Greetings from Malawi!

Hello All!

Sooo…..This is going to be the longest update of life, so I will try and make this as interesting as possible. The past eight months have been quite eventful, full of drastic changes and a whirlwind of emotions. As some of you might have noticed, the name of my blog has changed from A Glimpse from Guinea. I have changed it because I am no longer in Guinea and I just felt it appropriate since I have moved locations. I have changed it to La Vie Est Belle, because life is beautiful right?!!

Unfortunately about 5 months ago we were evacuated from Guinea due to extreme political instability. Does everyone remember the military coup from last December 2008? Well, we had a horrible event occur this past September involving the military and thousands of Guineans. On September 28th 2009, an opposing political party was holding a peaceful campaign/protest event in the downtown Conakry football stadium. Elections were due to occur in the upcoming months. The stadium was filled with thousands of Guinean people, peacefully expressing there desire for a fair democratic election. However, there efforts abruptly ended and would turn into a complete massacre. Within a few minutes, much to everyone’s surprise the military bombarded the stadium, locked the doors, and began to open fire on the crowd. The shooting ceased once military gun clips were empty. In addition, the most horrendous moment of all was that the woman were publicly raped, and in some cases with soldiers guns. It was a terrible day in which approximately one hundred and fifty seven lives were taken.

I can’t even begin to tell you how difficult this was for everyone involved. The volunteers were taken out of the country the following week to Mali to remain there for 3 weeks until the US State Department made its final decision about our existence in Guinea. Saying goodbye to my family was the hardest goodbye I have ever made in my entire life. I am not going to go into to much detail about it because it’s difficult to think about. But I know that everything happens for a reason, and I will forever remain thankful to God for giving me the opportunity to spend an incredible year and a half in Guinea. I know I will never experience anything like that ever again and the memories I have of my petites, my students, my family and fellow volunteers will remain with me forever.

On a happier note, like I said things happen for a reason. Apart from being home, with regular internet access to apply for graduate school, I was blessed to have another job opportunity fall in my lap just before leaving Mali. I am now working in Malawi for an organization called Water For People as a Project Assistant. I can’t think of a more perfect opportunity for getting some more development work experience just before starting graduate school. And most importantly, I can stay in Africa!! I swear, I love this continent! I have just applied to graduate school for a Masters of Public Policy with a focus on international development.

So now, I will be reporting to you from Blantyre Malawi, hopefully giving more frequent updates about new events and anything else I feel like rambling about. In a nutshell, Water For People is an NGO that promotes access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities in developing nations. We are based in Denver, CO with offices all over the world, India, Malawi, Uganda, Equador, Bolivia, Rwanda, Peru, Domnican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. We work as facilitators in developing countries, working closely with the local government and people, and partnering with other local NGO’s to ensure sustainability of our projects. SUSTAINIBILITY IS KEY!!! We don’t give anyone anything; all of our work requires contributions from everyone that is involved and everyone that will benefit from it. It’s a team effort. To give you a little more detailed information about Water For People here is their website, waterforpeople.org. Take a look!

I Am Still Alive & Have Not Forgotten About My Blog

Bonjour a tous! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

For those that might still read this, I realize that it has been an incredible about of time since my last post. Almost 9 months!!!... Oops. :-/ But not to worry, I will be giving an update soon to fill everyone in on the adventures. It has been an eventful 9 months, full of excitement, fun, laughter, and bit of heartbreak. I am looking forward to informing you all of the happenings. I am a bit slammed with work at the moment, so I ask for even more of your patience. The second I have chance I will be writing.

Thank you all very much! Happy Holidays to everyone! I wish you all the joy and happiness in the upcoming year.

Reasons Why I Love Guinea

So this is just a random blog entry for entertainment and to take up some more space. I decided to make a list of all the reasons why I love this country and hopefully give you all a glimpse of some of the other things that I see regularly that were once foreign but have now become normal to me.

