One year ago (yesterday?) I was in Guinea on my way back from Kankan headed to my site. Kankan is the regional capital for volunteers, and we’d been there for something (was it the girl’s conference?), perhaps just our monthly visit. It is a 9 hour trip on a good day, and that day was not a good day.

I don’t remember much of that day. Rumors began flying about halfway between Kankan and Kissidougou, which is the biggest city on route. People were rioting, I heard. Or maybe the military was killing some people. The military had arrested all the candidates. No it was just two. Or maybe none. Messages started coming in from other volunteers. We are leaving for sure. No, we are staying, there is no reason to worry. Are we on standby? If we didn’t leave for the coup we aren’t going to evacuate because a few protesters got killed. Wait are we? We are on standby?

I arrived home thinking not much would come of it. The number of killed were getting bigger, but it had been in Conakry and everyone knows that what happens in Conakry stays in Conakry. That is to say, the rest of the country was rather tranquil. I don’t remember if Sajay stayed at my house that night. I think he might have been consolidated there. Or it could have been the next day. We slept and I woke up cursing the little bugs that like to bite me while I dream. For a few days we had not a lot to do. I went to my business club meetings. We ate corn porridge with lime juice. I forget it’s real name now. It’s called coco here, and made with millet. That stuff was so delicious, eaten piping hot at four in the afternoon. I would sweat my shirt through in five minutes.

We ate brochettes and potato salads with boiled eggs. We had a few sodas. We joked around with my friend Cece, who is 15 and a refuge from Cote D’Ivoire. We met this American named Mike who was volunteering with the chimpanzee reserve not far from my site. He was finishing up his time and had been ravaged by various illnesses. He also liked this woman that I had a little crush on myself. We went to visit her and afterward talked about her smile.

A few days into this consolidation (it wasn’t official consolidation, because then I would have been in my regional capital I think) we heard from Mike that the Embassy was evacuating. He had called them to see if he needed to worry about security. They told him to GTFO. He gave them my number as a contact since he didn’t have a phone.

Rumors of evacuation had been building for days as we stayed on alert. When Mike told the embassy to contact him via my number and that I was a Peace Corps volunteer, the guy on the phone said something like, “Oh that won’t work. They won’t be here after tomorrow.” And thus was all the Peace Corps secrecy exposed. This was a Saturday, and of course we couldn’t get confirmation that we were leaving. Sunday afternoon we received the official call. We waited a couple of days as other volunteers came into my town to meet up with us, and on Tuesday we left. We spent that night at a hotel in Guinea and Wednesday crossed into Mali as a big group.

I remember most that I couldn’t find my kids the morning we left. They were 2 and 5 years old and I loved them. One day they woke up and I was gone. I hope they understand why, or at least that I didn’t abandon them. In all honesty I was kind of glad to leave, but I had to hide my tears as we drove away. I had had such a hard time in that site, but I was sad to be so suddenly leaving my friends and my family. What would be next?

The RSO in Mali was an exercise in ridiculousness. What happens when you pay someone to be responsible for the security of all Americans but then encourage him to stay behind the safe bars of the embassy? Yeah, you can guess it. We nicknamed him Captain America and he promptly started hitting on some volunteers. They wouldn’t let us change money because of “security.”

A month later I arrived in Niger and a month after that I moved into a lovely little village that suited me much better. Or maybe I had just learned how to be a better volunteer by then. And that closed the Guinea chapter of my life.

If I sound critical of staff at the Embassy, it should be qualified. I don’t know what those guys go through, what kind of information they have. I don’t know how many threats are real or not real. But I do know that living in a village, living normal life in Guinea or in Niger, the threat is incredibly minimal. To me, real security assessment should involve living closely with the local population, forming real relationships, and getting a feel for the attitude of the population. It doesn’t seem like you can do that very well from behind multiple security measures. This leads to warped perceptions, like the RSO in Niger telling us that we would see herders with AK-47s on a regular basis. I have seen many herders. None with an AK-47. I don’t know any volunteers that have seen one. Maybe their job is just to scare us. Or maybe if you look for shadows too long you start to see them whether they are there or not. From my incredibly uninformed view, there seem to be some lessons in all that with respect to our current struggles.

So adieu, Guinea. Here’s hoping the new group going to Guinea gets to stay.

This was a mad week. It was mad in many senses: as a prelude to things to come, as a launch point of new directions, as a return to friends missed, as a challenge of head and heart. Much had to do with with the Gender and Development (GAD) auction and the swearing in of new volunteers, coupled with a day long workshop to which I was central. And since it isn’t often that I get to see many volunteers, the nights were full of social events. To top it all off, I have been having trouble sleeping the last couple of weeks, at first because I found this amazing computer game, then because of nervousness about this week, and then because the week was so full that my days weren’t finishing until late. I finally crashed last night and slept like the dead, only to wake and stay up until midnight.

So anyway, Tuesday was the GAD auction, which lines up roughly with when new groups of volunteers swear in. Since I am a GAD representative for my region, I was responsible for a few things, mostly just showing up on Tuesday to help organize all the stuff for the silent auction. We get stuff by going around to local businesses and asking for donations and by collecting things from volunteers throughout the year. I work till 5:30, so I wasn’t involved in much of this (also I hate asking for donations), but I was able to get the afternoon off on Tuesday to help set up. The auction itself was great, and we raised over $3,000 dollars for GAD. I didn’t bid on anything, but there was some really cool stuff there.

Then we had a nice dinner and a talent show / live auction / raffle, which I (badly) helped MC. I did a swing dance with a girl I met from Boston University and a funny dance to a song from Glee. Also I won a small computer bag sewn like the Niger flag in the raffle.

After that it was time for the after-auction party, which includes yet another auction. I had donated four pies to that, but they didn’t get auctioned off because the new volunteers had to leave and we ran out of time.

I woke up the next day and had a workshop at PLAN to get some local input on our objectives and themes for this life skills project. Whenever we get a final draft I will put it in a post here. It was a great workshop, and we got a lot of good ideas. But having slept only a few hours that night, I was beat.

Later that night I went out with a friend of mine and met a guy who works here who is from The Netherlands. He turned out to be really cool and does interesting statistical things with a national farmer cooperative. At least he would like to if he can get them collecting a good set of data. He is new to Niger and I plan on inviting him out the next time I am doing something interesting (such as going to the horse races on Saturday?).

Along those lines, I have become a huge fan of Hand Relief International, which makes great fun of the development world (and has some pointed things to say about Peace Corps). I am not quite as cynical as they are, but they make me laugh.

Yesterday was more of the same, and this morning I went out with Moustapha, who manages this whole Youth Economic Empowerment project, to see some groups having their first meetings. Unfortunately we got lost and ended up coming back having done nothing. Here’s to hoping next week will work out better.

So that is the week in review. Today is pretty relaxed, and then tomorrow I will be helping the new volunteers in my region go shopping for supplies, and we will go to the horse races and have a goodbye dinner and dancing for the brave souls going to do a third year in Diffa.

Life is really pretty awesome. My job is turning into a great experience both professionally and personally, and I am really enjoying the group of people that I socialize with in Niamey. It is a little too much at the moment, but that should calm down soon (Incha’Allah). I find myself doing a lot more interacting with Americans, which is good, but I didn’t want it to come at the expense of knowing and spending time with Nigerians. It is some, but I’m making Nigerian friends here to and am pretty excited about that.