees a computer for the first time. We bought him a month of computer lessons at the cyber cafe. As soon as we get to our bank in Conakry we'll pay the owner of the cyber and he can start the classes. He's thrilled.

playing games, reading, writing, listening to BBC, and talking on our plastic mat in our home (during non-mosquito hours of course). The wall that the mat's long side touches is super hot. That side of the house is in direct sun-light during the day. By the evening the wall is literally hot to the touch. The door in the background leads to our little enclosed outside area. That's where we've been sleeping at night because of the heat.

at the cyber cafe. Matt took this photo of me in the corner when I wasn't looking. That's where I'm posting this from right now.

We'll keep you posted on the latest as soon as we know anything.

A Few More Photos

2008-03-31T08:41:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd post a few more photos while I have access to the internet. The national strike was postponed until April 8th and even that's not for sure. We decided to stop waiting and just go to Kerouane to visit the family. We'll leave here on Friday and will only stay there a few days. After our short visit we'll have to head to Conakry to extend our visas and get more malaria prophylaxis. We'll also be finalizing our schedule for the summer and our eventual return home. As soon as things are figured out I'll post all the details.

The diamond digging crew near Kerouane.

I think the woman in the background is the woman Charlie referred to in his comment from the last post. While we were there she was cracking jokes and laughing with her co-workers. As we were leaving I wished her well and said I hoped she found a diamond. She went crazy clapping and dancing.

Charlie and Matt drinking tea and hot milk at Nene's house in Lelouma

Matt, me and Charlie in front of the family's house in Kerouane.

My friend Mr.Bah and his wife Aminata just had a new baby. Matt, Charlie and I were lucky enough to see her right after she was born. Her name is Mymoona Bah. Here's a photo of the family: Mr.Bah, Aminata with Mymoona, Tierno (Max's best friend) and Mariam.

Photos From Charlie's Visit

2008-03-26T08:30:00.000-07:00

It was such a treat to have Charlie here. We took him to Lelouma first to spend time with Matt's host mom, Nene Delanda and do some hiking and then headed to Kerouane to introduce him to the Kaba family. Charlie endured some of the worst travel experiences I have ever had in Guinea. There's a gas shortage (and now a water shortage) so people are hoarding gas, selling gas, trying to buy gas, etc. As a result almost every bush taxi we took had big jugs of gasoline *IN* the car. The fumes were atrocious and we were all sick by the time the car got where it was going- usually at night. Charlie is such a good sport. He took all the craziness (good and bad) in stride, learned greetings and phrases in French, Mandingo, and Pular and ate whatever was put in front of him. The kids loved him and we, of course, loved getting to share Guinea with him. So here are some photos from his trip.

Lelouma:

Matt and Charlie playing chess in Nene's courtyard

Nene's backyard. Inside the couryard walls are cassava plants and Papaya trees (out of view). Beyond the red door are some amazing hiking trails- mountains, waterfalls, creeks....

Charlie climbing down a canyon on a natural ladder made out of vines and bamboo twisted together. People in the area use these ladders to travel between villages with goods.

Matt, Charlie, Mamadou and two local kids at the top of the canyon after having gone down and up the natural ladders.

Me and Charlie hiking

Charlie, Matt's host mom Nene Delanda, and Matt. Like Kerouane, Lelouma got phone service a few weeks before we arrived. In this photo Nene is wearing her new cell phone around her neck.

Left to right: Nene Delanda, her best friend Nene Salimatou, Salimatou's daughter Oumou, her other daughter Hadja Kadiatou, Matt, me, a neighbor with child.

Charlie making bread on Nene's porch. Matt is sitting on the jugs used to store water here.

Kerouane:

Me, Matt, and Charlie with the Kaba family. From left to right: Papice, Na (Domanine Kaba), me, Matt, a neighbor who we all tired to convince not to be in the photo- he was causing problems with one of the family's friends and therefore no one was happy to have him around at the time, Bijou, bottom row: Max, Yi Assiatou, Sidiki and Charlie

At the nearby diamond mines.

Kerouane and surrounding areas are a major source of Guinean diamonds. A lot of people from Kerouane go the mines hoping to strike it big. Some people work for land owners and diamond dealers but a lot work for themselves. They perform backbreaking work everyday for the chance of finding and selling a diamond. This is an aspect of Kerouane that I've never really learned too much about. I see people go off to the mines and hear stories of people finding big rocks. It's certainly part of the culture of the town and area, but I've never been too curious about it. The great thing about having a visitor is that it gives you a chance to experience things you never would have on your own. This is a perfect example. Charlie was very interested in seeing the mines and so we enlisted the help of our friend Sekou and set out on the 4 mile walk to the mining site. It turned out to be a facinating time. We met miners who showed us the process of digging, panning, an inspecting the pebbles. We got to hear their stories, hopes, and experiences. It was a highlight of our time in Kerouane with Charlie.

Ansoumane panning for diamonds. After digging away at the earth (as in the first photo), miners take the piles of rocks to the river and wash and sift them.

Matt near the river, right next to a pile of the rocks waiting to be washed and sifted.

Charlie inspecting the washed and sifted rocks. Mr. Camera, a miner there that day showed us how to inspect the rocks on a clean, dry surface of earth using a small stick. It's amazing how intricate the process is.

One last thing about Mr. Camara and our experience at the mines. The first day we went was a Friday. Friday is the holy day here and therefore people are not supposed to work at the mines on Fridays. As we suspected the site was deserted. All of a sudden we heard a small noise. We approached and found Mr. Camara. He looked scared at first and explained that he didn't mean to be working but had forgotten something from the day before and came to pick it up. Once there he decided to work a little. He was a wonderful tour guide and took us through the entire mining process. He later told us that when he saw Matt he immediately thought he was the devil, coming to punish him for working on a Friday.
(We went back a few days later and got to see and meet all of the people who weren't there on Friday. We won't let Matt forget, though, that out of the three of us *HE* was singled out as the devil).

I can't resist posting this photo of Max and Tierno. Max lost his first tooth while I was there (right after Charlie left). Tierno had lost his first tooth a month before. I wanted to take a photo of their toothless smiles but they got shy on me.
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For now, Matt and I are still in Kankan. We're waiting until the end of March to head back to Kerouane to visit the family. For months now the population has been planning a national strike for the end of March. We've decided to wait it out here in the city just in case we need to leave the area. We'd like to be in a place where there are more resources and support in terms of transportation, foreign NGOs, reps from the embassy, etc. More than likely nothing will happen, but just in case, we'll be here through the end of March.

And the dust? Well, the other night it rained and we got...mud! So now I have a new appreciation of the dust. And the water crisis? Well, it now comes around 2am every two days. We look back fondly at those glorious days when the water came at 6:00am . But at least it's coming regularly. One morning a week or so ago it simply didn't come. Matt looked at me and said, "darn, we had such big plans for today!" "Really? Like what?" I answered. In all seriousness he said, "We were going to do laundry and flush the toilet." I couldn't argue with him.

That's all for now. We're thinking of all of you.

From the Net

2008-03-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

Here’s a photo of Matt and me inside our mosquito net, a place in which we’ve been spending a lot of time lately. The mosquito situation here in Kan Kan is the worst it’s ever been and we’ve taken to retiring into our trusty net around 8:00pm to read, write, listen to BBC, play backgammon, and, eventually, fall asleep. If you’re wondering what we’re up to you can picture us in our net (if it’s evening here) or sitting at a cyber café waiting for the internet to start working (if it’s daytime). That’s pretty much the routine for now. Of course we eat and clean too. The cleaning thing is actually pretty intense since this city is unpaved and full of red dust. The dust is everywhere- on our clothes, in our home, in our lungs…it never ends.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First a summary of the world news (I guess I’ve had a bit too much of BBC news bulletins lately- every 30 min.! By News Hour at 8:00pm- in the net- we’ve basically got the news stories, and sound bites memorized and of course, the theme music is permanently imprinted in our brains by now). So, a week ago I left the family in Kerouane and met Matt in Kan Kan. He had gone to Conakry to see Charlie off. When Charlie left it felt like we moved into the next phase of this whole experience. Since we got to Guinea at the end of November, we had been travelling around, visiting our friends and families, and then enjoying our time with Charlie, introducing him to our families here, etc. Once he was gone we had some decisions to make. We couldn’t stay long-term in the village for a number of reasons. Being in the village with the family is an amazing experience. It’s also overwhelming. We were also getting to be quite a drain on their resources (though they would never tell us this). When I told the family that we wanted to rent a house in the village for our subsequent visits in order to not take up room in their house or in their neighbor’s hut, their reaction sort of summed up the spirit of overwhelming hospitality. The house I found was a five minute walk from the family’s house (five minutes!). The rent was $5 a month. My host mom said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. When you wake up in the morning I want to be able to find out if you slept well right away.” To be fair, the house did need some repairs. In any case, the family talked a neighbour into letting us rent one of his huts which is a few feet from the family’s house (where we stayed with Charlie during his visit). In so many ways being in the middle of everything in Kerouane is the best place to be. But not forever. After awhile it's necessary to have some breathing room.

So we decided to come here to KanKan and find a place to rent. We decided on KanKan because it’s close enough to the family (a 6 hour bush taxi ride away) and it’s a city with some of the big city perks like electricity for charging our computer, and the internet. Unfortunately the internet hasn’t been working too much lately. I’m writing this post as a word document in the hopes that sometime soon the internet will be working and I can post this.

So for $40 a month we’ve got a nice place to stay for awhile. KanKan is not a very comfortable city to live in right now though. There’s a water crisis which means that water is available every other day for a few hours. We don’t live near a pump or a well so we’re dependent on this schedule. We wake up early every other day (water is only available from around 4am to 7:00am) and fill jugs and buckets and bottles as best we can. This is also a hot place to live. We buy beans every morning for breakfast and the five minute walk at 8am usually leaves me dripping with sweat. And then there’s the dust. Oh the red, red, red dust. It’s a part of me now. It’s possible that the color of my feet will never be the same.

We’re adjusting to life here but we’re not sure how long we’ll actually be here. It was important to rent the house because to get to the capital or to Kerouane one must spend the night in Kan Kan. Three nights in a hotel costs the same as rent for our house for a month. So renting is a good move financially. But will we stay here in KanKan or will we use the house more as a passage house? Things still feel really up in the air. I applied for another job (this time in Conakry) and am waiting to hear back. But I’m not sure I really want it. Whether I get it or not I’m going to have to decide what the heck I’m doing here. While in the village my objective is very clear- I’m there to be with my Guinean family. This is fun and easy to do. And I love learning and speaking Malinke. It seems everyday that I’m there I learn a ton. But away from the village I’m not sure what my purpose is. Why am I here? Matt is working hard on a writing project and so KanKan seems as good a place as any to do it (he says as he coughs up red dust…).

I’m not so sure. I’m mulling over all kinds of possibilities right now. Most roads seem to be leading to home. It’s too early to say what that means but just know that it’s on my mind. A plan of some sort will have to come soon. In the meantime I’m waiting to hear on the job and am trying to clear my mind and listen to my heart.

Our place here in Kankan is quiet and so while I miss the warmth and laughter or the family’s home in Kerouane, I’m enjoying the silence (other than BBC music, or course) not to mention the independence. Today I washed my clothes and no one tried to take over for me or make me feel bad for not washing Matt’s underwear. It doesn’t sound like much but in the midst of all this dust it felt like a breath of fresh air.

In theory I’ll be able to post more often now that we’re in the city. I’m at the mercy of the stability of the internet connection though. I’m also hoping to check email more often, so please write and let me know how you’re doing. We miss all of you a ton. Oh, and I have photos from Charlie’s visit. I’ll get them up as soon as I can.

New Stories and Next Steps

2008-02-15T08:20:00.000-08:00

We're passing through the regional capital Labe on our way back to Kerouane and I wanted to send out a quick hello via this very slow internet connection. (I usually try to bring a book to read while pages are loading but I forgot this time...darn).

Charlie arrived safely in Conakry and we traveled together to Lelouma the next day to meet up with Matt and his host mom, Nene Delanda. Travel around here is long, dusty, hot, and exhausting- quite an introduction to Guinea. Lucky for us, Charlie is not only super-flexible and positive, but also has experience with bush taxis and unpaved roads. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda a few years ago and in some ways this is old hat for him. He has remarked, though, that the trips are longer here than he was used to. This is probably because our friends and family here live on opposite sides of the country, both of which are quite far from the capital. In any case, a decent chunk of Charlie's trip will be spent in a car. He seems to agree, though, that this is worth it since he'll get to meet all of our friends in both Lelouma and Kerouane. This is a huge deal for our friends here. They are honored to host a member of our family who has traveled so far to greet them and Charlie, too, seems honored to receive their hospitality.