1. My Petites. ( Mory, Papisse, Ningke, Mariam and Abass) They are like my children. I don’t know how I could live in Guinea without them.

2. My Students. Although they drive me nuts at times they are good kids and make me laugh.

3. Hospitable Guineans. Guineans are the most hospitable group of people I have ever encountered in my life. I always feel welcomed and loved wherever I go.

4. Cold Bissap Juice. For the Trini’s that might be reading this, bissap is made from the same plant that you guys use to make sorrel. But it tastes slightly different. It’s amazing and makes my day every time I drink it.

5. Bathing outside. I know I keep raving about this, but bucket baths really are still just as great as the first time I did it.

6. Street Food. When I go into town I can get something to eat on virtually every corner. Fried Plaitains, fish, rice, bissap, and cake.

7. Family Values. I’ve mentioned this before but the family structure and values in this country is like none other. We could learn a lot from this culture.

8. Life is stress free. After adjustments were made, I don’t’ deal with the daily stresses that we encounter in the states, like being busy all the time, in a hurry, working like theirs no tomorrow.

9. Guinean Women. Being in utter amazement every time I see a Guinean women walking across the river in water waist high, with a baby on her back and about 20 lbs. of food on her head on her way to sell in the market.

10. Resourcefulness. You’d be amazed at the things you’ll think of to use, when you have limited supplies and money.

11. Mangoes. The sweetest mangoes on earth exist here in Guinea.

12. You can by fresh food here.

13. The River. I cross a river every time I want to go into to town. It’s really peaceful and fun when your foods not floating down it. It's the social gathering spot of the village over the weekends.

14. Thunderstorms. Thunderstorms here are phenomenal. A bit scary and loud at times but somehow simultaneously very calm and relaxing.

15. Random village Tam-Tam fetes. (video footage below)

16.Learning to appreciate the little things in life.

Story Time

Food in the River

So….I don’t think that I have accurately described to you all what happens or how I get to Kankan these days. When I first arrived at site I took the main road that runs through my village 10 km every time I wanted to go to Kankan, which is every weekend. I have to go into the city because it’s the only way that I can eat during the week. I don’t have a market in my village so everyone has to go into the city to buy food or grow their food if they want to eat. Anyway. I have now stopped taking the main road to Kankan because my village told me it was dangerous. There are bandits and thieves and the road is really bad. So, now I take the river to get to Kankan. I hop on my bike, with my bucket/shopping cart tied securely to the back and then bike for about 10 minutes until I reach the other end of my village. T hen I descend down a hill towards the river and take a pirogue with the other villagers across the river to the other side less then a quarter of a mile across. I then get off the bike, push my bike up the little hill and bike another 2-4 k to get into Kankan. It’s quite a hike sometimes but still better than taking the main road.

Right now is dry season so that means the river is very shallow. (Apparently during the rainy season when the river is higher crocodiles suddenly appear. I don’t know where they come from but they say they’re there. I can’t say that I am too thrilled to hear that news.) It has gotten to the point that most people can just walk across with the water about thy high at the highest point. The women hike up there pagnes, with their babies on their backs, and whatever food in a container on their heads and traverse like its nothing. It amazes me every time. If you have a bicycle you just pick it up, put it on your shoulder and keep it moving across the river. But if you’re me, and have a hiking backpack and other things strapped to the back of your bike, carrying your bike across the river is not really an option, so I still take the pirogue.

