The last couple of weeks have been very full. First we left for our counterpart workshop, where we meet our counterparts and have two days of sessions with them. It is a good way to introduce us to each other and learn how to work with each other in the comfort of other peole. Many of the sessions focus on exploring the cultural differences and the expectations of volunteers and of counterparts. It seems very well put together. After those two days, we took a bush taxi ensemble to our site, me with my counterpart, another volunteer and his counterpart, and a volunteer from an earlier group. Its a good introduction to riding in bush taxis.
My house is a single room with a large bed, and a tiny bathroom attached. It was pretty dirty, and is slowly falling down a hill, so its was pretty disheartening to see when I first got there. But I moved some stuff around and lay in my bed thinking about how to arrange it and I think I can make it pretty homey. But if I get the chance I will try to move. There were also several giant spiders of a type common in Guinea (I don’t think they’re poisonous) in the bathroom. I have current occassionally, which is nice for charging my phone and my other electronics.
Faranah itself is very pretty, being on the edge of the savanah and along the Niger River, it has great landscape not too far out. It is also the city of Guinea’s first president, and he pumped a ton of money into it, so it has a lot of amenities (this does not mean running water). My marche has actual lettuce and carrots, and a million other things as well. The market is very close to my house, which will make shopping pretty easy.
So I spent the first night watching a football game between Faranah and Conakry. The director of the department for the promotion of youth met me and gave me his chair right on the sidelines. It was pretty awesome. The next two days I walked around with my counterpart and met people at the organization I will be primarily working with, as well as a number of local authorities, some of which were happier to see me than others. Much of those two days was spent alone in my house dozing and thinking. It was a great break from being with other volunteers all the time.
Then on Wednesday I took a bush taxi to another volunteer’s village. It was a station wagon with a third seat, and there were at least 14 people in the car, and another 2 on top of it, plus all our bbaggage. It was a little intense when we drove through a herd of cattle that miraculously had an opening the width of a car in it. Anyway, we spent the afternoon hiking through hills near his site, and ran into a couple of snakes that left quite hurriedly. Then we camped on a hilltop. But by 2 am we gave up because there were a couple of cows that kept circling back to check us out, and so every 10 minutes we were turning on our lights to make sure the cows weren’t going to step on us. So we walked back in the moonlight, which was actually rather nice. We finally got to sleep at around 4 am.
Thursday we took a taxi back to Faranah (it had a plastic oil container rigged as a gas tank) and that evening we went, with two other volunteers, to my counterpart’s fiance’s family’s house. There we made garlic bread, and they made spaghetti with beef that was fantastically awesome, and gave us as much soda as we wanted. It was a little crazy, because they must have dropped a ton of money on my birthday party, and I don’t even really know them very well. We also danced a lot, and it was a ton of fun all together. They were incredibly nice, and I like her family a lot.
Other events transpired that evening, during which I learned that I definitely do not want a puppy in my life, and that volunteers who can’t handle a puppy shouldn’t get one, and that I have not yet perfected the buddhism of perfect patience. Who knew?
Then Friday the three of us in my group headed to Mamou, where we stayed the night with several volunteers before heading back to Forecariah on Saturday.
I also shaved a mustache, and after arriving in Forecariah, shaved my head completely. It is way cooler, but you can imagine how I look with a mustache and no hair (actually, maybe you can’t). We have two more weeks of stage before we prep to head to site. I’m so excited I can hardly sit through my classes. I can’t wait to start my life there.
A bit about the organization I’ll be working for. They concentrate on helping women and youth start small enterprises and form groupements and associations. I’ll be doing some trainings on how to start businesses, how to write plans of action, and probably some classes on English. The organization is primarily funded through Faisson Ensemble, an initiative of USAID. It seems I might also be working with several groups to facilitate cooperation between NGO’s, so I might be travelling to different cities a lot, which is pretty exciting.
With only a couple of exceptions, everyone had a great site visit and we’re all ready to be done with stage and living at our sites. Just two more weeks. I have to say that the Peace Corps has done a great job of easing us in to life in Guinea with baby steps. Petite a petite, as they say.