Matt and I are thrilled to have Charlie's company. So far, it doesn't seem to matter if we're on a mountain or in a broken down car with 10 other people and a few chickens. While we'd all prefer not to be in a car, he's a fun guy to be around no matter where we are. And after three and a half months of traveling together, recycling the same old jokes and stories, Matt and I are relieved to have someone else to talk with. In Lelouma this past week we stayed awake long past our normal bedtime here (usually around 10:00pm) listening to Charlie's stories as the candles burned themselves out.

We spent our week in Lelouma introducing Charlie to our friends, neighbors, and Matt's former colleagues. Before we knew it it was time to make the rounds again to tell people goodbye. Between the hellos and goodbyes, we were able to squeeze in some pretty amazing hiking. Lelouma is a hiker's dream-come-true. It really is beautiful and full of well-trodded trails and cow paths between villages that pass over and through mountains, ravines, waterfalls, woods, fields, etc.

It seems we've been coming and going a lot over these past few months. While we made ourselves comfortable at the family's home in Kerouane (we were there a month) and Nene Delanda's home in Lelouma (a month and a half), we haven't strayed too far from living out of a backpack (or actually, a few backpacks). At this point I'm going a little crazy. It's not so much the packing and repacking and traveling, though that's certainly contributing to my current state-of-mind, but it's really the lack of privacy and independence. We've been living in other people's households the entire time we've been away. This has allowed for an extraordinary amount of intimacy between us and our friends and family here. It's a level that I didn't experience the last time I was here and I am so grateful for it. It's a amazing gift. (I'd like to add, too, that such a gift has only been possible because of the unbelievable hospitality and generosity of our friends here. Imagine if someone who you were friends with five years ago suddenly showed up at your doorstep unexpectedly with all of their bags. Imagine they made themselves comfortable, ate your food, used your stuff and never said when they were leaving....I'm not sure how I'd handle that). So after the blessing of so much sincere and heartfelt hospitaltiy it's now time to be the crazy neighbors and not the crazy guests.

But how to do that? That's the question right now. We came here specifically to greet these two households and now we've accomplished that. So what next? How do we stay here if we're not guests? Matt and I would like to stay in Kerouane (the kids are even cuter in person if you can believe it). We're just not sure how. We're on our way there now. Charlie will have a chance to meet everyone and will be there for a week. Then it's time for him to head back to Conakry to fly home (though we're trying to get him to stay longer...). Through the miracle of phone service we've told the Kerouane family that we're interested in renting a house for Charlie's visit and beyond. Maybe they'll be able to help us find something.

And the job. I might have mentioned it too soon. Things aren't at all sure. Through a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings I finally figured out that the people who sounded so interested in having me "help out" really wanted me to volunteer my time to "help." Don't get me wrong. Helping is good. I was just hoping to do that via a job with money and professional opportunities. But the good news is that the people giving me the run-around aren't really authorized to even hire or fire or ask for help. I finally got with the program and called the real boss. He was friendly and straight-forward. We set up a phone date for Monday. By then we'll be in Kerouane (thank goodness for phone service!). In any case, I'm in a much better state-of-mind about it now. After all the confusion I'm not as emotionally attached to the idea of the job AND I'm feeling more realistic about it- a much better place to be when I start a conversation with the boss.

When I can, I'll post some photos of Lelouma. In the meantime, Matt, Charlie, and I are going to rest up in Labe before our 12 hour taxi ride to KanKan tomorrow. (The day after tomorrow we'll take the 6 hour trip to Kerouane).

I hope you're all doing well. Matt and I have been talking about all of you a lot lately. It's a rare night when I don't dream about one or some of you. You're on our minds and we miss you. We're trying to figure out how long we'll be here. In other words, how long it will be until we show up on *your* doorsteps with our bags and no idea how long we'll be staying....

PHOTOS!!!

2008-02-03T05:40:00.000-08:00

I'm in Conakry right now to pick up Matt's brother Charlie who will be visiting us for the next three weeks. I'll pick him up at the airport tomorrow and then we'll head to Lelouma where Matt and his host mom are waiting for us. It's such a treat to be seeing Charlie so soon and to *finally* have enough reliable access to the internet to be able to post some photos.

All these photos are from our time in Kerouane. We were there all of December and celebrated the Muslim holiday of Tabaski with the Kaba family. We're hoping to get back to Kerouane soon and settle there for awhile. Lelouma (where we're staying now) is beautiful- full of amazing hiking trails and waterfalls and ravines, not to mention Nene, Matt's host mom who is a wonderful woman, but we're missing the Kerouane kids. Many of you have heard stories about the family, seen photos or met them. But just in case you don't know everyone, they are: Na (Domanine Kaba- the mother of the family), Fa (Mr. Kaba-the father of the family), Bijou (now 14), Papice (now 10), Yi Assiatou (now 8), and Max (now almost 6). You'll also see Amadou (Na's brother, now 17). Enjoy!

Matt with (from clockwise) Papice, Yi Assiatou, a neighborhood kid's knee and right up front Max, and two neighbor kids.

Matt and I gave the kids a puzzle (that we bought at world Games of Montana). It hadn't occured to us that the kids might not know what a puzzle is. Try explaining to kids what a puzzle is! There was mass confusion for the first hour of this endeavor. This might just be one of the hardest things I've ever attempted in Guinea. I think Matt would agree. The kids were thrilled and curious and excited to get such an odd gift. At first they thought the idea was to find two pieces that fit together. They were fine with that. They even enjoyed it. A lot. We weren't able to communicate the idea that each piece is part of something larger, a big image. We didn't have to though. After several hours of fun and laughter for them and stress for us, they saw the big picture come together and were in awe. It wa a beautiful moment for everyone. They were still talking about it weeks later.

Max playing with a toy cell phone. When we arrived in Kerouane we were told that cell phone towers had just gone up two weeks before. Two weeks before! We saw many people, young and old, experience a phone call for the first time. I took Max with me to the telecenter when I called my mom so that he could greet her. I don't know if I've mentioned this before but Max was named after my mom's family, my grandfather in particular. Her maiden name is Max and so when Max was born they wanted to give him a name from my family. I chose my grandfather as his "toma" (the person one is named after). Max is probably the youngest kid in Kerouane to have used a phone. He was quite a celebrity afterwards. People were cheering and asking him to repeat the conversation over and over again. Max is a story teller so his "translation" of the coversation was pretty entertaining. Since he doesn't speak English and my mom doesn't speak Malinke, he just made up what was said. (According to him, my dead grandfather is coming to Guinea to greet him and to give him a bike- everybody thought this was pretty funny).

Mariame Bah with Max and Tierno Bah. Mariame and Tierno are my friend Mr. Bah's children. When I left Kerouane in 2002, Madame Bah was very pregnant with Tierno. I left a month before he was born. It was such a joy to come back and see him as a kid *and* as a surprise bonus, to meet his little sister. The Bah's are of a different ethnic group than the Kaba family. In Kerouane Mr. Bah's enthic group, the Pular people, are a minority (in Lelouma where we're staying now, they're the majority). In kerouane Pular kids and Malinke kids don't often play together. Matt and I went to Mr.Bah's house everyday to greet him and spend some time with his family. Since Max likes to follow Matt and me everywhere we go, Max came to the Bah house with us. He and Tierno become really good friends (as only 5 year olds can in such a short period of time) and now play together often- even when Matt and I aren't around. They are really sweet to each other, giving each other bits of their candies and sharing toys. It's been an amazing thing to watch.

Matt with Mr. Kaba, Amadou, Sidiki, Papice (front row, second from left) with neighbor kids at the mosque on Tabaski morning. Just like on Christmas morning, kids here get up super early. Max and Yi were up singing and dancing by 5:30am, waiting for all the excitement to begin and for the rest of the household to wake up. After a huge breakfast everyone puts on nice clothes and goes to the mosque. The prayer lasts about 30 or 40 min. or so. It felt a bit longer for me because while men sit up front (in this case under the shade of a big, beautiful tree), women sit behind (in this case in the direct sun). Afterwards we joined the men and matt said, "wow, that was nice and relaxing to just sit in the shade for awhile." I glared at him. That's when he looked back at where the women had been and realized how good he had it.

Me with Na (Domanine Kaba) after the prayer at the mosque. Notice my hair in this photo and the following photos. Na took me to the salon to get my hair braided for the holiday. My hair is very different from people's hair here so it was quite difficult for the hair dresser to do it. They had to get the owner of the salon (the best darn braider in Kerouane) to do it since I was such a special case. It hurt a lot but I was very impressed when they were done. I hadn't thought it was possible! It was a treat to wear the braids for a week or so and not have to brush my hair.

People leaving the mosque with their prayer mats

Me with Na after leaving the mosque.

Me, Matt and Max after returning from the mosque

Matt and me. Matt's wearing his new holiday shirt here. He had borrowed the boo-boo for the mosque but afterwards people put on their new clothes.

I'm including this photo specifically for the Missoula folks. Check Matt's shirt out. Yes, the Missoula peace sign lives on! Even as one slaughters a goat. On the day of tabaski families are expected to slaughter a goat if they can afford to.

Matt playing African checkers with Omar, a neighbor kid. And yes, that's a goat head in the background.

Papice, Max and Yi Assiatou. After the holiday meal all the kids in town dress up in their new clothes and go door-to-door asking neighbors and friends for candy and money.

Yi and Max in front of the Kaba house. Na and some neighbor kids are in the background

Papice putting on a hat that Matt and I had given him for the holiday

Bijou in her new clothes for the holiday. For those of you who knew Bijou when I was in Guinea before, or who've seen her photos, this might come as a surprise. Yes, Bijou is now a teenager. Hard to believe.

Na and Fa- Domanine Kaba and Mr. Kaba on the night of the holiday
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That's it for now. Thanks for all your wonderful comments. It's so nice to hear from all of you. I'll have internet access until Tues. so feel free to email. I love hearing from everyone. Oh, and one word about our post office box. We recieved a few letters but we've heard from at least one person that a letter was returned. I forgot to mention some tricks that people around here say might help assure that your letters arrive in our box. Try some of the following: Write our address in red ink, write "educational materials" on the envelope or package, write "Feminine hygiene products" on the envelope, or write "God" or "Allah" is watching you. Who knows? It could be nonsense but it's worth a try.

One last bit of news. I had an interview for a job in Kerouane and it's looking promising. Most people don't want to live in Kerouane because it's so far away from big towns, there's no internet access and there aren't many jobs. So the fact that I want to live there makes me a shoo-in. At least I hope that's the case. As soon as I have more info. I'll let you know.

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Matt's in Lelouma right now but I talked to him on the phone last night (Lelouma got cell phone service a few weeks ago!) and he greets everyone. We're both in good health and spirits.
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Thanks again for all of you comments and support. We miss you.

Reunion

2008-01-02T08:34:00.000-08:00

It's been killing me to not be in contact with all of you this past month! Matt and I were thinking of all of you during the holidays and are sending you our best wishes for 2008. This past month we've been in Kerouane where there is not yet internet access.

I know a lot of you have been waiting for news of the reunion with my Guinean family. I'm thrilled to give you all an update. It seems so silly now that I wasted time worrying about whether or not people would remember me. The reunion itself was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had. As Matt and I wondered around the town looking for the family's house (they had moved from the place where I had lived with them) all of sudden we heard screaming and suddenly people were running toward us. Bijou, Yi Assiatou, Papice and Max- my host brothers and sisters- grabbed ahold of us and wouldn't let go. Max (now 5 years old) actually knocked the wind out of Matt with the force of his running hug. The kids were taller and older but I would have known them anywhere. They were crying and behind them was my Guinean mom and best friend here, Domanine Kaba. She was sobbing. I was crying too. When I let go of Domanine I saw the 50 to 100 neighbor kids who were gathered around us. Domanine, Mr. Kaba, Matt and I sat on chairs facing the crowd. Max jumped up on my lap. In the true Madingo fashion where everyone's business is everyone else's business, we had our first conversation in over 5 years in front of the whole neighborhood. It really was one of the most joyous moments I have ever experienced. I thought my heart was going to explode.

