It took 12 hours to go 60 miles. Walked about 25 times, pushed the car about 15 times, changed one tire and filled the radiator with water about 5 times. This was seven passengers plus driver in a late model, small Mercedes. But I did see a great sunset (the sunset I never should have seen as a result). Also, I got to crank the crank on the hand cranked ferry to cross the river. Guineans LOVED it. I think those two fun elements make up for the other 11:50 minutes that didn't go right.
I use 'chose' as the title because that means things. Just another part of my combination of French, English and PC slang which I realize makes understanding me sometimes rather complicated. My apologies. Just ask me to clarify.
But I am doing great. My site has treated me wonderfully and I am making lots of friends (I can't leave my house without at least four families wanting to feed me) and I've had lots of great conversations about the needs of my community with people from my site as well as other development (extensionist) workers who use my site as a base for their operations. It has created some great ideas for projects, such as a solar dryer project (for food security) that helps preserve the abundant source of mangos and tomatos which no one can possibly eat all of when they are in season. The project idea is to do a business training, A to Z, with high school age kids and have them set up a small enterprise that sells dried products during the off season and use the proceeds to help buy basic school supplies and books for the school. Some of the books they do have include Canadian Geography which doesn't really have a decent place in the curriculum. As for mangos, I have joined the cows and petites in mango hunting. For humans, it involves a 20' pole and climbing the tree, batting at a mango till it falls. I did not have success but fear not, I am frequently given in excess of 20 mangos so I have pleanty, if not too many, for me too eat. Hence the reason I myself made a solar dryer to introduce the technology to my community. My counterpart was so excited and immediately made a meeting for me to explain this and the business opportunities to a groupment. As for my real work, my ONG (NGO) would like me to do a large business training of 50 persons over five days, five people from 10 groupments. Since not everyone will read or write French, it provides a great opportunity to allow for collaborative projects with health or agfo volunteers. Not to mention, thats a lot of material for me to prepare.
So until I went mango hunting, I had managed to avoid issues with petites (small children) that normally plague other volunteers. Such as petites staring at your windows for long periods of time. Than I went mango hunting and overnight, the all of a sudden, the number of petites who know my name grew exponentially and now thing my house is the local hang out point. Luckily they still respect me saying its time for me to repose (rest) and that they need to go. The advantage is, I now get a LOT of mangos and petites now want to search for water for me, although despite the work, I prefer to do it myself.
So despite originally thinking that I would want to cook for myself a lot, I enjoy eating rice and sauce with families and at my rice bar. Peanut sauce is the best although leaf sauce with peanut butter is very good too. Its partly because cleaning dishes after cooking/eating is a lot of work absent running water or a nice dishwasher.
And on travel. I know you all heard about my adventures with the built in AC, a bush taxi missing half the front windshield. And I started this blog about travel as well. Needless to say, it hardly seems safe and rarely seems comfortable. Yet most of the time, once you get into a groove, its somewhat comfortable. Its only if you have to keep stopping and walking do things get uncomfortable, as they did the other day when it took 12 hours for a 3 hour trip. But, our trip was broken up for a good part by a ride in an ONG car, although we had to stop at various points for them to inspect their work. This involved multiple waits although we did stop in small remote town where everyone seemed to be collecting mangos. We were handed probably 50 and some child born this year in that town will not be born in 2009 but will be born "In the Year 3 Portos Showed Up and One Taught us a Funny Dance Called Skinny-Marink-A-Dink-A-Dink" complements of yours truly. Finding ways to pass time along the side of the road is key. It might become a Broken Bush Taxi Olympics, it really is an artful sport and all the pushing up hills is also good sport.
One of the hardest parts is dealing with food security here. I generally get the feeling that a lot of statistics are somewhat hazier than they seem but when someone says that 99% of Guinean's go to bed hungry or don't get enough to eat, the hardest thing for me is to accept a large plate of rice and sauce, even though it is culturally inappropiate to refuse. I was reading some of Dave's blog, on which he wrote something to the sort of "If we all had a little bit of Guinea in us, we'd be a lot better off." While we miss him dearly, as he chose that now is not the right time to deal with the many challenges of Guinea, I do tend to agree with him on that. Granted, we would not be better off if it took us 12 hours to go 60 miles or had cars with only half of windshields, but the culture and the people. If we had the sense of community, the sense of taking care of family and neighbors even making our ends meet was difficult; just one act a day in that general direction would go a long way. Happiness, kindness and hospitality are virtuous cycles and despite facing some of the greatest challenges in one of the most challenging places, the people of Guinea do that well. You never know who is in a bush taxi with you but it is an experience you share, and you make friends and you look after one another. Even if an hour (or 12) you were complete strangers. Imagine getting on a plane and having the plane sit on the tarmac for three hours and having a similar experience, seatmates sharing food, water and inventing new games and conversations just to pass the time in a more pleasant manner.
As for photos, I have augmented somewhat so here is the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/jabarbour/Guinea#
Enjoy the sites and stories of Guinea because so much, the smells and sounds can only be described and left to the imagination.
