So I completed training and apparently I can speak French which is somewhat of a surprise for me. Not that I am fluent in it by any means but I have the next two years to work on that. As for my current state, I feel it is very surreal, expecting to wake up from a dream, be back in Vermont or New York City and say, "damn, what an adventure!" Than I wake up, or rather am awoken by a rooster crowing five feet from my door at 5AM, attempt to fall back asleep but the rooster still crows so I wake up and its 75 or 80 degrees at 7AM. And no matter how long I spend scrubbing my feet to try to clean them, they are covered in dust the moment I step outside. I realize it's the perils of wearing sandals but it is just to hot to even consider wearing shoes, let alone socks and shoes. Not to mention when I'm using three buckets to wash my clothes by hand, the fewer clothes to wash the better.
But the last time I wrote, I was just about to visit my site. Throughout this whole adventure, one of the hardest things for me to do was to try not and have expectations. Not that I didn't want to think about things that lay ahead but more so, I am coming into a culture I don't know, a language I don't speak, a town that until I was told I would be living there I had never heard of so what can I expect? If expectations are built on past experience and my past experiences are defined by my history in my culture, how can I develop a realistic expectation for something which I am learning so much about but which I still know so little? Although, I did expect to be somewhat terrified, have difficulty communicating and at least have an adventure. Simple expectations are easy to meet. First, bush taxis are a lot more terrifying and uncomfortable looking than they actually are, even when they don't really operate on a fixed schedule but, that may just be myself forcing laughter at bush taxis in general. The ride to my town was beautiful, although four hours on a dirt road did turn me a little red. There are giant mesas (a mountain/rock formation) which are cool and savannas (picture the movie The Lion King, even though I have yet to see major wildlife) which extend for almost the entire drive.
I get into my town (name omitted for safety reasons) and I have a wonderful little market and the office of my organization is right in the center of town. Now, let me go into a little detail about my market. One, dried fish is everywhere. Usually in the states, I love fish. Some tuna, some salmon, some swordfish, grilled, pan seared, or sashimi and I would be in heaven. I have yet to develop that taste for fish here so the dried fish kind of creates an unwelcoming situation for me. Now imagine my market is the equivalent of a supermarket. It’s really not but it’s where I go food shopping so the comparison works. Now imagine you are browsing the aisles of your supermarket, picking what you want off the shelves and as you go about your business, cows mingle all around with a 4' bar hanging horizontally from their necks. The bar is designed to prevent cows from eating crops in the field but little is done to keep them from stealing produce in the market. Every time a cow walks or shifts its head, it runs the chance of knocking you down. It makes for an interesting shopping experience to say the least. And if its night, the lack of light allows for the distinct probability that one might just walk right into a cow. That being said, it takes some getting used to but with the exception of the fish, it really is quite a wonderful market.
As for my house, I mean this in a positive manner when I say it could have been built by Habitat for Humanity in the States. My house has tiled floors, a nice front porch, a foyer which enters into my living room, bedroom and storage room across with my bathroom off my bedroom. My house has fixtures for light bulbs and a bathroom that includes a toilet, shower and sink but my electricity and water are not actually hooked up to anything that would make them function. But my house is very spacious for one person and I never thought I'd be getting a housing upgrade when I joined Peace Corps and moved to West Africa but it does needs some work before it will feel like home. But, if you send me a catalogue with some cool furniture that I might like the designs of, I can have it custom built for not too much money so... I might have some cool looking furniture sometime soon as well!
As for logistics, such as water, I mentioned that despite my nice water using furnishings, I must gather and carry my water from a well. By the time I got to site, I had been taking French for a month and figured I had getting my basic needs (such as water) down. So I ask for some assistance in getting water and it passes through a few people without ever getting done (over two hours) and I am beginning to wonder am I really this dumb that I can't even ask for water? And if so, how on earth can I actually accomplish business trainings? So the next day, I give up on asking for water and ask for some assistance showing me to the water source. This worked so much better and somewhat alleviated my concerns about my ability to communicate. Anyways, it is a journey to get to water, through a few yards, over a fence, through two gates and down a hill. Maybe 1/3 - 1/2 of a mile away is my well water (water used for bathing and cleaning but NOT for drinking). And when I say hill, imagine a small mountain complete with roots and rocks for a couple hundred feet. So I show up at the well and this porto (white person in Pulaar) is a very curious site but I do my Pulaar salutations and everyone laughs. Anyways, the hike back with a bucket of water is rather hard but at least I know where my water is now. Anyways, the next day, another trainee arrives to stay with me and we both head down to get the well water. One porto showing up at the well was a woah moment, two showing up and people started asking what is this world coming to? Anyways, their isn't really a line, rather a lot of people waiting around but they love our Pulaar greetings so our buckets are filled and than we attempt to carry the buckets on our heads, thinking this is how its done locally, it must really be the most convenient. So as we attempt to put 24 and 40 pounds of water on our heads respectively, everyone laughs. As people realize we are actually going to carry our water like this, they laugh harder. Laughter is contagious and laughter uses or at least induces core muscles making it incredibly hard to balance a large bucket of water on your head. Not something you usually would learn from experience but I can say I've been there done that. But, since this is a lot of work, water conservation becomes a good exercise, seeing how many times I can reuse the water before I use it to flush my toilet.