A quick word about Max. He was a baby when I left. I really didn't expect him to know me. I was even preparing myself for him being scared of me (as some kids are of white people). Not Max. His family talked to him about me all the time. He had seen the photos of me with the family and with him on my back. As soon as he could talk fluently he told his friends that I was going to come back for him. The day I arrived he looked into the crowd at his friends with such a satisfied smile "I told you so" it seemed to say.

The month we spent with the family went fast. Too fast. I had wondered if I had built up how great these people were over the years. Not a chance. We started right where we left off and it was clear to me that, if anything, I hadn't realized how truly amazing they were before. It was hard to leave. Everyone but Max understood that we're coming back in a few months. He was devestated that we weren't taking him with us. It wasn't because we didn't want to.

There's so much more I'd like to share about the month we spent in Kerouane but I don't have access to the internet much longer. I want to make sure I get this sent off before I lose the connection. Tomorrow we're headed to the village where Matt lived. We're really excited to see his host mom, Nene Delanda. When Matt left in 2002 she lived alone. We can't wait to surprise her with a visit.

As soon as I have access to the internet again I'll write more. Thanks for all your well wishes. We think about you all the time and hope to be able to have more regular contact.

Happy New Year!

Our Address

2007-11-28T08:15:00.000-08:00

I've listed our new address on the side of the blog too. You'll always be able to find it there.

Annie Mascorro
S. Matt Read
B.P. 363
Conakry, Guinea-Conakry
West Africa (Afrique de l'Ouest)

We'd love to hear from you! Keep in mind that it'll probably take a few weeks (two?) for the letters to get to Conakry. The tough part, though, is that we won't actually be in Conakry. We'll get any letters in our box when we come to Conakry next. Since Matt's brother will be visiting us in January or February we'll definitely be back around then, if not sooner. If you know Matt's brother you might consider contacting him to see if he might have room to take some letters over...

Here's the latest update:

We finally have an address!! And a bank account too! Plus, we're registered with the U.S. embassy! We've been in Conakry for 6 days and we just completed these three chores yesterday. I know it doesn't sound like much, but I must say, it wasn't easy. Bureaucracy is hard no matter where you are, but in this case a number of factors was working against us. First, we don't really know how this kind of stuff works here. Second, everyone is speaking French or Sous Sous or Malinke or Pular or some combination of these languages. But THE biggest obstacle between us and our P.O. box and bank account and registration was the heat. The new Peace Corps headquarters is very far from town. It took over 45 minutes to get to town and involved several different taxis. All of this in scorching heat and humidity. We got back to the house on Monday and Tuesday in the early evening drenched with new sweat, sticky with old sweat, and salty with really old sweat.

The P.O. Box was relatively easy thanks to one of El Hadj's contacts (though I've got to add that the main branch of the Post Office in Conakry is one of THE hottest places I've ever been to). El Hadj's friend was a wonderful woman who made a long process as painless as possible. The bank, however, was a bit more complicated. People in the bank (and everywhere, really) were so nice and helpful. Unbelievably helpful. But rules are rules and the bank absolutely needed something called a certificate of residence for Conakry, even though we don't plan to live in Conakry. We knew it and they knew it and yet, the safety of our money depended on this magic, $1 piece of paper (actually, we both needed one so I should say $2). I won't go into the details but our quest for the golden certificate took us to a shanty town concession where an old woman cooking over an open fire opened up a tattered black purse to show us the official Guinean paperwork for the certificate. Unfortunately her husband wasn't there to sign the paperwork and she wasn't authorized to do so. High noon in Conakry, West Africa is about the worst place to experience frustration. In smaller towns or villages one is more likely to have friends or be offered a piece of fruit as a consolation prize. In the capital though, it's just you, frustration and the omnipresent sun. So, that was that. The woman couldn't help and was therefore done with us. Anyway, the bottom line, after much worry and frustration, is that the bank bought some black market certificates for us and allowed us to finish up the process. They happily tucked our money (in dollars) safely in their vaults. I'd like to add that through the entire process the bank officials were lovely to us and we were, as always, two fumbling, ridiculous, Americans. And smelly too.

The other major frustration was with the U.S. embassy. I might be off the wall here but I really thought that one's embassy (no matter what nation you're from) was there to help with all kinds of details related to citizenship. I'm sure embassies are great in an emergency. There's no doubt in my mind that the U.S. embassy would do anything and everything to get us out of here if we had problems. But all we wanted to do was register to vote. I would think that good 'Ol Uncle Sam would eat that up. Doesn't the U.S. government want us young hippies to vote?! Okay, don't answer that...Anyway, we showed up on a Monday but were told that American citizenship services only happen on Tuesdays. Oops. Funny, it didn't *look* busy there. In fact, I didn't really see anyone else there. Certainly no Americans. Hmmm....So we took the hot taxi ride back the next day. The woman who saw us looked nervous. "Well," she said, "I don't really know how you can register..." "We're still trying to figure that out." The embassy?!!! The U.S. government?!! She pulled out a big book, "let's learn this together." We were, of course, in a hurry and worried that if we didn't get to the bank soon they'd forget to get the illegal certificates in time to open the account that day. But what are a couple of conscientious Americans supposed to do? She finally found something for us to fill out and then when I asked if she'd mail it, she said, "No, we don't do that. But be careful, I've heard the Guinean mail system is awful." Great. So if none of this works out please don't blame us for any unfavorable election results!

But all that is behind us. The good news is that we're finally leaving Conakry tomorrow morning at 7:00am. We'll go to the big Taxi station and buy two places for a ride up-country to KanKan. If we're lucky we'll get there before nightfall. That's the goal. KanKan is the regional capital closest to the village of Kerouane where I lived. We'll stay in KanKan for a day or two and then take the 6 hour taxi ride on a rocky, red dirt road to Kerouane. As many of you know, this is the moment I've been waiting five years for!! I can't tell you how anxious I am to see my Guinean family. Matt and I can't wait. So many people in the states and here have shared with us wonderful reunion stories. They have all made me feel very hopeful that ours, too, will be filled with as much joy as I am imagining. I will certainly let all of you know. It might be awhile before we have internet access again(though that shouldn't stop you from emailing, we'll get your emails eventually). The plan is to stay in Kerouane through the Tabaski holiday, that's December 22nd. We might stay longer but we'll just have to see. In any case, after the reunion I will do my best to let you all know how it went. Thanks for all of your well-wishes. So many of you have shared in my excitement over this for the past year.

Please know that Matt and I are both doing well and are in good health and spirits. I joke about the heat and frustration (though in the moment they don't feel very funny) but rest assured that we are so happy to be back here. Overjoyed, really. We remember people here and the crazy part is that they remember us too! Even the dude who sells Schwarmas downtown. He looked at us straight in they eyes and said in French "Where the heck have you guys been for the last five years?!" Unbelievable. It's good to be back. But we miss all of you like crazy. We love hearing from you so please keep in touch.

Just in case we can't get to the internet for awhile, Happy Holidays! We're thinking of you.

Flight 720

2007-11-24T05:22:00.000-08:00

We finally made it! It still hasn't really sunk in...We're walking around in a daze. Are we really here?! It sure *looks* like Guinea. The landscape is as we remember it: green grasses and palm trees, red earth and dust. The people are speaking local languages that we recognize and respond to. The pounded cassava fluff with chicken and onion sauces tastes the same if not better and the heat is oppressive, heavy and sticky. We've worked so hard to get ourselves back here, though, that it's kind of unbelievable. Matt and I keep exchanging confused glances. Are we really here? It's exhilarating and confusing at once. And exhausting. Before we get too excited about being here we've got to sleep. We spent Thanksgiving night in a crowded, hot, florescent lit airport and are now looking down the barrel of a massive sleep debt.

Dakar, Senegal and Conakry, Guinea are a mere 420 miles apart and yet it took us much longer to make that trip than it did to cross the Atlantic. As you all know, we didn't hike, bike or drive to Conakry. Nor did we take a flight with a lot of layovers. Nope. After playing the standby game on Monday we went ahead and booked a direct flight from Dakar to Conakry, a *one hour and fifteen minute* flight. Our flight was to leave at 8:30am on Thursday morning (Thanksgiving). Finally, we thought, something easy. All we have to do is show up with our bags packed. No way to mess this one up.

Most people who fly have some (now) funny stories about ridiculous and/or frustrating airport experiences. Lord knows Matt and I do. But I have *never* *ever* spent so long in an airport. If I had to pick an airport to spend the night in, I probably wouldn't pick Dakar's Sanghor International Airport. There are a few small air-conditioning units scattered throughout the place but the cool air doesn't go far and to be honest I actually forgot they were even there. After just the first hour of our wait we were wet with sweat. I'm glad I didn't know how long we had to go. The food situation, though, is what really did me in. It could be that by the time I was even aware of a "food situation" it was one in the morning and if you're at an airport at one in the morning you're probably not doing so good anyway. So I was hungry. This airport is small (it's about the size of the Missoula International Airport) and once you get past customs and you're at the gate (there are 4 gates as far as I could tell) you have two food options. Both places served the same thing- sandwiches with ham, cheese and mustard that had been sitting for a long time, ice cream, and water, juice, coffee, and alcohol. None of this looked particularly appealing. By two o'clock we were desperate though and bought a sandwich to split. It was old and I gagged. Matt finished it up and I bought an ice cream bar. My stomach wasn't happy.

The part that made the whole thing worth it (aside from eventually making it here to Conakry) was the people. We all banded together out of frustration and misery. We watched from the hard metal seats as the spoiled passengers going to Paris and Madrid and Casablanca and Freetown and Lome boarded their planes happily and *on-time.* We all became restless as the hours passed. Soon we all began talking. Patrick, the black South Africa guy (who by the way, looked like he had just stepped out of a magazine despite it being 3 in the morning) wanted to start a revolution. Soon he got the Nigerian guy in on it and by 3:00am I was in as well. I had an in with Abdou, the Air Senegal attendant so I was the go-between. Patrick had some underground contact who gave him what he claimed was "the real" info. and I would test it out on Abdou to gage his reaction. There were all kinds of conspiracy theories circulating and by a certain time we had all given up on sleep and were indulging in in-depth discussions about the possibilities of fowl play. Had Air Senegal really known we'd have to wait so long and just didn't want to spring for hotel rooms for all of us? Is that why since 8:30 in the morning they had said each hour that we'd leave soon? Or, since there were a lot of empty seats were they trying to sell more tickets before leaving? Meanwhile, Matt started raising his fist in the air chanting "vol sept cent vingt" (or, flight 720). People loved it. We even had the bathroom attendant in on it. Each time one of us went to the bathroom he handed us our towels and said, "you're *still* here?!!). (And as a side note, what kind of place is this? A bathroom attendant and yet no food?!). When we boarded the plane at 4:30 am on Friday(!!!! yea, let that sink in) Matt walked down the aisle, lifted his fist and said in French, "flight 720 we're all a big family." People cheered. I think the funniest moment, though, was when we were finally going to get to board the plane and Abdou and his side-kick from Air Senegal ushered us in to a bus to take us to the plane. It took a good 15 minutes to get us all in and situated and we were packed in like sardines, all of us smelling pretty bad. Then the bus took a wide circle around the tarmac and brought us to the plane. What makes this ridiculous is that the plane was a mere 50 yards from the gate!! 50 yards!! Since one must go outside and walk up the stairs to the plane anyway (ie. there is no big mobile hallway connecting passengers to the plane directly from the gate waiting area like you find in bigger U.S. airports) this was extremely silly. What took almost 30 min. could have been a 5 minute (if that) walk in somewhat fresh air. After such a frustrating day and night having something to laugh about felt pretty good. Soon all of us revolutionaries were doubled over laughing, trying not to trip as we walked up the stairs to the plane.

We got to Conakry at around 6:30 in the morning on Friday- 24 hours after we had arrived at the airport in Dakar, Senegal the day before. We walked out of the airport with our new "flight 720" friend Mouctar and his puppy Mia just in time for all of us to catch the sunrise.

