Hello everyone!
First off i am on a french keyboard that does not have english spell check. Sorry! So a little bit about what i have been up to. The other night i came back to town after a trip to visit another volunteer and my really good friend in town comes running up to me so excited i am back and is screaming something about meat. So i hear this long story about how a taxi hit a goat and killed it and left it in the middle of the road. So all of my guys stole two legs off the goat and waited for me to come back to cook it. Then at 9 oclock they wanted to start cooking it. You know who guys in the states like to start cooking meat at random times and they get half way and they realize they are missing half the stuff, yeah it was kind of like that, only in Guinea. It was a delicious disaster that took forever. Around 10:30 our fried goat meat was done and then i made them walk me home. But i was surprised to find out that cooking large quantities of meat at random times of the night is an international phenomenon. Sadly i am out of time at the internet lab so more later.
Happy 4th of JULY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the packages:
Mike, Amy and the kids
Aunt Peggy
Friday, July 3, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
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Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Workin' in Guinea
OK, so I am all finished with trainings (at least until mid-service)!!!! This means I am starting work! After several months of intense trainings I was ready to start my own thing and use some of the information I learned.
I know everyone back state side is wondering “What are you doing over there?” Well let me give you a run down of what I have done in the past two weeks. I have been going to my towns “hospital” a few days a week. I often just spend my time there talking to the doctor giving him as much information that I know about Malaria (which does not come from MANGOS! Which I am often told here), family planning (it really is cheaper to only have 5 kids compared to 30 no matter what a Guinean tells you), and fun stuff like sanitation (WASH YOUR HANDS!!!). I also have been giving vaccinations to the children for Polio and dispensing vitamins to help counter-act malnutrition. I have gone/helped with one informational class about women excision (which is mortifyingly aweful). Because the class was in Pular, I really didn’t get a lot of it, but the general idea was burned into my brain. I hope by just me sitting there horrified the other Guinean men in the class understood the significance of everything.
There is also a Youth Association for Development in my town which I have been going to. I was invited to sit on the board, giving fresh ideas and a female voice to the group. I am very excited to work further with them. It is a group of over 50 “older teenagers” who are motivated to learn and change some things in my town, which I think is great! I am really hoping to do some cool things with them.
When I get back to my site I will be starting my garden which I plan to plant moringa trees to give to people all around my village. (PLEASE
http://www.treesforlife.org/our-work/our-initiatives/moringa/moringa-tree/
, it really is amazing). I go to weekly meetings with my woman’s group as well as I will be starting savings and loans groups amongst them in the next few weeks. Which I hope will encourage the women to save money over the summer break for their children’s educational fees for the upcoming fall school year. Otherwise, I am working on improving my French (which I will confidently say is getting a lot better) and I am struggling to learn Pular, which I am determined to learn.
So that is how I occupy my time. Sure beats a 9-5 doesn’t it!
One last thing, special thanks out there to Aunt Bonnie and fam, Aunt Betty and Uncle Dan, and of course the ’Rents for all of the amazing packages, Danie thanks for the postcard. Also congrats to all of those who are GRADUATING this JUNE!!! Chrissy-baby that means you! Whoot whoot!!! And can’t forget those how are just excited for the school year to be over and move on to the next year, Creekview Elementary 3rd grade as well as OLH 5th grade classes!!!! YAY summer!
I know everyone back state side is wondering “What are you doing over there?” Well let me give you a run down of what I have done in the past two weeks. I have been going to my towns “hospital” a few days a week. I often just spend my time there talking to the doctor giving him as much information that I know about Malaria (which does not come from MANGOS! Which I am often told here), family planning (it really is cheaper to only have 5 kids compared to 30 no matter what a Guinean tells you), and fun stuff like sanitation (WASH YOUR HANDS!!!). I also have been giving vaccinations to the children for Polio and dispensing vitamins to help counter-act malnutrition. I have gone/helped with one informational class about women excision (which is mortifyingly aweful). Because the class was in Pular, I really didn’t get a lot of it, but the general idea was burned into my brain. I hope by just me sitting there horrified the other Guinean men in the class understood the significance of everything.