But on site visit I also had time to ponder some serious things as well. Generally taking notes while eating rice and sauce (leaf, think spinach, or peanut) at my new favorite restaurant. One of the activities we were asked to think about during training was an Income Generating Activity ("IGA"). This is another story but our IGA of selling peanut caramel was so successful that I wanted to make more of our product to sell in which I failed miserably and learned the hard way that my cooking skills don't quite translate to regional cooking methods and that when you earn a good profit, sometimes the rest of the day is best spent drinking tea.
But that aside, one element of business in Guinea and IGAs here in general is that much of the IGAs are agriculturally based. The seasonality of agricultural IGAs never allows supply and demand to naturally balance; rather the market is flooded with supply which lowers the price all suppliers can get for their products than when the season is over, all of the supply is taken away, even if demand remains. This reduces the profit possibilities of the product when it is in season but because it is labor and skill intensive to extend the season, even if just by a couple of weeks, an extended season for greater profit is rarely if ever achieved. Now there are other IGAs as well, including local production of soaps as well as the selling of goods not produced domestically. There are a decent number of goods available at my site but all the boutiques sell these same exact products. Despite my brief experience, I'd hazard a guess that the number of items available in my village is less than the average number of items available in a typical grocery store, roughly 30,000.
Because of the economic situation, demand for goods is limited. Their may be a need for more goods but most people cannot afford them so it is not profitable to supply them. When 30 or so boutiques offer the same type of product and in close proximity, the market is flooded with supply of goods, diminishing the profitability for the boutique owners. Simply put, the problem is that if there are limited IGAs for people to engage in, lots of people will do the same IGAs. This drastically increases the level of supply and without an increase in demand; the positive economic benefit is reduced. In reality, there is a great deal of trade that does go on but we will make the assumption of a closed economy just so I can make my point. If their is X amount of money circulating in the economy of say 100 people and only one person is selling a product that is in demand, more of the money will flow to that one person. However, if a majority of the 100 people sell the same product, X amount of money will be divided amongst a larger portion of the population, doing very little to develop or improve individual economic situations. By working with one family in this small population to increase their portion of the wealth spurs demand for new needs/desires, demand that otherwise wouldn't exist in the community, creating new opportunities for IGAs. For IGAs to be successful, they have to be differentiated to provide economic opportunities based on supply and demand, ensuring a more balanced market.
Basically what I am getting at is: 1. an economy needs diversity to better adapt to supply and demand and 2. some wealth disparity is necessary to help an economy develop and grow. After all, things that are part of our every day lives, maybe more yours than mine right now, were developed because of demand from nation states or wealthy individuals (cars, Internet, jet engines, cell phones, computers, etc.) These may be all tech related but the initial demand for all of these goods came from wealthier individuals or institutions/governments but the demand for these goods helped create jobs that generated incomes for more persons which further spurred greater demand for other goods and services, a cycle that created new IGAs.
The problem lies in you can't build supply without demand but you can't get demand for a product or service that is not economically possibly within a community so the question is where and how do you start to diversify to provide a broader range of IGAs? I would love your input so PLEASE e-mail me with suggestions, thoughts or questions.
I realize this was long and I hope I didn't bore you switching from my adventures to a more “I have this thought and I want your feedback mode.” But what I've shared is not nearly all of what’s happened in the past month so their is more to come (including pictures I promise) and I hope to get this all up before I leave my access to internet for another month. But life is a journey and adventure about what you do, who you meet and what you think along the way. And so far, this journey is still good with plenty of stories and thoughts to share. After all, as humans we have spent thousands of years developing oral and written communication and after all, that’s only good for sharing information and last time I checked, I was still human.
Danc, bon nuit et bon chance!