We Are Not In Guinea

2007-11-22T06:47:00.000-08:00

Yep. You read that correctly. We are no closer to Guinea than we were yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that... This post is coming to you from, you guessed it, good 'ol Dakar, Senegal. A word about making plans here: People in West Africa often say "Inshallahaw" after statements or in response to other people's statements. For example, I've been telling people "We're going to Guinea on Thursday." People's response? "Inshallahaw," which is Arabic for "If God wills it to be." I keep forgetting to add that to everything I say. After this morning (or rather, after this week in Senegal) I bet I won't forget. God has not yet willed our trip to Guinea. Nor has Air Senegal. Poor, poor Mr. Thiam.
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What happened? you ask. Well, Matt and I woke up at 5:30 this morning. By 6:00 we were in Mr. Thiam's car on our way to the airport. This was our third trip to the Leopold Senghor International Airport in 5 days. We couldn't contain our excitement. We were finally on our way to Guinea! And this time it was the real deal. We weren't merely standby passengers. We held in our hands *real* tickets, paid for by us and blessed by Mr. Thiam's friend's travel agency. There was NO possible way that things could wrong this time around. We said goodbye to a very happy Mr. Thiam with American hugs (the custom here is a handshake) and promised to see each other in Conakry in a week or so when he passes through Guinea on his way to Mecca. It was a bit sad to say goodbye to a man who we had become quite close to but we all knew it was time for us to leave. Mr. Thiam was glowing. He was about to get his life back.
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At the airport I checked us in while Matt watched our luggage. That's when things started to fall apart. I learned that the flight was delayed a bit and would depart this afternoon "Inshallahow." Then it was "maybe around 6:00pm." Then, "maybe tomorrow." The plane, it turns out, is broken and in Niger. We sheepishly called poor Mr. Thiam, waited in line to pick up our 30,000cfa (roughly $60) from Air Senegal for food, lodging, etc. during the delay, said goodbye to some of our new aiport friends (among them Mouctar and his dog Mia who were at the airport Monday and like us were turned away), and took a taxi back to Mr. Thiam's place. And here we are.
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A few days ago when we tried to fly to Guinea and were turned away we got back in Mr. Thiam's car and I told him about the song "The Cat Came Back" (the cat came back the very next day...). "Wouldn't it be funny if, like the cat, we kept coming back?," we laughed. "What if we never got to leave Dakar and had to live with you forever?"I giggled to Mr. Thiam. This inspired deep belly laughs from all of us.
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Well, no one's laughing now. Our baggage is back in "our" room in Mr. Thiam's complex and in a few hours we'll take our regular places at his table for lunch. We might even use his daughter's computer again.
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Meow.

A One-Way Ticket to Conakry

2007-11-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

Me, Mr. Thiam, and Matt

Thiam's daughter Satou, Mr. Thiam, and me

Mr. Thiam is an extraordinary man and he has taken very good care of us here in Dakar, Senegal. There's really no way to thank him. Matt and I have had a fabulous time getting to know him and his daughter Satou. But it's time to leave. It is time to get out of this good man's hair and let him have his life back. So we're off tomorrow morning. Today over breakfast Mr. Thiam handed us our plane tickets. I have them right here in my hand. A one-way ticket to Conakry, Guinea. It's intoxicating just looking at them. After five years of dreaming about it, we're finally one flight away from Guinea. This time I mean it: my next post will be from Guinea.

We've been in Africa 15 days now and we've fended for ourselves exactly one night out of all those nights (and that was only because we arrived in The Gambia at night. The next day when people found out we were there, we had an invitation to stay with a member of the PC The Gambia staff (a former Peace Corps volunteer) right away). We've stayed with The Ndoye family in Pout, Tim in The Gambia, Alpha (Abdou's older brother) in Kaolack, and with Mr. Thiam in Dakar. We didn't expect any of this. We're so grateful for such a warm welcome to West Africa. We've met some amazing people and they've all made us feel at home here.

Tomorrow we're finally headed to Guinea. It feels so close I can almost taste it (peanut sauce, leaf sauce, achecke...).

Until Conakry...

Stuck in Senegal + Some Photos from The Gambia

2007-11-20T07:40:00.000-08:00

Matt playing Draughts (international checkers) with Lamine Conte at a gaming group in Banjul, The Gambia

Matt with our friends Alpha, Bakary and Appolino in The Gambia

Alpha, Bakary and some of their friends playing Sorry in The Gambia

I was hoping that this post would be coming to you from Guinea. It feels like we've been away from Montana/California/Texas for such a long time- shouldn't we be in Guinea by now?!! Sure, things here work a bit differently and yes, travel here is a pain but, in this case, Matt and I are at fault (okay, I'll also share a tiny bit of the guilt with a mean woman at the Air Senegal ticket counter). If we had planned our travels a bit more carefully we'd be in Conakry, Guinea by now. We weren't sure when we'd be getting back from The Gambia so we didn't make any airline reservations beforehand. Basically we showed up in Dakar, Senegal on Saturday and "planned" (or rather, expected) to hop on a plane the next day. Of course the flights are booked until Thursday. Since we're not getting any turkey or homemade stuffing for Thanksgiving this year, our consolation will be *finally* making it "Back to Guinea." At least I hope it works out that way....

In the meantime, we're dirtying our last few "clean" clothes and trying to get some of our freelance work done despite the heat and power outages. (As a sidenote, I'd like to respond to the controversy about Matt and his underwear before this case makes it to the Montana Supreme Court via our favorite Lawer, Brian: Unfortunately I'm not authorized to say whether or not he wears any. I'll leave that up to him. BUT I can say that he did pack a lot. In fact he packed a lot more than I did. Since our current situation here in Dakar is not ideal for washing clothes (no bucket, clothesline, etc. Plus, we're leaving so soon) I've had to start wearing some of *his* underwear. The more I think about it, he was quick to offer them to me AND they don't look or feel very worn....)

Okay, back to our situation. Matt and I are used to being a bit unorganized and therefore often find ourselves fumbling around, trying to make plans at the last minute. We're fine with this. We've even come to like laughing at ourselves. But when it involves someone else it's not so funny. Enter Saint Boubacar Thiam. Actually, he's not a Saint but will go to Mecca this year and will soon be an El Hadj. Mr. (almost) El Hadj Thiam is a lovely man. He's a successful business owner and family man here in Dakar (though his son is studying in the U.S). His time is money. And, unluckily for him (though he would never say this), he has found himself "in charge" or two fumbling Americans with dirty, big and/or no underwear. Poor, poor Mr. Thiam. Matt and I were volunteers under Mr. Thiam's uncle in Guinea. His uncle, a Guinean man and a true El Hadj, now lives in the States. Since finishing the Peace Corps El Hadj and I have become friends via email and more recently, the phone. He has made it his mission to make sure Matt and I are safe, happy, and well taken care of in West Africa. He hasn't let the fact that he no longer lives in Africa get in his way. This is a big man in every sense of the word. He has big hands, big contacts all over West Africa, and an even bigger heart. He basically put his nephew who lives in Dakar with his family in charge of Matt and me while we're here. When we get to Guinea El Hadj has a whole other network of caretakers ready for us until we reach our Guinean families. Of course Matt and I are adults and can take care of ourselves. But I do have to admit that it has been such a pleasure getting to know El Hadj's newphew. And yes, he has made things possible that we never would have drempt possible. He as gone above and beyond the call of duty. He has put up up in a rental he owns, fed us, taken us to the aiport several times and waited the requisite three hours while we tried to fly standby, changed our money at a good rate (they use dollars in Mecca so this works out for everyone), connected us with a travel agency, facilitated us buying our plane tickets....and on and on and on. This list really does go on for a long time. We can't thank him enough. We also can't seem to get out of Dakar. So guess what? We're *still* his problem. Believe me, we've tried to get him off the hook. He won't have it. We've also tried to get the heck out of her and get to Guinea. It feels like some weird movie where the annoying foreigners who dress funny and smell bad just won't get the hint and take a hike. He's been great about it though and has made us feel very at ease (as we eat his food and he drives us all around town). We're embarrassed. We're also so damn happy to know this guy, not because he's bending over backward for us but because he's a great, funny guy and we have a wonderful time with him. I'll try to post of photo of him before we leave (if we ever do...).

Our trip back here from The Gambia was long and exhausting. We stopped in a big town called Kaolack on a mission to find Matt's Guinean host brother Abdou. Kaolack is known as one of Senegal's hottest towns. I don't mean hottest fashion or spiciest food. I mean hot. Hot, hot. Hot as in, I'm melting hot. So we arrived in Kaolack at high noon to look for a guy who we thought might be there. Fun! And Mr. Thiam and his air conditioned car were a zillion miles away. To make a long story (and a long, long, day) short, with a lot of help from a very nice stranger named Maget (he said to call him Max for short) we found Matt's host brother's older brother and got Abdou's cell phone number. He's currently in another region in Senegal- very far away. But contact was made so we felt good. Mission (basically) accomplished. It really was a small miracle to find this guy's family in the middle of a huge town where we didn't know anyone. Abdou will visit us in Guinea at the end of December. We spent a very bizarre night with Abdou's older brother and his wives. Bottom line: They had no idea what planet we were from or how on earth we knew their family. By the time we left their home we weren't sure what planet they were from. And Matt ended up with a whole bunch of bed bug bites.

My fingers are crossed (and Mr. Thiam's too I imagine) that my next post will be frm Guinea.

Love you guys! Thanks for all the comments! We love getting them!

We're Here!

2007-11-14T04:53:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry I haven't been able to post sooner. We arrived in Dakar, Senegal a week ago but went straight to a town about 3 hours away (where the internet was, of course, not working) to stay with the family of a friend of ours from Missoula. Our friend N'doumbe is a Senegalise woman getting her masters at The University of Montana in Missoula on a Fullbright scholarship. She'll return to Senegal in May 2008. She was my French tutor this past summer and we became friends. Matt and I took a package over for her and her family offered to host us for a few days. Her sister Mareme picked us up from the airport and the three of us took a taxi to N'dboumbe's hometown of Pute. What was going to be a two day visit with her family turned into five days. And even then it was difficult to leave. We had such a wonderful time with them. They welcomed us into their home as if we were family and we immediately felt comfortable. We spent our time talking and joking with 5 of N'doumbe's sisters and several brothers and friends of the family as well as her mom and dad. Everyone in the family and in the neigborhood was anxious for news about N'doumbe. They served us incredible Senegalise food- rice with fish and vegetables, rice with leaf sause, noodles with meat, potatos and peas....We ate well and were grateful for such a warm welcome to West Africa.

We were in Pute with the family long enough that we needed to do some laundry. The family had made sure that Matt and I didn't lift a finger the entire time we were there. They gave us their biggest bedroom, cooked for us, cleaned for us, showed us around, etc. etc. We were touched by such incredible hospitality. There was no way, though, that we were going to ask N'doumbe's sisters to do more work for us. So we did the only thing we could do. We told them we needed to wash our underwear. I think underwear is one of the only excpetions to the rule of not letting a guest do anything for themselves. People everywhere recognize that handwashing underwear is a very personal or "intimate" as they said, thing. Matt and I were pleased to be able to give them a bit of a break from all the stuff they were doing for us. They set the buckets up for us and got the water ready. I went first. When I finished I asked Matt if I could do his for him. He said he'd do his own. No problem. Well, the sisters thought this was hilarious. A man doing his own laudry when there were plenty of women around to do it for him?!! Crazy. They were busy cooking and braiding each other's hair so allowed it to happen. They really got a kick out of it though. It was all laughs until the father of the family got home. He took one look at Matt bent over the bucket and went crazy. First he yelled at his daughters for not doing Matt's laundry for him. He called Aiyta over and made her finish up the job. Then he talked sternly to Matt for not having his daughters do the job. But the person he was really upset with was....ME!! Huh?! Me?!! Yes, since I'm Matt's "woman" or wife, it's up to me to wash his underwear. I was branded as a bad wife right then and there. The only one who really took this seriously was the father since he's from a different generation. The rest of the family was able to laugh about it. I told Aiyta that she could be Matt's wife now and she gladly excepted the job. As a side note, Matt had already finished his underwear by the time Aiyta took over. She washed his shirts.

Matt and I are now far from Pute. We're in Banjul, the capital of The Gambia. The Gambia is a super small country that is almost entirely inside of Senegal. It was a 7 hour taxi ride and a 30 minute (or so) ferry ride across the Gambian River to get here. We came here for Matt to do research for the article he's writing for Knucklebones on West African games. People have been nice to us here but after having spent time with the family in Pute and then a friend in Dakar (the nephew of a good friend of ours, a Guinean man who we worked for in the Peace Corps) it feels a bit lonely to be here. I'm getting anxious to get to Guinea. We'll probably leave here tomorrow or the next day. If all goes well we'll get back to Dakar, buy a plane ticket to Conakry, Guinea and will fly there soon.