To make a long story short, the other day I was coming back from the market with my food in my bucket strapped to the back of my bike. After waiting on the shore for about 15 minutes for the next boat it was finally my turn to go across. There were about 3 other people in the boat besides me. I placed my bicycle securely (or so I thought) into the wooden boat and took my seat. Now since the river is shallow, we always have to give the boat a push or two to get it moving. It’s so shallow that sometimes the boat stops almost in the middle of the river and everyone rolls their pants legs up, hops outs, grabs their stuff and walks the rest of the way. Anyway, it was time to push and as it moved, of course my bike goes tumbling off the side of the boat and my food bucket is completely submerged in the water. Everyone kind of watched, but I had to quickly get out and grab my tomatoes and lettuce that was floating away and save the rest of the food from being destroyed. I was kind of irritated about all this because there was a man sitting right next to my bike that could have done something to avoid this whole situation, but instead he stood and watched as my bike tipped over the edge. Anyway, someone finally got out and helped me pick up my bike and put it back in the boat, and I got to the other side without any more drama. I biked the rest of the way home thinking to myself, I have to drain the rest of this water out of the bucket before my food goes bad. When I arrived I was greeted by my loving petites and handed them their candy that I always get for them when I go into town. I had to apologize because the candy was wet and I had accidentally dropped it in the dirt when I was getting out the boat. I unstrapped the bucket off the bike and poured the water out. My petite Mory laughed hysterically at the amount of water that came out, and then apologized afterward for my misfortunes. Jerk! (just kidding.) It was actually pretty funny after the fact. Majority of my food made it, however didn’t last the rest of the week like \it usually does.

Forrest Gump

This is actually a really cute story. You all have seen the movie Forrest Gump right? You know that part in the movie when he decides that he wants to take a jog across the United States and he has 100s of people following behind him as he runs? Well, I lived a mini version of that story a few weeks ago. I decided to go for a jog one evening to the next village which is about 3 k away. I left my house and was running past the football field, there was a match going on, and as I’m running suddenly I have a swarm of about 50 plus barefoot Guinean children running behind me. They were watching the match but then decided it would be more interesting to go for a run with Madame in the heat for 6k. I guess. Most of them were children under the age of 15 but the rest were my students that just wanted to accompany me on my run. I didn’t know what to think at first when it happened because a lot of the time I go for a run not only for exercise but to get away for a while, relax myself and relieve any stress I may have had during the day. It can be hard to do that when you have 50 plus children chasing behind you for 35 minutes. It actually ended up being really fun. I was amazed that every last one of them made it the entire way. Some of them were barefoot and others had on flip flops and no one really seemed to get tired. Sometimes I would break out into a sprint just to see who could keep up. It just ended up in a roar of laughter. It was fun. The next day after I had finished revision with my students at 5:00pm, I had about 15 of them waiting at my door when I arrived at my house waiting to go running again. All I could do was smile.

Don’t Ride Your Bicycle at Night in Africa with No Flashlight

I know the title of this story sounds silly (because it is), but there really is a good reason behind this. About 2 weeks ago I went into Kankan on a Thursday evening like I usually do to stay the night and go to the market the next day. I met up with my friend Ayo that evening for dinner and on the way back we had to bike back at night to get home. Now biking at night is actually normal here, because if you need to get somewhere sometimes that’s the only way, but most of the time people use flashlights. Unfortunately in our case we didn’t have a flashlight so we had to ride without one (or walk, but clearly that would have been too bright of an idea.) Now night time here is like no other place I’ve seen. It is PITCH BLACK unless the moon is out. You can’t see a thing. There is no electricity in Kankan so there are no street lights. If you are riding or walking it can be dangerous. You just hope that if you don’t have a flashlight that maybe a moto will ride by and light your path for a few yards, or if you are walking just pray that people on their bicycles are being attentive and don’t hit you. And if you think just being dark as hell isn’t enough, on top of that the roads are horrific, possibly the worst roads in Guinea, especially for a city.

