Traffic Jam

So life in Africa is generally good except for those moments when you get sick (giardia is not really much fun to talk about so we can skip that story) and totally awesome when something really cool happens, which in my case seems to be about once a week. The last "I love Africa" moment happened, ironically, while stuck in the worst traffic jam I have ever seen.

Guinean traffic jams are something else entirely, and this was one of the worst even our driver had ever seen. Imagine an eight lane highway that has a huge hole dug in the middle of it for about half a mile, with kids playing soccer in amongst the trash and market ladys selling sizzling meat by firelight. This hole has disrupted traffic enough so that there are now at least four different directions in what should be a nicely flowing two direction highway. Instead there are people driving through market stalls, cutting sideways through traffic, men pushing their motos up and over trash heaps and big tractor trailer trucks threatening to bump smaller cars out of the way. In the middle of all this, after being stuck in the same spot for about an hour, (it was now about 9 at night) I hear the distinct siren of Lansana Conte's presidential motorcade and look behind me to see the advance motorcycle of the procession inching through the packed traffic. The presidential motorcade consists of about 6 Nissan Armadas, one presumably with the President of Guinea, and the other 5 are packed full of soldiers dressed in green military fatigues and toting loaded AK 47s. The motorcade sped up behind us, and then sped to a stop, right next to us, because as powerful as the Guinean oligarchy is, it too was subdued by the chaos of the traffic jam. We just sat there in our car and stared across at the tinted windows of the presidents SUV. And then we sat there some more. After a while traffic finally began to move and a path was cleared by the police. The motorcade began to move, and a car in front of us tried to jump in behind one of the Armadas, not realizing that there was one last SUV that was trailing behind. The soldiers who had been cut off all jumped out of their car and rushed toward the car with guns drawn, pointing them through the open window of the car and yelling at him to move back. I have never seen a car put into reverse so fast in my life.

Its moments like these that I find particularly funny; its almost like the sheer absurdity of this place somehow makes it more bearable. Most importantly, I think its necessary not to take things too seriously here, otherwise you will be suffocated by the excruciatingly slow paced chaos of life in the third world. Whatever you do, if a presidential motorcade happens to pass you, at least give them a few carlengths before you decide to follow...

Beach Trip

During training we all took a break and took our bus to the beach. I took this video along the way to show you guys what a typical West African road trip looks like. ~Enjoy~
If you are interested, or just bored with nothing better to do, scroll below for a really long update.

May Update

Sorry for not writing sooner, but I have been in the bush for altogether too long. Much has happened since my last post, and some highlight events include getting Giardia, running into a cow while riding my bike at night without a light and being stuck in a Conakry traffic jam for four hours along with the presidential motorcade.

But, first things first. I am now officially working for Peace Corps Guinea as a Small Enterprise Development Volunteer. This means that my job now is to work with micro finance institutions and local cooperatives with the goal of small scale, community based, economic development. I live at the same economic level as most Guineans in my small village of Tolo, which is thankfully located in one of the most fertile, mountainous and best of all, coldest places in Guinea. That of course is a relative term, because it never really goes below 75 degrees during the day, although it can drop down to the 60's at night.

I get my water from the village foot pump and carry it in 5 gallon bidons back to my house to use for washing and drinking. I cook with a wood burning stove outside, and pick my own mangos and papayas right off the tree next to my house. I just had a large fence built around my garden to keep the cows out. It cost me a total of $2.30. I bike 25k three or four times a week to go into the nearest big town, to buy food and supplies. This is safer and usually faster than taking public transport, which consists of the only car in the village (a extremely battered ford fiesta from the 70's) with four people crammed in the front, another four in back and another two or three riding on the roof along with the usual assortment of goats, chickens and family furniture attached by any means possible. This car runs once a day and back again so I prefer to take my bike because I can make the trip in less than an hour. Such is my daily existence in Guinea. I listen to the rain pound on my tin roof, read Conrad's Heart of Darkness and shoo African petits off my porch with my pink fly swatter.