There is also a Youth Association for Development in my town which I have been going to. I was invited to sit on the board, giving fresh ideas and a female voice to the group. I am very excited to work further with them. It is a group of over 50 “older teenagers” who are motivated to learn and change some things in my town, which I think is great! I am really hoping to do some cool things with them.
When I get back to my site I will be starting my garden which I plan to plant moringa trees to give to people all around my village. (PLEASE
http://www.treesforlife.org/our-work/our-initiatives/moringa/moringa-tree/
, it really is amazing). I go to weekly meetings with my woman’s group as well as I will be starting savings and loans groups amongst them in the next few weeks. Which I hope will encourage the women to save money over the summer break for their children’s educational fees for the upcoming fall school year. Otherwise, I am working on improving my French (which I will confidently say is getting a lot better) and I am struggling to learn Pular, which I am determined to learn.
So that is how I occupy my time. Sure beats a 9-5 doesn’t it!
One last thing, special thanks out there to Aunt Bonnie and fam, Aunt Betty and Uncle Dan, and of course the ’Rents for all of the amazing packages, Danie thanks for the postcard. Also congrats to all of those who are GRADUATING this JUNE!!! Chrissy-baby that means you! Whoot whoot!!! And can’t forget those how are just excited for the school year to be over and move on to the next year, Creekview Elementary 3rd grade as well as OLH 5th grade classes!!!! YAY summer!
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The frist three months, an explination!
Why hello everyone,
I am doing fine and am still very happy here in Guinea. Right now i am rapping up more training and working on great ideas of projects ranging from very small to very large scale operations that i want to start-up here in the next few weeks.
The first three months, an explination:
Feb, March and April are months of observation for us. So what i did every day was observe how people in my village perform the everyday stuff. Like, where do they get water, who prepares food, why only certain kids go to school, what types of medicine do they have at my health center and things like that. For those of you sitting inside your little cubicle from 9-5 or longer this might seem like an ideal day. Waking up when you want, going where you want, doing whatever you want, but let me tell you, it is a lot harder than it sounds.
There were certain days where getting out of the house seemed worse than crunching numbers in a cubicle under fleurissant lighting all day. Imagin, being dropped off in a place you don't know, where you don't know anyone, a language you don't speak, it averaged about 110-120 degrees a day and a culture you can't even begin to understand. Well that was my every day life. Don't get me wrong i loved every pain staking minute of it, and i wouldn't change it for a cubicle at all. Things did get easier and conversations became more fun and less work as the months began to pass but i am still working on understanding the culture here. There are certain times when you just want to throw your hands up and scream, like when you just finished telling people you can only get malaria from mosquitos and then you ask and they tell you that you get it from mangos and milk..... But those things just take time.
I have made great friends and some of my favorite times thusfar are just sitting around under a mango tree, drinking (strong, sugary) tea, watching the traffic go by (about a car every 20 minutes, on the NATIONAL HIGHWAY) and just talking about life with my friends. That is where i feel i will be able to make the biggest difference. Opening up the eyes of the youth in my town to a world larger than just Guinea. But i have big plans, we will see what really happens while i'm here.
I'm begining to adjust to things as well. I no longer detest rice and sauce, i can now tolerate it. I no longer get the wicked cravings for food that i got while in training. OK thats a lie, i still miss american food but i try to tell my self i don't. I take a bath from a bucket, i squeeze into a compact car like the best of them and i even have eaten with my hands (but i DON"T like to make a habbit of it). Who would have thought. The heat is still killer, but i have learned to take naps (mainly sitting in bed trying to remember the days of snow) after lunch until about 4 when the sun starts to cool down.
My all time favorite part of the day is right after the last meal of the day (9.30 ish) when i know i made it through another day and i look up into the sky and see a million stars twinkling. There are no city lights, no lights period so you can see every star in the sky. It is an amazing site. I never knew how many stars there were until i moved here.