Anyway. It’s time to ride home and I am following Ayo on his bicycle because he does this all the time. Everything is going smoothly, as smoothly as they can considering the roads, but then Ayo takes this really wide right turn on this street. I didn’t stop to think about the reason while why he might be taking such a wide turn, but of course yours truly didn’t follow behind. I thought it would be best for me to take the inside of the turn as opposed to making a wide turn like he did. As I’m turning blindly, my front tire suddenly descends into a giant pothole. Not a big deal, this happens to me all the time. Unfortunately this wasn’t all. As I’m turning my handle bars trying to get out of the pothole suddenly I hear Ayo yell, “WATCH OUT, THERE’S A BIG HOLE OVER THEEEERE!!’’ By this point, of course I’m already plummeting forward into God knows what because I can’t see. All I know is that I’m falling. All I could think was ‘Oh sh*t! God help me!’ I didn’t know where I had fallen, but I just hit the ground, but was able to catch myself without undergoing too much damage. A moto sped by, which meant light for about 10 seconds. I looked and I had fallen straddling a 4 feet deep, 3 foot wide sewage drain. My feet were on one side and my hands had caught me on the other side of the hole. No serious damage occurred accept losing my shoe and having a few scratches and bruises. I was pissed when I got up, not because I had fallen, but because I fell riding my bicycle at night, in Africa, with no flashlight when I could easily have been walking and avoided the situation all together. But on the other hand I felt relieved because it could have been a lot worse. I could have actually fallen inside the 4 ft sewage drain blind, and God only knows what kind of damage that would have caused. So I am very grateful that things ended the way they did.

So the lesson of the month is, try to avoid riding your bicycle at night all together, but even more so riding at night in Africa, in a city with no electricity, where the roads are bad and sewage drains are located on the side of the road uncovered, and you don’t have a flashlight.

Tabaski

So I know you all are dying to hear all about the Tabaski Fete that I mentioned previously that happened like 3 months ago. I’ll give you all a little background information about the celebration. Basically, Tabaski is a Muslim holiday that occurs around the 10th of December ( the exact date varies based on the lunar calendar) in celebration of the story of Abraham and his son. Everyone think back a little to your days in Sunday school. You all remember the story when Abraham was told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac? If you don’t, here’s a quick tell. Abraham was told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac on an altar. Because Abraham was obedient and loved God so much he was actually going to go through with it. However, in the midst of the process he was stopped by God and was sent a goat instead to sacrifice as opposed to his son. Therefore, the Tabaski festivity is in remembrance of Abraham’s sacrifice. It’s one of, if not the most important Muslim holiday of the year and is certainly the most celebrated fete in Guinea.

In Guinea the celebration is about 2 weeks. Everyone anxiously spends the first week in preparation buying their new fabric for new complets, getting their hair done, you have to look good, and making plans for the sacrifice. This means that majority of my students miss about a week of school prior to the already scheduled week off in order to get things ready. All this preparation that everyone put in helps you understand why I was so excited to see what was going to happen. I mean if it’s normal for the students to miss an entire unscheduled week of school this must be really important. I was mainly excited about witnessing the sacrifice of the cow or goat and what other things were comprised in the celebration. This was my first time ever hearing or celebrating this holiday. A few days before I made sure to get my hair braided like all the other girls and get my feet and hands hennaed. That was actually my favorite part. I went with my female students and had a little bonding moment and it turned out to be really pretty. The day of Tabaski I put on my best complet and accompanied my host dad to the sacrifice. I was thrilled to be going to watch this. It wasn’t exactly what I thought in terms of ceremonial events. And by that I mean, I expected for the whole village to get together and have an actual sacrificial service of some sort. That wasn’t the case (or maybe I just missed it), however I did see them kill the cow, whose parts were then distributed to families’ throughout the village. Essentially, each family sacrifices a goat and if you have more money, or a joint sacrifice (more than one family) you sacrifice a cow. On the day of Tabaski the whole village eats meat.