My work is progressing slowly in the village, and I am not rushing it, purely because I want to integrate into the community more before I start working. Meanwhile I am keeping busy working on getting funding for a project of Sarah's, which is a National Teachers Conference. I find fundraising for projects like this really enjoyable because you have to sell your idea to a group of people who control a fund of money. Its kind of like selling anything else, except in this case you are actually helping people. So far we have been looking at funding from the American Cultural Center and USAID's Small Project fund.

Happy 2006

n


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Its been a while since my last post. Right now its new years day and I am in Conakry at the Peace Corps house. The house is right on the beach and there are about 2000 Guineans celebrating with live music and drumming about 100 yards away. Even in the air conditioned tranquility of the PC house the noise is deafening and if you look out the window there is just a sea of people down on the beach. I had a great Chirstmas with a vegetarian feast over at the country directors house and lots and lots of good desserts. I have been eating really well over christmas because of the influx of people visiting over the holidays. I have had sushi, Mexican and lasagne with real cheese in the past week. For Guinea, that is unheard of.

I finally got the chance to post some pictures, although they are low quality because of the connection here. The first two are taken in Kindia, once when I got a ride back to the village with the military and the second is of people traveling by dumptruck. Row two is Sarah posing with one of our favorite bush taxis and one of Sarah's students walking up a mountain behind our house. The last row is a picture of said mountain and the sunset in Mamou. Enjoy!

Middle America vs the African Bush

Village life is liad back, relaxing and more slow paced than I have ever seen. It seems like there is an almost inverse proportion to the quality of life versus the pace of life, and the accompanying stress. You don’t see Guineans complaining about how the maid doesn't put the dishes away, how the faucet leaks or how there are weeds in the lawn. When the only potable drinking water is two miles away and you have to carry a five gallon jug on your head, with a body barely nourished by a diet of white rice and no protein, suddenly the banality of 1st world problems becomes starkly apparent. Every day I see Guineans laughing and enjoying the simple pleasures of life; sitting in the shade of a front porch on a particularly hot day, chatting in the local tea bar or singing as they work in the rice fields. Yet the Guineans in my village live without electricity, refrigeration or plumbing. They have limited knowledge of French, no concept of sanitation or preventative health-care and yet they still function and live happy lives.

This is such an amazing contrast to the ultra privileged, yet ultimately unhappy white middle class of America. I think every husband undergoing a midlife crisis or desperately frustrated housewife should be sent to Guinea for a month to receive a much needed reality check. The bucket of cold water that is life in a third world country should be thrown in the faces of every bleeding heart liberal and Cheney worshiping conservative. Not even for political action to be taken, but merely to provide a paradigm shift to the ignorant and thus do a service to humanity.

I don’t mean to paint guinea as some kind of 3rd world utopia, or spout some back to nature Emersonian propaganda. There is certainly more than an ample amount of discontent and unhappiness here, as is dictated by human nature and socio-economic conditions. However, my goal is merely to illustrate the contrast between unhappiness that is justified and one borne out of a culture consumed by materialism.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to let me know if you stopped by as always.

African Petits

Well its almost week two in Guinea for me. I have now been introduced to the entire village of Sougueta, shook every hand, and greeted everyone in three different languages. Now when I walk to the market in the mornings to buy fresh baked bread people shout out greetings to me in Pulaar and French, or just use my new Guinean name as a greeting. Sarah’s 8th grade class got together and voted on the name and came up with Abdul Salaam Sou. I found out later that it is also the same name as Guinea’s most famous soccer player, so I guess I have been given quite an honor.

African kids, or petits, are one of the most amazing, and different things here in Guinea. There is no TV, no Internet or video games to dull minds to the near vegetative state as in America. Instead children occupy themselves by rolling old tires down the street or playing soccer in the dirt with a homemade ball. I have started playing frisbee almost every day with the village petits and they love it! At first they stared at my orange disc in wonderment as it would fly through the air, but they quickly picked up the idea and soon were tossing like pros. There is one deaf kid that has a killer backhand, and speaks in his own form of sign language that everyone in the village seems to understand. All the other children actually treat him very nicely and its amazing that he can get along so well, but sad that he will never have a formal education as there is no way to teach him official sign language and they will not accept him at the local school.