In the meantime we're having a good time getting to know the game players here in Banjul. We've met a group of guys who play African checkers in the shade near the post office each day. They've been friendly and have let us sit with them and watch the games. Matt played a few games with them (which was entertaining for everyone since it's a rare sight to see a foreigner playing with the local guys) and we've got an invitation to play Scrabble at a guy named Lamine's house.

We miss all of you a ton. I'll do my best to seach out the cybercafes wherever we go. I better post this while the internet is still up....

We're Off...

2007-11-04T21:43:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I'm writing this, but here it is- we're leaving tomorrow! We have the backpacks and duffle bags and piles of stuff all over the living room floor to prove it. We haven't even left yet and we're absolutely beat from all the anxiety and excitement and sadness. Yes, more goodbyes are on the horizon. Last night we had a family get-together to celebrate my dad's birthday (yesterday), my mom's birthday (day before yesterday), and our departure (tomorrow, or actually, today, as Matt and I will be spending the night in San Francisco tonight- our flight leaves at 6:00am tomorrow). Like all goodbye events it was fun until we all realized that at the end of the evening we'd be saying goodbye. Actually, we'll have a few hours today to draw it out even longer. I have a stomach ache from the thought of getting in the car this afternoon and pulling away. Matt and I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning, hearts racing, our minds on all the last minute details, the zipping of overstuffed backpacks, and the end-of-the-road (for awhile anyway) goodbyes.

Last night's celebration: (Clockwise from back) Matt, me, my mom, my dad, my brother Brent, and his girlfriend Julia

So here’s the game plan: Matt's brother will come pick us up at my mom's house at 4:oopm today. He'll take us to his place in San Francisco where we'll sleep for a bit tonight and then wake up at 4:00am to get to the airport by 4:30 am to catch our flight at 6:00am. We'll go from San Francisco to Atlanta and then direct to Dakar, Senegal. We’ll arrive at 5:15 am the next day Dakar time (that’s around 7:00pm California time, 8:00 in Missoula). I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

So this is going to my last post from the U.S. for awhile. After over a year of planning and all of the associated headaches and chaos, we're finally going back to West Africa. It still hasn't really hit me yet. To all of our friends and family: Thank you for all of your support and help. You have been amazing. Your well wishes and enthusiasm for our trip mean the world to us. I promise to do my best to stay in touch. I'll post on this blog as often as I can and as soon as we get a P.O. box in Guinea I'll let you know. In the meantime, please keep emailing us. I'm not sure how often I'll be able to check it but I do know that whenever I do it will be wonderful to hear from you.

Before I sign off there are a few random things I've been meaning to mention:

1. Thanks to everyone who sent me their advice and insight into on-line photo album sites. I checked out the sites that were mentioned the most and finally decided on Google's Picasa. It was easy to get started since I have a google account for this blog. Plus, I have to admit, I like the little map feature. I have a feeling that the internet connections that I'll have in West Africa won't be fast enough for me to post whole albums, but I'll see what I can do. If I do post an album I'll let everyone know via email and/or this blog.

2. If you have a chance and haven't already, check out the October isse of Bark magazine. You can find it at the big chain bookstores. SMatt's Rubber Rubberband dog is featured on page 18. The photo is really cool.

3. A lot of you know that this past spring I put on a fundraiser for an NGO in Guinea. I presented a Missoula screening of the award-winning documentary "Death of Two Sons," the story of Amadou Diallo, the Guinean man who was killed in New York and a Peace Corps volunteer killed in Guinea. The film was directed by Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Micah Schaffer whose time in Guinea overlapped a bit with our time there. Aside from being a powerful and important story, the film has a lot of amazing footage of Guinea. A lot of people who weren't able to go to the screening asked how they could get a copy of the movie. Until recently it wasn't possible. Now people can buy the DVD from the website: http://www.deathoftwosons.com/ You can also order it off of Netflix. I highly recommend it.

That's all for now. We love all of you more than you know and miss you already.

Warming up for Guinea in Corpus Christi, Texas

2007-10-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this post from sunny, hot, Corpus Christi, Texas. I'm not kidding about the heat. There is no sign of autumn here. None. No red or yellow leaves, no crisp air or chilly nights. Okay, so I've seen a few pumpkins around and kids are talking about Halloween. But the parents and grandparents with whom I've spoken have talked about making sure the little ones wear light, cool costumes so they don't get overheated! What?! I remember dreaming about this kind of weather during those cold winter nights in Missoula. I guess I hadn't factored mosquitoes or sweaty sheets into my fantasies. Of course, this is wonderful practice for Guinea where it will be just like this except without air conditioning- ouch!

My dad and I are here visiting Matt and his family as well as my dad's sister (aunt Mirta) and her extended family. I'll be at Matt's family's house until October 24th. I'll then fly back to California and Matt will drive back a few days later. At that point it'll be crunch time in terms of preparing for our trip. In the meantime, though, I'm having a great time catching up with family here. It's been over 3 years since Matt and I have been to Corpus Christi and it's nice to be back. The food here is amazing. We've been eating Tex-Mex everyday. The other specialty in South Texas is something the Texans call BBQ. This confused me during my first visit. I assumed that when people invited me to BBQ they meant some sort of backyard thing- A grill, a guy in an apron, some macaroni salad, etc. etc. I was wrong. BBQ is a whole class of restaurant that specializes in meat. I've been to casual BBQ places and I've been to fancy places. Aside from serving meat, all of these places seem to have at least a few animal horns hanging on the wall. I've been here almost a week and haven't yet been to BBQ. This scares me since it means that all of my inevitable BBQ experiences will probably happen all at once toward the end of the trip. This could be an intestinal nightmare.

This last month (in California and now in Texas) has been full of all kinds of little tasks to get ready for our trip. Lately it's been about buying things- gifts for our friends in Guinea, a backpack for Matt, and now a camera. I *finally* bought a digital camera. I dragged the process out a long time but feel really good about what I ended up with. I got a lot of help from the local camera shop in Missoula, The Dark Room. I bought the camera from them via the phone and they sent it to me in California (it would have been too easy for me to buy it while I was actually in Missoula...). The people at The Dark Room have been amazing- so helpful and friendly. Hats off to them for putting up with me and all of my questions. Now that I have the camera I'm still calling them with questions about how to use the darn thing! Here are some photos of Corpus Christi that I've taken with the new camera.

Matt and his mom

Matt and his dad

My dad and me

Matt, me, my dad, aunt Mirta and her dog Willy at my aunt's house

A small beach across the street from Matt's neighborhood where we went swimming a few days ago. I couldn't believe how warm the water was! It was like taking a warm bath.

Matt Jumping rope near the warf.

A memorial for Selena- Corpus Christi's pride and joy

(I'm not sure why they decided to immortalize her without a shirt)

Shots from our walk along the water:

Autumn in Northern California

2007-09-24T18:07:00.000-07:00

It rained here the other night and it really took me by surprise. It shouldn’t have, it’s officially autumn and the grocery stores are gearing up for Halloween. But the summer seemed to drag on so long that it’s hard for me to believe it’s over. What a long Missoula summer- the 107 degree heat wave, all the fires and smoke and ash...Even our car ride out of Missoula was a condensed version of the long, uncomfortable summer season, a sort of recap just in case we might forget. We drove straight into the sun for hours and hours. It felt like we would eventually run into it if we kept going straight, which we did. Since I'm still in that mindset and have been feeling disoriented missing our life and friends in Missoula it kind of snuck up on me when I also started to feel...well, cold. It seemed like such a good idea to give away all my coats and sweaters as we were leaving Montana. We’re headed to Guinea for crying out loud! No fleece or scarves will be necessary there! But I’ve got a few months in Northern California and while there won’t be snow here, there will be some cold days and nights ahead.

Time seems to be moving so slowly, especially since I don’t have a schedule right now, and yet, if it’s getting colder then it must mean that time *is* passing. And if time is passing then we will soon be leaving. In 6 weeks we’ll be getting on a plane. With so much left to do I’m feeling more anxiety than excitement at this point. In any case, these 6 weeks will be packed with a lot of preparations and travel. Some people have asked about our plans so here they are: Matt left California a week ago and drove to Texas to see his grandma. He is now on the East Coast (Virginia and then West Virginia) vising some of his siblings and his nieces and nephew. He’ll fly back to Texas in a week to spend time with his parents. I’ll fly to Texas with my dad in mid-October to visit Matt, his family, and my dad’s side of my family (all of whom live in the same city- a small miracle given that everyone else is so spread out!). I’ll fly back here on October 24th and Matt will drive here from Texas the last week of October. We’ll do some more visiting with family and then will fly out of San Francisco on November 6th.

In the meantime, though, I’m here at my mom’s place spending a lot of time with my mom, dad, brother, and my brother's girlfriend Julia, trying to catch up with other members of my family who live in this area, helping the cats adjust to their new home (this seems to be harder on them than the car ride), and slowly (very slowly) getting stuff done to prepare for our trip. We’ve set up a new bank account with free wire transfers, bought mosquito nets, registered to vote absentee, and received our visas to The Gambia (we’ll be passing through there to get to Guinea so that Matt can do some research for an article he’s writing). There's a ton more to do and I'll keep everyone posted on how it's going over these next 6 weeks.

Here are some recent photos from our time in Northern California with my family:

Matt, me and my brother on a hike in South Lake Tahoe. My brother and his girlfriend Julia treated us to a wonderful few days in Lake Tahoe to welcome us to California. The highlights of the trip were this hike, the hot tub, and winning $97 at the roulette table (A shout out to Matt who encouraged me to bet it all on number 27) during my first gambling experience ( I know, just what the casinos want, a positive first experience to hook me back in. Good thing I'm headed to Guinea. And I've already spent the money on a mosquito net so I have nothing to bet anyway).

My brother's girlfriend Julia and my brother on the same hike in South Lake Tahoe.

We were going to start out with an easy one mile hike to a place called Grass Lake but we took a wrong turn and ended up on the trail leading up some huge mountain. By the time we figured it out we were halfway to the summit. Five hours later we were still wondering around looking for Grass Lake. We never found it but had a great time trying.

Julia shaving Matt's head to help get him ready for the heat in Guinea

Post-Shave: Julia, me, and Matt

Morel and Curry enjoying their new kitty bed at their new home

Our Move: Riding Low, Catching Cats and Arriving Lost

2007-09-10T23:15:00.000-07:00

I’m writing this post from my mom’s house in California which means...we made it. Barely. Anyone who saw us leave Missoula (or Portland on the second leg of our journey) can tell you that our prospects of arriving safely in Sacramento weren’t great. But before I share the crazy details of our departure let me tell you how we had *wanted* to leave Missoula. A few weeks ago when Matt and I were mapping out our plans for the move, we decided that on moving day we’d wake up early, hike up Mt. Jumbo one last time, perhaps snap a few photos, and then return to our house, take showers, eat breakfast, and then leave, all the while enjoying our last views of our beloved Missoula as we drove off into Montana’s famous big sky. Yea, that would have been nice...

All I can say is that on moving day there were no hikes and no showers, just a whole lot of chaos. After a very nice breakfast of plum pie with some friends (the calm before the storm), Matt began packing up the car, or maybe I should say packing *down* the car. With every box and suitcase the back of the car sank lower and lower. Matt attached the fabric Thule (that we affectionately referred to as our "Foolie") that our friend lent us for the trip, to our car windows since we didn't have the required racks. So along with all of our stuff practically hanging out the windows, we also had the excess rope from our Foolie get-up. But that was just the outside. One glance at the inside of our car would reveal a solid block of "stuff" from floor to ceiling: "The Joy of Cooking," a litter box, a 50lb sack of flour, one hiking shoe, a large Tamale pot, some underwear....and on and on and on. And the car just kept getting lower. Aside from the primary drama of the car, there was the cat drama. In order to travel with three cats, we had to first find the three cats (who like to hide in the mountains when they sense some funny business going on), trap the three cats, lure the three cats into the car and then make sure the three cats didn’t escape. We assumed this would take no longer than 10 minutes. Suuuure....