I have learned lots of valuable information that i hope to share with everyone back in the states especially about how to do business in a country ranked 166 out of 177 on the world development scale (USA is in the top 3 fyi) but if you have specific questions about anything at all, please e-mail me so i can answer any questions you might have and there are no dumb questions. Lord knows i asked a lot before coming here and about 95% of what i thought before i came was wronge.
Well my time is up at the internet "Cafe" so i'll write more next time ;)
I am doing fine and am still very happy here in Guinea. Right now i am rapping up more training and working on great ideas of projects ranging from very small to very large scale operations that i want to start-up here in the next few weeks.
The first three months, an explination:
Feb, March and April are months of observation for us. So what i did every day was observe how people in my village perform the everyday stuff. Like, where do they get water, who prepares food, why only certain kids go to school, what types of medicine do they have at my health center and things like that. For those of you sitting inside your little cubicle from 9-5 or longer this might seem like an ideal day. Waking up when you want, going where you want, doing whatever you want, but let me tell you, it is a lot harder than it sounds.
There were certain days where getting out of the house seemed worse than crunching numbers in a cubicle under fleurissant lighting all day. Imagin, being dropped off in a place you don't know, where you don't know anyone, a language you don't speak, it averaged about 110-120 degrees a day and a culture you can't even begin to understand. Well that was my every day life. Don't get me wrong i loved every pain staking minute of it, and i wouldn't change it for a cubicle at all. Things did get easier and conversations became more fun and less work as the months began to pass but i am still working on understanding the culture here. There are certain times when you just want to throw your hands up and scream, like when you just finished telling people you can only get malaria from mosquitos and then you ask and they tell you that you get it from mangos and milk..... But those things just take time.
I have made great friends and some of my favorite times thusfar are just sitting around under a mango tree, drinking (strong, sugary) tea, watching the traffic go by (about a car every 20 minutes, on the NATIONAL HIGHWAY) and just talking about life with my friends. That is where i feel i will be able to make the biggest difference. Opening up the eyes of the youth in my town to a world larger than just Guinea. But i have big plans, we will see what really happens while i'm here.
I'm begining to adjust to things as well. I no longer detest rice and sauce, i can now tolerate it. I no longer get the wicked cravings for food that i got while in training. OK thats a lie, i still miss american food but i try to tell my self i don't. I take a bath from a bucket, i squeeze into a compact car like the best of them and i even have eaten with my hands (but i DON"T like to make a habbit of it). Who would have thought. The heat is still killer, but i have learned to take naps (mainly sitting in bed trying to remember the days of snow) after lunch until about 4 when the sun starts to cool down.
My all time favorite part of the day is right after the last meal of the day (9.30 ish) when i know i made it through another day and i look up into the sky and see a million stars twinkling. There are no city lights, no lights period so you can see every star in the sky. It is an amazing site. I never knew how many stars there were until i moved here.
I have learned lots of valuable information that i hope to share with everyone back in the states especially about how to do business in a country ranked 166 out of 177 on the world development scale (USA is in the top 3 fyi) but if you have specific questions about anything at all, please e-mail me so i can answer any questions you might have and there are no dumb questions. Lord knows i asked a lot before coming here and about 95% of what i thought before i came was wronge.
Well my time is up at the internet "Cafe" so i'll write more next time ;)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
YAY, I got medically cleared to go back to site. I am amoeba free and there are no crazy African viruses in my system!!!!! How exciting, I know. Anyways i will be saying goodbye to Conakry and all of the wonderful amenities that i get to enjoy here today. Starting Monday i will be going to In Service Training, which is a two week program of more language and business trainings now that i have a better idea of what i will be doing!!! Can't wait!
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Only in Guinea...
So I went to get dinner tonight at the Beach Bar (and yes the name is correct, a bar on the beach overlooking the Atlantic Ocean) and look what i found.... one of those real, "Only in Guinea" moments
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