Its particularly interesting to see just how fast a pack of petits can accumulate. Sarah and I will start tossing back and forth between ourselves, and usually in less than a minute (and we have timed this with a stopwatch) a petit will come up and stand watching shyly until we invite him to play. 10 minutes later the crowd will have grown to 7 or 8 and within half an hour it will have grown to 25 or 30, with all the kids screaming “Monsiur, moi, moi” in the hopes that I will throw the disc to them. Its fun to stand way back, throw a floater and watch the utter pandemonium erupt as the whole pack descends on the Frisbee screaming, with dust flying everywhere. Petits form packs wherever Sarah and I go even if we are just out for a stroll. Sometimes I feel like the pied piper when I look back and see a group of 40 children trailing behind me. Guineans also get a real kick out of seeing me run; the old men and women of the village applaud me as I run past and the petits chase me for as long as they can keep up.

The first week

So far Guinea is great! I arrived in the capital city of Conakry Sunday before last, bags intact, a bit tired from the past two days spent traeling and very very excited to actually begin the trip I had been planning for the past four months. As I got off the plane, the first thing to hit me was the heat and accompanying smell. It was very humid, about 85, and I am told that this is the dry season. I was escorted by Peace Corps Land Cruiser, complete with Guinaen chaffeur, to the PC compound which is surrounded by 16 ft high walls and gun toting gards. Driving through the streets, I was struck by the sights and sounds of a typical third third world city. Nobody knows exactly how many people live in Conakry and estimates run anywhere from 2 - 5 million. However, the sheer amount of sweaty humanity crammed into the small peninsula that is the capital city was starkly apparent that night as we made our way to the peace corps compound. Kids ran among the cars playing soccer, women were carrying back breaking loads on their heads and flashes of kerosene lit markets all flew by and wuld become common sights in the days to come.

Looking back on my first impressions, Guinea is not as bad as I had expected it to be. I had pretty accurate descriptions of life here from all my peace corps contacts, and having been exposed to 3rd world poverty before facilitated my adjustment immensely. Still, every once and a while, you are shocked by the sheer amount of trash, open sewers and general filth that pervades any place that is inhabited in Guinea.

The next few days after my arrival I explored the city with Sarah, going to the nice french restaraunts and watching the sunset from a tropical bar on a sandy beach. We had pizza (a nice treat for most PCV's becasuse cheese is hard to get outside the city) and listened to a group of Guinaens at the table next to us drum on a water jug and sing in SouSou (on of the four local tribal languages). When they heard us applauding them, the group launched into a perfect rendition of a Bob Marley song in our honor. The markets in Conakry were another highlight of my stay in the capital. Even the most seasoned Peace Corps voulenteer or Ex pat is wary of the niger market in Conakry. Pickpockets run amok, the noise of shouting vendors is deafining, and as a fote (or white person) you draw so much attention that by the end of your time spent wandering around the market you have a train of 10 - 15 people following you, all hoping you buy their American flag bandanas, plastic air jordan sandals or dead poultry. If a pure embodiement of chaos ever existed, the Niger market would be it. Needless to say I sat back and gripped my money belt close and watched Sarah bargian in fluent french with a mix of Pulaar, all while navigating the rabbit warrens and alleys of the market with ease.

My arrival in the small village of Sougueta is another story all together, but I'm running out of time in the computer lab here in Kindia and I have to go soon. I will just say that the whole village pratically worships Sarah, and they have been very welcoming to me as well. I have been slowly improving my french and can understand about 25 percent of what people say, although I can only say hi and goodbye in Pulaar. I have been given the name Abdul Salaam Sow by Sarah's eighth grade class, and children shout out the name as I walk past on my way into town every day.

Life is great here! Im staying healthy and having fantastic time, will post again when I have time. Leave me a comment if you see this or drop me a line!