All of this seemed even more chaotic given that we had had only 4 or 5 hours of sleep and had a whole list of chores to do on our way out of town (close bank accounts, get an oil change, use a few gift certificates we had been meaning to use for three years....). And yes, we did take the car, fully packed, and super precarious, to get an oil change. Matt wanted to have the spare tire checked so he unpacked the entire trunk right there on the floor of Super Lube. When I saw our dirty towels, a pillow and a box of my mom’s china in the middle of the mechanic’s garage I had to look away. Had it come to this? Are we really *this* disorganized?!! I guess we are, though we really did try to plan ahead. I swear.

So while we meant to leave Missoula at 8am (9:00am at the latest) we ended up dragging (literally) out of town, Foolie and ropes and three drugged-out cats and all, a little after 1:00pm. And we were off, a caramel bar from Posh Chocolate (thanks to the gift certificate) melting all over our supply of napkins. We were so distracted by such an exhausting morning and serious worries about the state of the car that we didn’t really feel sad. We had too much on our minds. It wasn’t until the second leg of our journey two days later, at nightfall as city lights were appearing somewhere between Redding, California and Sacramento that it hit me. We left Missoula. And all our friends there. And I kept saying to myself, "What have we done? What on earth have we done?" Matt and I have been so sure that going to Guinea is what we must do and I haven’t had many (or any) doubts about that until now, until going to Guinea meant leaving our friends and life in Missoula.

And now we’re here in California, two months away from our departure to Guinea. While we’re enjoying time with family right now, we’re still walking around in a daze, not quite sure what we’ve done or why. I don’t really have any answers or insight about any of that right now, leaving Missoula still seems too recent and raw for that. What I do have though, is a whole lot of people in Missoula (and Portland) to thank for making possible a move that, left to ourselves, would have been a disaster. We didn’t think we needed help. We had it all covered. Thank God you guys didn’t buy that! While our departure from Missoula wasn’t smooth or pretty, it was possible because of all the help and support we had from our friends.

So thank you for:
all those amazing good-bye dinners when our kitchen was packed and our hearts were sad, a last carousal ride with our god kids, taking away our dining room table, offering to let us spend our last night at your place (an offer we didn’t accept only because we were up all night scrubbing our shower and fridge and therefore didn’t actually need a bed to sleep in), a goodbye email, an article to read in the car, our last breakfast of plum pie and a pep talk, lending us a Foolie for our car, the cat bed (that served as an excellent cat catching device) and cat carrier (oh my god, what would we have done without the cat carrier?!), all the good advice people gave us about traveling with cats, the tarp, sitting with me and telling me funny stories when I was a super stress case while waiting for Matt to come back with drugs for the kitties, taking all of our perishables and office supplies and stools and plants and extra toothbrushes, your plans to plant my rose bush, taking the book I borrowed and agreeing to track down its owner, opening up your home to us in Portland when we showed up at 1:00am with three cats (!!!)....and on and on and on. Thank you for all of this and for three amazing years. Please know that it broke our hearts to leave all of you.

Leaving

2007-09-04T22:41:00.000-07:00

It's almost midnight on the night before the night before our move. Tomorrow is our last full day in Missoula. The house is in shambles, our to-do list is getting longer (we're up to 13 items listed for tomorrow), we're exhausted, stressed about the amount of space we'll have for our boxes, suitcases, cats, etc. in the car, and heartbroken over all of the goodbyes we've had these past few days. It really feels like we're at the end of our rope. We just can't get over how awful it feels to say goodbye to our friends here. And while we want to spend our last moments in Missoula with them, we're busy dealing with carpet cleaning, stuffing boxes into the car, trips to Goodwill....I'm wondering if all this will actually get done in time for us to move. And then there's the thought that once we get through all of this tedious stuff it might just start to sink in that we're actually leaving this place and the people here. We're excited to see our families and to eventually see people in Guinea, but for the moment all I feel is sadness.

We're trying to stay focused though. The countdown has definitely begun. Tomorrow we get to clean, close our bank accounts, and pack the car for good (among other things). By the way, has anyone out there traveled long distances in a car with cats? We're looking for *any* advice or encouragement from anyone who has been in such a situation. The three-cats- in-the-car aspect of our drive to California is one thing we're dreading. Our cats are very important to us and we know they're going to hate us for putting them through such torture...

Onions, Onions, Onions....

2007-08-24T21:35:00.001-07:00

We just harvested the onions in our garden!
We're thrilled to have so many beautiful onions, but... we're leaving Missoula in a week and a half! We kind of forgot that detail while working on our garden this summer. So now we've got onions but not much time left to enjoy them. Hmmm...can we eat them all?!! Doubtful. We've been giving bags of them away to friends and
neighbors (maybe onion breath will help our friends remember us, at least for a little while). So if you're in Missoula and you're interested in some onions, just let us know.

Saying Goodbye to El Presidente and the Gang (as Cat Stevens rocks on)

2007-08-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

Last night we attended our last Western Montana Returned Peace Corps Volunteer potluck. The group meets once a month at a member's house to socialize and eat amazing international food. Matt and I have been a part of this group for a year now and I have to say that it has been one of my favorite parts of our Missoula experience. The photo above is of all of us this June at the group's yearly weekend retreat on Flathead Lake. For the last meal of the weekend (a potluck to end all potlucks! Talk about amazing...) most of us dressed up in clothing from the countries where we served in the Peace Corps. (Matt and I are kneeling in the front row, he in his indigo Guinean boo-boo and me in my green waxed Guinean boo-boo).

Matt and I had been back to the U.S. for over three years before we met up with El Presidente (the head of the group, also known as President-For-Life) and the RPCV Gang. While Matt and I were (and still are) lucky to have each other to talk to about our time in Guinea and the challenges of being back, it has been wonderful to be welcomed into a whole community of people who are excited to talk about some of these things, whether they were in the Peace Corps in the 60s and 70s or just got back last year. The people in this group are amazing and inspiring. Individually they are doing great things for the different communities to which they belong and as a group they fund small projects locally and abroad, help foster cross-cultural understanding in Missoula through presentations and panel discussions, and give advice to newly nominated volunteers getting ready to leave. The bottom line, though, is that they're just super nice and supportive people who have made us feel very welcome. Lately they have all been giving Matt and me a lot of encouragement for our upcoming trip to Guinea. Many people in the group have been back to visit the countries where they lived in the Peace Corps and I keep asking to hear about their experiences as I get ready for my own. Last night I spoke with a couple who went back to Ethiopia after having left 30 years ago!! Amazingly, they were able to meet up with friends and former students from their time there!! And the people there remembered them! They said it was an extraordinary experience. This, along with all kinds of other "going back" stories from other returned volunteers in the group gives me hope that a happy reunion with our Guinean host families and friends might be around the corner.

But before any of that is possible, we must first say goodbye to people here. As we started our goodbyes last night Cat Steven's "Wild World" was blaring out of the speakers and onto the deck decorated like a Jamaican beach cafe. The party's host, a former volunteer who served in Jamaica patted us on the backs and said, "That songs for you. Kids, it's a wild world out there and you're headed off into it."

Indeed. But before we rush out into it I keep stopping to pause and look back. It was sad to say goodbye to the group last night. The only thing that made me feel better was that El Presidente said he had put a link on the group's website to this blog so that people could stay in touch with us. So to El Presidente, I say, Gracias, and right back at you. The Western Montana Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Group is now a link on my blog too (in this post and on the link list to the right). So there you go- mutual blog linking, the next best thing to monthly pot-lucks with our friends.

Thanks again to everyone in the group for welcoming us into your community and for all the laughs and support. We'll miss you guys. Please keep in touch.

***NOTE: if people are looking for a place to make donations, this group is a great one to consider. Each year the group funds various local and oversees projects. The group is conscientious and sensitive to issues concerning sustainability and appropriate development. Check out the "Projects and Fundraising" link on their website for a list of recent projects and some photos. ***

Getting Closer... Visas, Taxi Postmen, and an Unexpected email

2007-08-16T10:52:00.000-07:00

It is finally starting to feel like we’re really headed to Guinea soon. For so long it has been such an abstract idea that has involved paper work but no real contact with Guinea. We bought our plane tickets on-line, sent our passports away for renewal, sent them away again for visas, and have been making to-do lists like crazy. This whole process has been very slow- from knowing that we would go back “someday” to knowing that we’ll be going back on November 6^th. And while we’ve been plugging away on logistics, Guinea and the people who we miss there have seemed very far away.

And then, suddenly, in the last few weeks we’ve started to see real signs that we’re getting closer to Guinea itself, not just the idea of it. Two weeks ago we received our Guinean Visas from the Guinean embassy. While the embassy is in Washington D.C, there was something thrilling about seeing the return address as “l’ambassade de la republique de Guinee.” And even better, inside our passports is a 6 month visa. It was our understanding that the standard tourist visas is for 3 months. We thought we were pushing the envelope a bit asking for the less common 6 month visa. As there is no tourist industry in Guinea (though that shouldn’t stop any of you from visiting us there!) the man with whom I spoke at the embassy during the application process was a bit confused as to why we’d want to stay so long. When I explained that we wanted to really spend our time visiting people who we care about there, he said he’d see what he could do. And it worked! We’ll be “legally” welcome in Guinea for 6 months. If we want to stay longer we’ll apply again.

But all of that pales in comparison with what happened yesterday. The really big news is that, for the first time in almost 5 years, I heard from someone who I know from Kerouane (where I lived while in Guinea)!!! I can’t begin to explain how big this was for me. Matt and I have sent several letters to Guinea since we’ve been back, either through the post or via Americans traveling to Guinea from the U.S. The mail system in Guinea is interesting and I can’t say I completely understand it. Basically, outside of the major cities, mail delivery relies heavily on bush-taxi drivers. If you wanted to send a message to, say, Kerouane, you’d go to the taxi station closest to you and hand the letter to a taxi driver headed that way. Sometimes a driver ends up with a whole stack or, sometimes, a sack, of letters. Then, when he gets there, he hands the letters off to taxi people there. Somehow, sometimes, letters get where they need to go. While in Guinea, Matt and I lived in different parts of the country. In his town there was a post office. He wrote me often and gave letters to the man at the post office. It took a long time (sometimes months) but I received his letters. (Matt did his best to make those letters non-time sensitive and it was funny to get those silly time-less notes). It’s much faster to send the mail via either Peace Corps drivers (who travel the country visiting volunteers and dropping mail off in volunteer mail boxes in regional capitals) or bush-taxi drivers.

All of this is to say that when I’ve sent mail to Guinea over these past few years, I’ve had no idea where it would end up. It felt a little like throwing mail into the wind. Recently I sent a few letters to a Peace Corps volunteer who was in the states but headed back to Guinea. This time though, I decided to send a letter to not only my family in Kerouane, but also to a friend of mine who worked in Kerouane during the school year but whose family is in KanKan (the closest regional capital). Bingo! I got an email from him yesterday saying that he received the letter and was excited to be in contact and to see Matt and me soon! Wow. When I was in Guinea there were cyber cafes in Kankan but they were very unreliable and it didn’t seem that many people had email accounts or email access. But that was a few years ago. Apparently times are a’ changing. Yes!!

Now that someone in Guinea knows that we’re on our way, it feels real. Yes, we *are* on our way. In the meantime though, there are a ton of things to do to get ready to leave Missoula. And, unfortunately, leaving Missoula is starting to feel real too. It’s such a weird feeling to be so excited to see our families in California and Texas and Guinea and yet be so sad to leave our friends in Missoula. I wish I could build a great big bridge connecting all of the people who we love.

Packing Up and Eating Sushi

2007-08-06T09:07:00.000-07:00

All of a sudden we're three weeks away from leaving Missoula! We've started to panic a bit and have been desperately trying to get rid of all of our stuff. We've put some of the logistical stuff concerning the trip to Guinea aside in order to concentrate on the actual move. It's pretty overwhelming to look around the house and know that we have to get rid of everything (or, almost everything). We'll be taking with us personal papers, photos, favorite games, favorite books (we're having to be very brutal about what qualifies as "favorite" - ouch, this is tough), some clothes, the dishes we borrowed from family members, and some keepsakes. That's it. Thus the panic. I guess we've acquired quite a bit of stuff over these past three years here.

