Mary has been here for almost a week now, and as you can imagine I am spending less time writing blog posts while she is here, so those of you who want more posts will have to be a little patient. Her trip here was grueling, and unfortunately because I was not allowed in to the baggage recieving room she ended up paying a significant amount of money in bribes, which has me rather incensed. But other than that all went well, and after recuperating for a day in Conakry we made the long taxi ride back to Faranah, which took about nine hours and got us in a little after midnight.
We’ve also had the chance to attend a formation about living with HIV/AIDS that is geared toward a group of peer educators, and which overall had both of us impressed with the level and accuracy of the information being given. It is a Faisson Ensemble project, so it is nice to see something that they are doing that seemed good. Of course they pay these peer educators, and while we were there they got a lecture about not actually doing the work they were supposed to be doing, but it is a big step up from the good governance formation I went to earlier on in my service.
We also bought a fan, which has been a godsend in the heat, and has I think single-handedly encouraged my cat to actually spend time inside again. The market in general has been a (more) fun experience, and Mary is I think enjoying learning the numbers in French and Malinke and even has been teaching some of the little kids English numbers.
Friday we went to a village about 10 kilometers away, and walked the way there, which was a nice chance for Mary to get to see some of the countryside, but also extremely hot, which resulted in her being pretty dehydrated and my heat rash extending all over my back and down my thighs and my arms. It was the worst its ever been, but seems to have faded away again now. I have been trying to scrub it thoroughly every day, but it is hard to prevent flare ups. While there I met with a groupement to talk about the different kinds of formations I could do and what they would find useful, which invariably ended up as a list of mostly material requests, but also hopefully will result in some good formations to work on business skills.
