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.