On Saturday we had a yard sale which was pretty successful. I've always been curious about what it would be like to have one and it was such an odd experience. It was bizarre to see all of our "stuff" strewn about the front yard and it was so great to see people get excited to buy some of it. One teenager bought a scarf of mine that I'd never worn. As she walked away she kept saying, "Are you sure you want to sell this? It's so soft and beautiful." Yes please take it!! Take more!! Take everything!! People were happy with our prices- we were practically giving stuff away. While the sale put a dent in the stuff we have in our house, we've already got a new stash of things that we'll be selling at the next yard sale we'll be having in a few weeks. We're also using our local Craig's list to sell some of the bigger items that our friends have said they don't want or need. I had never used Craig's list before and I must say that I'm pretty impressed with it. I know I'm a bit behind the times since Craig's list has been around for some time now, but I'm now on the bandwagon. What a great (FREE!) place to connect with people who might want the stuff we have and who might have the stuff we want (although we won't be using that part of the list for now).

One last thing about our yard sale. I want to add that several of our good friends stopped by the sale to say hi, sit with us for a bit, help out, etc. It was wonderful to have their company and support since it is a bit of an emotional strain to think of selling things that have meant something to us, not the mention knowing that this is all in preparation to leave a town we've come to love and, more importantly, people who we love. Which brings me to the only perk of this whole process of packing up and moving away: doing all kinds of fun things with friends that we've been meaning to do for awhile. It has this "now or never" feel that, while a bit painful, has been a wonderful excuse to spend more time with friends. I'm happy to say that "last chances" to do this or that with people are leading into "one more last chance" and then "one more last chance" etc. etc.

One example of an amazing faux "last chance" came last night when Jonathan and Ayumi came over to teach us how to make Sushi. This is something we've all been meaning to do for a long time. They were great teachers and the sushi was amazing. After we had all eaten a ton Matt asked them how we were supposed to gauge how much we were eating since we just kept popping bite size sushi rolls in our mouths. The answer is that you don't. So of course I ended up with a bit of a stomach ache. But it was worth it. What a delicious meal! Here are some photos:

Our Sushi platter after we had already eaten a ton. All of a sudden I thought, geez, I better take a photo while I have a chance, these things are going fast...And by the way, the rolls that are bursting at the seaweed seams were made by Matt who often applies the Texas adage that bigger is better to all kinds of non-Texan things.

Ayumi, me and Jonathan eating

Ayumi, Matt and Jonathan eating

Harry Potter Around the World

2007-07-27T13:34:00.001-07:00

Matt and I are whipping through the latest Harry Potter book and have seen a ton of people around town reading it under trees at the park, in cafes, etc. I just got an email from a Spanish friend of mine currently living in Germany who is racing through his copy of the book. And now, a photo from BBC Africa of girls in Kenya reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What a nice reminder that all over the world people celebrate stories whether it be through oral traditions, songs, or books. It seems that people everywhere who have the luxury of free time, literacy, and access to books are having a good time with Harry Potter. Despite painful political, social and economic differences around the globe, including the inequalities of globalization- the same process that brought this book to Kenya, it is so nice when the world feels small and connected. And while in many parts of the world, including in East Africa, girls don't always have the chance to go to school or learn to read, it is refreshing to see a photo of girls enjoying a good story.

Al Pacino and the Fairy Godmother

2007-07-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

Good News! Matt and I are happy to announce that, as of Friday, we are Godparents! We were blown out the water and surprised beyond belief to receive an amazing package full of photos, cookies, letters, and official invitations to be godparents to our favorite Montana kids, Sage and Owen. We were at the game store for Mah Jong night when we received the package. Once we were able to speak, we offered the Mah Jong ladies a round of homemade chocolate chip cookies from our package. Between bites of cookies and slaps on the back, Rose, our resident cynic said, "Do these people know you're moving to Africa?!" Laughter broke out from all sides. We laughed and shrugged. It's true, we are moving a long ways from Montana and from our now god children. But we're taking this new commitment very seriously. Hopefully the kids will get a kick out of the letters photos, fabric, etc. that we send them from Guinea. And now any visit or move back to the U.S will include stopovers in Montana (or wherever Owen and Sage and their parents are).

While the god parent/god child relationship is traditionally a religious one, our relationship with Owen and Sage and their family is non-religious. As far as we know our commitment to our godchildren involves loving them (pretty easy, since we already do), staying in touch with them and with their parents, who we also love (Guinea will make this part challenging but certainly not impossible), hanging their art up on the walls of wherever we live, and doing whatever we can (big or small) to help or take care of them if anything were to happen to their parents. This all sounds pretty do-able. And it is a huge honor that we feel humbled by.

So here they are, our good friends and new godchildren, Sage Lee (age 4 1/2) and Owen Winter (age 1 1/2). (I'm also including Sage's card which features her art work and a letter to us that she dictated to to her mom).

Peace Corps Guinea Returns!

2007-07-16T16:17:00.000-07:00

I just found out that Peace Corps volunteers will be returning to Guinea at the end of this month! As many of you know, all Peace Corps Guinea volunteers were evacuated from Guinea in February due to some very serious national strikes. Tension had been building in Guinea for the last year or two. Prices of necessities like rice and fuel continued to skyrocket and government corruption was becoming more and more transparent. From what I read and heard in January of this year, there was a sense of desperation among the people, a feeling of there being nothing left to lose. Trade unions called for a nation-wide strike and, unlike other calls to action in the past, this one was taken seriously by people of all classes, ethnic groups and regions in Guinea. The nation simply stopped running. Thousands of people participated in peaceful marches down the streets of the capital calling for government accountability. Unfortunately the military responded with violence. At that point it was unclear how long the crisis would last or what it would mean for the country's longterm stability. Many NGOs and aid organizations left the country. Peace Corps Guinea consolidated all of its volunteers to neighboring Mali. As the situation in Guinea intensified PC Washington decided to officially evacuate Guinea volunteers.

In the end, the strike lasted 18 days, over 100 protesters were killed, and, after a misstep or two, President Conte agreed to chose a new prime minister from a list of 4 candidates chosen by the trade unions. This meant that Conte as head of state would share power with a new head of the government. This seemed like a small miracle given that most political analysts were predicting a civil war. And then, just like that, Guinea faded from the news. I had become accustomed to frantically searching out and reading articles about Guinea everyday and then, suddenly, nothing. I kept having to remind myself that no news is (sometimes) good news. That seems to be especially true about Africa as the media *loves* to tap into the West's fears of the "Dark (and scary)" continent by highlighting war and disease. In any case, Guinea seems to be getting itself back on track. And a can of worms has been forever opened. The government can no longer pretend to operate in a vacuum. People ("The People") are watching, taking notes, and are ready to act.

While I, like most people, have been thrilled by the surprise happy ending to this very tense story, I've been saddened by the fact that the Peace Corps left Guinea. Volunteers left projects counterparts, friends and host families behind when they were evacuated. Many students in Guinea lost their teachers partway through the semester. And volunteers lost their jobs, students, clients, friends, and on and on and on... My fingers have been crossed since the evacuation that someday PC would return to Guinea. While rumors have been circulating for a few months, it was finally announced the day before yesterday that Peace Corps Guinea will indeed be reinstated. Volunteers will return at the end of this month. I am, of course, ecstatic for Guinea, Guineans and the returning volunteers. And while I won't be working for or with the Peace Corps when I return to Guinea in November I am relieved that they will be there. I know that I can count on PC's support if I'm in a bind. And volunteers can count on my support as well. Above all, though, I think Washington's faith in Guinea's current and future stability is an excellent sign. Given that Guinea is no longer in the spotlight, this is the best (and only) news I've heard in a long time.

More Photos From the Buffalo Range and Beyond

2007-07-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

Carlos and Lauren sent some more photos from their visit with us. Enjoy!

(Click on the photos to get the original size- I still haven't figured out how to get the posted versions bigger...)

An Elk at the National Bison Range. Those antlers were even bigger than they appear to be in this photo. What an amazing sight!

Fawn at the Bison Range.

Matt at a store/restaurant right outside the park where they serve (you guessed it!) buffalo burgers

Matt, Lauren and me at our house

Morel (one of our 3 kitties) in our yard which often feels like a National Cat Range

Lauren and Carlos on Mt. Jumbo

Our Friends, A Heatwave, and Some Buffalo

2007-07-08T15:19:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted in awhile because there's been a lot going on here lately. Last week I started taking French lessons from my friend N'doumbe (more on that in my next post) and I've had to do some fancy footwork (phone calls, paperwork etc.) to get our health insurance extended for a month. But the most exciting part of this past week is that on Wednesday our friends Lauren and Carlos came to visit!! They live in Seattle and had never been to Montana. Since they'll be leaving soon to spend a few months in Spain with Carlos' family, this will likely be the last time we'll have a chance to see them before we leave for Guinea in November. I tried not to think about their visit in this way. It was nice to just focus on how great it was to see them and how fun it was to be with them. Carlos took some photos of all of us that I'm posting here. (As a side note, I decided to hold off on getting a camera until I get some info about tech stuff in Guinea from some recent Peace Corps volunteers there).

Matt, Carlos, Lauren and me in our home in Missoula

Unfortunately for Lauren and Carlos, they came to Montana during a record-breaking heat wave. On Thursday it hit 107 degrees- a temperature that Montana hasn't experienced since 1973!!! Given that this is rare here in Montana I feel like we weren't quite prepared for it. It really did take us by surprise. and of course, on that day, during the worst of the heat, we found ourselves at, of all places, the buffalo range. I don't know if any of you have been to a buffalo range, but I can tell you this much, there are no trees and lots of dust. We took the long loop around the National Bison Range to see more wildlife and while we saw some amazing things, we were all pretty much dying by the end of it. Not even a huckleberry shake at the end of the tour could cool us off.

Lauren and me in front of a stuffed buffalo in the visitor's center

Two buffalo in the wildlife preserve

Other highlights were our tubing trip to the Blackfoot River, our hike up the mountain near our home to watch the fireworks on the fourth of July, a marathon Bohnanza playing evening, and getting to see the movie *Sicko* (which I highly recommend). And, somehow, everyone survived the heat.

It was a fabulous few days and Matt and I were both sad to see our friends pack up the car and head back to Seattle. While we'll have many chances to talk to them before we leave for Guinea, I couldn't shake the feeling that this was the first of a series of goodbyes awaiting Matt and me in the near future.

Digital Cameras

2007-06-26T15:43:00.000-07:00

As a lot of you know, I don't know much about technology. A friend of mine who is 16 recently told me about something called iTunes. What a cool idea I thought. All he could do was laugh.

The excuse that I've been using for awhile now is that all the current technology was invented while I was in Guinea the first time around (from 2000 to 2002). While I was living in a mud brick hut a few hundred miles from running water, cell phones, blogs, digital cameras, ipods, mp3 players, etc. etc. were all being invented, right? Okay, so that excuse (or rather,fabrication) is getting old. Now that I've jumped into the world of blogging it's time that I put away my old clunky Cannon film camera and go digital. It's not all that practical to pack a ton of film canisters and send negatives home from Guinea to get developed. And even if I did all of that it'd be hard to share photos with everyone that way. One of the points of having this blog is to post and share photos of Guinea with everyone. But before I get ahead of myself, I have to actually buy a digital camera (details...). So I've been slogging through all kinds of websites on digital cameras, camera reviews, company sites, etc. etc. It is mind boggling really, all of the megapixels, optic zooms, LCD monitors, etc. etc.

The bottom line is that I found one that I think might work for us. I've been close to hitting the "buy" button on the website but I just can't bring myself to do it. It feels weird to spend so much money in one click of a button and to know so little about what I'm buying.

I got an email from a friend today and in it she mentioned her camera and what she doesn't like about it. All of a sudden the most obvious thing occurred to me- a lot of people have digital cameras and know a thing or two about them. So I thought I would mention the kind of camera I'm close to buying in case it raises any red flags for anyone. Please let me know. Any other feedback is also welcome.

Basically, the requirements I have are that the camera have at least 8 megapixles (because I'll be supplying photos for a magazine article Matt will be writing for Knucklebones magazine), that it use AA batteries (because we'll be using a solar battery charger and the most common are for AAs) and that it not be out of our price range too much (around $200).

What I found is the Fuji A900. The Fuji website says it's new (I'm not sure what "new" means) so I haven't been able to find specific reviews on this camera. Anyway, the link to one description of it is at: A900
and the description from Fuji is at: Fuji A900

No pressure to check any of this out. All this stuff bores me to death and it's FOR me. So I doubt it will interest anyone too much. But if you have any info. about this camera or cameras in general that you think I need to know before jumping into this, please let me know.

My current to do list includes not only buying a camera but also finding health insurance and figuring out what vaccines we need for Guinea and how to get them. Lately I've been having daydreams and nightmares about deductibles, typhoid fever, and megapixles. All of these things are getting mixed up in my head. I almost asked the Fuji rep what the camera's deductible was....