The sacrifice was an interesting experience. That morning I woke up bright and early and went out to talk to my host father to remind him not to forget about me when it was time for the sacrifice. He was on his way to the mosque to pray. On the day of Tabaski all the men, women, and children of the village dress up in their best and go to the mosque. Prayer at the mosque lasts about an hour and then is followed by the sacrifice. For whatever reason, when the prayer was over my host dad was in a hurry to get to the sacrifice that afternoon. I jogged after him out the door, with camera in hand, as he briskly walked down the path that leads from behind my hut. He doesn’t know this, but I had this huge goofy smile on my face as I was jogging after him. I was so excited. A cow sacrifice! Anyway. Papisse, Ningke and Mory were trailing behind me as we were all trying to keep up. We finally arrived to the house located in the back. As we approached my host dad ran to the scene. I was now staring at about 8 men surrounding a distressed, screaming cow lying on its side, tied up at its hooves. I now understood why he was in a hurry. He was supposed to assist with the killing and help hold the cow down. The other onlookers were on the outskirts seated closer to the house. He instructed me to a place in which I could stand to take pictures and video. Ningke was standing next to me holding my hand. I turned my camera on, and started rolling the film. The cow was then gorged. Blood was everywhere. Ningke squeezed my hand as we both watched in astonishment. After some time, the cow finally took a long, slow, agonizing last breath and was put out of its misery. It was a long, painful death. But I was relieved once it was all over. Now it was time for the skinning and cutting. After the cow was dead leaves were placed underneath its limp body and 3 men went to work cutting into its flesh to expose the meat underneath. The body was then chopped into pieces and placed in separate piles located in an area next to the house. Once all the parts had been separated there was nothing but the giant rib cage of the animal that remained. After everything had been cut and divided each family took there portion of meat that was going to be dinner for the next few days. (video footage below.)

As for the rest of Tabaski in the village, there was a soccer match and soiree that same evening. I left that Wednesday to go to Kankan and attend the Mamaya. The Mamaya is a synchronized danced that occurs every year during Tabaski. People from the surrounding West African countries come in to watch the performance. It happens outdoors in the evening in the middle of the big round about in the center of town. It is essentially an organized dance of about 150 men and women dancing with canes for the men and handkerchiefs for the women in a line. It reminds me a lot of fraternity/sorority strolling. All of the dancers are wearing the same color complet, so it looks beautiful when everyone is dancing ensemble.

Other than that, there was nothing much else that happened during the week of Tabaski. However, I had a wonderful time seeing how things happen in the village and more importantly spending time with my family and students. It was a wonderful time.

Thank You Delta Sigma Theta

I would like to write to special blog post to acknowledge and express my sincerest thank you to the Delta Sigma Theta Denver Alumni Chapter for there academic contributions made to the college of Balandou, Guinea. The ladies of the Delta organization were thoughtful enough to coordinate a school supply drive with an assortment of notebooks, pens, pencils, calculators and other much needed utensils to be donated and sent to Balandou.

With the assistance of the school direction, all of the supplies were distributed amongst the top students in each of my classes as a reward for their hard work and discipline. They were recognized in a ceremonial fashion in front of their schoolmates for their efforts to excel in their studies. The students were ABSOLUTELY ELATED with the quality products they had received, and even more thrilled with the idea that someone from the United States had thought of them enough to send it.

As most of you can imagine, finding quality school supplies here in Guinea is virtually impossible and even with what is available many students struggle to afford. I have to say that my students felt extra special the day they received there gifts. It turned out to be a very useful source of encouragement for the entire student body, for those that have excelled in school to continue with their hard work, and for those that have not yet to give a considerate amount of thought into putting more time into their studies.

I don’t know that I can truly express to all of you how thankful I am for your kindness and your efforts to make this happen. I wish you could have seen how happy my students were. It’s amazing how such simple things as school supplies can go so far. The students were genuinely grateful for what they received. I thank each of you from the bottom of my heart for your generosity.

Fete Preparation

Just wanted to let you all know that Tabaski is coming up tomorrow!!! Everyone is so excited and so am I!! Apparently its the biggest fete of the year. Ill give more details later! A plus tard!