Laura Bush on AIDS Funding in Africa: Gender, Abstinence and a story from Guinea

2007-06-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

Did anyone catch the interview with Laura Bush on NPR yesterday? An excerpt of a conversation between Bush and NPR’s Michele Norris about funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in Africa was broadcast on “All Things Considered” yesterday evening.

Here’s the link if you’d like to listen to it and/or read the transcript:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11291671

Here’s some background and my own take on the interview:

Laura Bush will be traveling to Africa (I’m not sure where) on Monday to check out the progress of the administration’s emergency AIDS plan (PEPFAR). The plan itself, initiated in 2003, is quite impressive. Bush pledged $15 Billion over five years for AIDS relief (mostly in Africa). Now he’s asking Congress for $30 billion to continue the plan through 2013. This is, according to NPR, “…the largest amount any country has spent fighting a disease outside its borders.” No doubt this is how George W. Bush got his face on one of the Vanity Fair covers. While Bush supporters and critics alike laud his efforts to fight and treat AIDS abroad, some question the way the money being sent to Africa is being spent. In other words, the debate about abstinence education versus education about using protection rages on. This is a debate that the U.S. can’t seem to resolve within its own borders much less outside of them. According to the current AIDS relief package that the administration exports mostly to Africa, one-third of the funding, (that’s one-third of $15 billion!), must go toward abstinence education. This is legislated by congress.

Basically, most African states have adopted a plan for HIV/AIDS prevention known as “The A-B-C strategy.” A is for “abstinence”, B is for “be faithful,” and C is for “condoms.” The U.S. supports the African A-B-C plan for prevention and the use of anti-viral medication for treatment. Clearly though, in terms of education, there is a lot of wiggle room. Abstinence AND condoms are part of the plan. So why has the U.S. chosen to focus much of its money for AIDS education on “A” and “B?” What happened to “C?!” In her interview with Laura Bush, this is what Michelle Norris asked, though more tactfully of course. Bush’s answer completely confused me. Completely. Since hearing the interview yesterday evening I’ve tried to understand the logic of her answer but I just can’t. It doesn’t seem to make any sense to me. Before posting Bush’s response though, let me just say this: It’s clear that I don’t agree with legislating the type of AIDS education people will get in other parts of the world, parts of the world where upwards of 30% of the population are HIV positive. BUT, despite my personal opinion on this matter I was ready to hear what Bush had to say, ready to at least *see* where she was coming from on this issue. And, unfortunately, I got stuck on the logic (or lack thereof) of what she said.
Here it is:

BUSH: “In countries where there are gender issues and where girls feel like they have to comply with the wishes of men, I think abstinence [and abstinence education] become even more important. We need to get the message to girls everywhere, not just in Africa, that they have a choice, that they can be abstinent and make choices for themselves that keep themselves safe.”

Hmmm…So if there are “gender issue” in these countries and girls don’t have much of a say and must “comply with the wishes of men,” then how on earth is abstinence on the part of the girl or woman going to work?! How can one say, in the same response, that women don’t have a voice and that they should make the decision to abstain from sex? It is also unclear how women can encourage their husbands to be faithful if they must “comply with the wishes of men.” So this is what I’m stuck on, this is where I’m trying to figure out her logic. It seems clear from what she said about gender issues that educating men is probably the best route to take. And since the reality is that sex and rape happen (between men and their wives, between men and their multiple wives, between men and their girlfriends, between men and prostitutes, between men and the women who don’t wish to have sex with them) it seems like HIV testing, condom education, and discussions on faithfulness might be good places to start.

I’m going to end this with a quick story from Guinea. While I was in Guinea I worked with a man at the high school who was probably in his 40s. He had a wife and several children. One day he invited me to his wedding. He was to marry a second wife, a girl (not woman) from a very small village a few hours away. I went to the wedding not sure what to expect and curious about what a traditional Guinean wedding would be. As soon as I arrived I was ushered into a small room full of older women. The women were crowded around the bed shouting to someone in their language (Mandingo). A French speaker told me that they were giving advice to the bride. I craned my neck to see a girl of no more than 14 years sitting on the bed looking petrified. On that day she was to become the second wife of a man who was old enough to be her father. She would also become a second mother to several children who were a few years younger than she was. They asked me to say a few words to her. I had no idea what to say. Since she didn’t speak French I sputtered out a few blessings in Mandingo and politely excused myself. The wedding itself was a colorful, festive event. Women danced in the moonlight, an animal was slaughtered and everyone was sent home with uncooked meat and a bag of sweet cassava bread.

But I kept thinking about that young girl. Thinking back to that day in terms of what Laura Bush proposes as one way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa I can only sigh. I don’t know when my colleague planned to consummate his new marriage but I can say that whether his new bride was to be exposed to HIV was probably all up to him. Her father expected her to marry this man, and that man would expect her to consummate the marriage eventually. As far as I can tell (keeping in mind that as an outsider I cannot pretend to know too much) keeping her safe would be about educating her husband on the benefits of being tested for HIV and of being faithful. It would also be helpful to stress to him the importance of using protection when and if he were to seek “companionship” outside of his home. While there is a time and a place for abstinence education, in this case (and I can only imagine in many more cases throughout the world, including in the U.S) abstinence education (for women as well as for men) seems like throwing money into the wind.

Vanity Fair Africa Issue

2007-06-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

Matt's brother who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda called us the other day to let us know that the latest issue of *Vanity Fair* (July 2007) is a special All Africa issue guest-edited by Bono. Since we don't read or know much about *Vanity Fair* we weren't sure what we'd think. We bought a copy of it yesterday and are in awe. What an amazing read! From an interview with South African Archibishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel Peace Prize recipient) to Bill Clinton's reflections on his friendship with Nelson Mandela to West African music to drugs for Africans with AIDs to Chinese investments in Sudan to contemporary African literature to a 22 page photo tribute to Africans who are making a difference on the continent....

Wow! The issue is hopeful and inspiring, an incredible tribute to people all over the world who care about and are connected to Africa's future. What a refreshing change from mainstream media that usually focuses on Africa's conflicts and diseases.

The only disturbing part of the issue is the juxtaposition of such incredible stories and all of those sexy, ridiculous ads. It's more than a bit jarring. After reading about the struggle to find safe drinking water in parts of Africa it is kind of bizarre to flip a few pages and find a photo of a half naked Jennifer Anistan holding a bottle of designer bottled water. But maybe it is, in and of itself, an interesting commentary on a world divided along economic lines. And yet, some of those ads (for Gap, Motorola, Exxon) are part of campaigns that donate money to amazing causes in Africa. It makes me wonder if this whole issue, cover to cover, is globalization at its best and worst. I'd love to know what you think.

In the meantime, I highly recommend this special Africa issue. And if you'd like a sneak peak along with some supplemental articles and multimedia features (songs, videos, etc.) from some of the features check out the Vanity Fair website:
www.vf.com

One last note: There are 20 different covers of this issue. Twenty portraits of famous people who are doing work in Africa were photographed in pairs by Annie Leibovitz. These people include Oprah, Archbishop Tutu (photographed with George W. Bush?!!), Warren Buffett, Djimon Hounsou, Quen Rania of Jordan, etc. etc. We got the one with Barack Obama and Don Cheadle. So don't feel like you have to get the one with Bush on the cover....

How My Father's Hair Turned White: My dad, Africa, and the golden carrot

2007-06-17T21:05:00.000-07:00

Today is Father’s day and I’d like to send out a shout to my dad. He’s a great guy and, despite a lot of challenges, he’s never given up on wanting to be a part of my life. As an adult we’ve grown closer and I am always surprised and more than delighted to find out that we’re not as different as we appear to be. Life has taken us in very different directions but somehow we’ve both figured out how to find each other. When I was a little girl and we were both trying to figure out what on earth it meant to be father and daughter after the divorce he used to tell me, “fathers don’t grow on trees.” I would roll my eyes and stare out the window of his red Blazer. I had no idea then that he was right. It’s been a long road but we’ve come out alright. He’s my dad and I’m grateful for his love. I love him very much.

One of the stories my dad loves to tell is about how I ruined his hair by going to Africa. According to him, the root of a lot of troubles (big and small, local and global) is my time in Africa. I remember when I called him from college to tell him that after graduation I would be joining the Peace Corps and heading to Africa. There was silence on the other line. “With Africans?” he finally asked. “Yes, Africa with Africans” I said. And so began the end of my father’s thick black hair. When I left for Guinea, West Africa in July of 2000 my dad still had black hair, albeit it with flecks of white here and there. He called it “salt and pepper.” And, you guessed it, by the time I returned in November 2002 his hair was completely white with not even a hint of the old pepper of his youth. He laughs when he tells others that all the worrying he did when I was in Africa made him an old man. “Look at me now”, he tells anyone who’ll listen, “look at this old man now with white hair, all because of Annie going to Africa.” His laugh is full and round, it seems to come from deep down. And he always pulls me close, giving me a playful squeeze when he tells that story. I imagine it’s because I’m back, safe and sound. He can cross a lot of things off of his worry list. My life, too, is looking more and more traditional, stable, safe. The adventures of unbridled youth have given way to a life that is easier for him to relate to. I have a wonderful partner with whom I share a life and bank account. I have an advanced degree, a teaching job, a salary, etc.

So you can imagine how thrilled he is that Matt and I are going back to Guinea. He’s already lost his black hair, what on earth will this next stint in Africa do to him? It’s obvious that he’s sick about us leaving. But, he really is trying to make peace with the whole thing- in his own way. The other day he said to me over the phone, “I guess I’m glad you’re going to get this whole Africa thing out of your system. Just get it over with. Then when you come back, you won’t have to think about it anymore.”

Hmmm…. An interesting idea. But not original. It has definitely taken me by surprise just how many people have expressed some version of my dad’s thoughts about our return to Guinea. Usually it sounds a bit different, but the idea is the same. People say, “Hmmm (or “wow” or “gee”) I guess you better do it now while you’re young.” That last part varies, I’ve heard “while you’re young,” “before you have kids,” “before you own a house,” “before you have a career,” “before you settle down,” and on and on and on. I never know quite how to respond to these comments. I don’t expect everyone to jump up and down about our plans. I certainly don’t always get excited about other people’s plans. That seems only natural. But those responses bother me. A lot. There is an implication that the real way to do things, the real way to live a life is to do some stuff that’s “adventurous” (their word, not mine) while one is young. This of course, does not last too long and is understood to be temporary. Preferably this phase doesn’t go on past the mid to late 20’s. Then comes marriage, a house, some kids (2.2 right?), maybe a career, certainly money. And everyone lives happily ever after. The second implication of the “better do it now” line of thinking is that once the ball is rolling on all the stuff that is “supposed” to happen, anything outside of the box is impossible. I, of course, don’t agree with either of these implications.

It’s taken me a long time to come to this seemingly simple revelation: life is happening right now. I’ve said to myself for so long that I’ll just get school out of the way or get college out of the way, or the Peace Corps, or grad school, or…. And then the real stuff will start. But I’ve found that that way of thinking has set me up for disappointment after disappointment. If real life happens “after” what I’m doing right now and I make it to that point, then what? Where is that darn golden carrot? I’ve been referring to it in my mind as the “myth of arriving.” I keep waiting to arrive, to get to a point where I say to myself and others, “yes, I have arrived, this is it.” That’s where the carrot comes in and the rainbow and the singing angels etc. But that can’t be possible because we’re always moving forward, sometimes to Africa, sometimes to school, sometimes to parenthood or homelessness or a greater self awareness or… And those things, all of them and more, are worthy of falling into the category of Life. And all kinds of things are being experienced by all of us or some of us at all times. It seems irreverent to imply that any life experience is just something to get out of our system before the real stuff begins. As simple as all of this sounds, I still struggle with it. I have to remind myself everyday that everything (everything!) counts.

My hope for our trip back to Guinea is that it be, in mind and heart, a linear journey, a journey that happens in real-time and real life. This trip cannot be a stalling strategy. It will be what it will be and while there I hope to really be there.

So, to my dad on father’s day:. Please know that my trip back to Guinea is not a detour. It’s a step, the next step on a long trip that you helped kick-start almost thirty years ago. I know you’re going to worry, but for the sake of your hair and health and sanity be assured that wherever I go I know exactly where home is.