At Site
Hello. I decided it’s about time I write another letter. Today is April 29th. I just woke up and made myself pancakes for the first time since I’ve been at site. They were delicious! I bought a gas stove before coming out to Dabiss, but I haven’t been able to use it until recently because there is an ongoing gas crisis/shortage in Guinea. My gas tank finally arrived a few days ago with the Peace Corps country director and his wife when they came to visit me at my site. It was good to finally have some people to speak English with, but I think I was even happier to see the gas tank on the roof of their car. I had bought lots of food before coming here, but most of it required a functioning stove. So the first two weeks were tough. I have a family here who agreed to make me dinners for 7,000 Guinean francs a week, but I’m on my own for breakfast and lunch. And in Dabiss, you’re lucky if you manage to find bread more than once a week. So I was hungry often. At one point, I resorted to drinking warm powdered milk and peanut butter straight from the jar. The powdered milk is for cooking and the PB is for bread, but I couldn’t find bread or cook anything, so that was my sustenance. I hung my head low that day. But don’t worry, the food situation is better. I just made myself pancakes with very little trouble and they tasted better than I remember them tasting back home. Plus, I’m better at finding nourishment around town now as well. And food is cheap here. For example, I pay 7,000 GNF for dinner per week. While this is a good deal for the family who prepared it, 7,000 GNF is equal to about $2 American. I might up it to 10,000 a week just because I can. Then they’d really be rolling the dough.
Anyway, I’ve been here at site for 3 weeks now, with a short trip to Boké for a few days somewhere in between. Being at site is such a completely different experience than stage. It’s hard to explain. Coming here after training was like leaving for the Peace Corps all over again. It was just as nerve-racking, if not more, and I was met with a whole new wave of culture shock, homesickness, and other challenges and experiences I wasn’t prepared for. Stage was just long enough for us to all feel comfortable and acquainted with Guinean life, but nothing prepares you for being completely alone in a small village in Guinea. It’s just crazy. So crazy. That’s the best was I can describe it.
The first 3 or 4 days were the hardest for me. I expected them to be hard, but there was a death in the village on the second day and being there for that just made everything a little too real. I’ll try to give a quick recap. Like I said, it was my second day at site and I was in the process of settling into my hut. A bunch of little kids (petites as we refer to them) came by and wanted to wash my bike because it was dirty. So I gave them some soap and they went to work. When they finished, I went out and thanked them and gave some candy to the biggest kid who did most of the cleaning. You should have seen his eyes light up. It was a small piece (I didn’t have much), but he managed to share it with most of the other kids. I let them all come into my shade hut (a hut without walls, not my ‘hut’ hut) and sit down. The one big kid asked if I would bring out my guitar and play for them. I was still feeling grateful for them cleaning my bike, so I went and got my guitar. As I started playing, I could see this was an even bigger treat than the candy. Half of them got up and started dancing. But I hadn’t even played for two minutes when they heard some screams coming from across the village. Before I knew what was happening, all the kids were gone and the one kid that was left told me, “Someone just died. Sorry, we have to go” and he ran off. The screams all around me got louder and louder as people began to realize what had happened. I ran and put my guitar away and then followed the screams and the running villagers. I showed up at the scene not knowing what to expect. I’d obviously never seen a Guinean mourning process before. It was crazy – I can’t really describe it. Women were running all over the place screaming and crying and falling over and passing out incessantly. I stood a little ways back with the rest of the village and watched it all happen. This was my second day at site and here I was in the middle of a tragedy. A 17 year old girl (a normal age for having a baby here) had just died while giving birth to her first baby. Her body was simply too small to have it, so they had to operate. The baby lived, but the girl had lost too much blood in the process. As all the women were running around crying and screaming (a few men were doing that too), most of the men started gathering under a mango tree and talked amongst themselves. I went over and sat with them for a while. They chatted with me as if nothing had happened. A man was collecting money for the family, so I gave some. Eventually everything calmed down and I went back home. I felt very overwhelmed and didn’t quite know how to process the whole thing. It was hard, but I was glad to have witnessed it. It was an unreal experience, and it probably won’t be the last.
Now, I won’t tell the next story, though it is interesting, because the last one took too long and I’m tired of writing. But I’ll just say that the next day a young boy in a nearby village died of malaria and the whole mourning process occurred again within earshot of my hut. This time I stayed home. It was too much. I just felt depressed about it. That was my third day at site. All that piled on the stress of moving to site was hard on me, to say the least. But in general, things improved from then on.
Actually, once you get settled in, life here isn’t too bad; it can even get boring. Unlike training, I have unlimited freedom in terms of how I spend my time. And in terms of working, or “my job”, I have complete freedom as well (or close to complete). In fact, during the first three months, I’m not even supposed to start any projects. My only direction is “get to know your village”, which for me means “hang out with people”. I can handle that. All I have is free time.
Here is an average day. I usually wake up around 9, take my time eating and making breakfast, and then read for a good hour or so. I think reading is my American equivalent of watching TV now (nerd alert!). I also spend a few hours each day playing guitar and studying Landuma (and sometimes French). On my busier days, I can be seen walking around or riding my bike somewhere. And when I’ve decided to finally buckle down and do some “work”, you can usually find me sitting with some Guineans drinking tea. The tea here is great. They drink it all the time and put tons of sugar in it. I’m usually back at my hut by 5:00 for a bucket bath and dinner (ALWAYS rice and sauce – I still like it though). The sun goes down around 7:30 every day and that’s when I usually return to reading or playing guitar. Occasionally, I treat myself to some music, but the battery life on my MP3 player is a precious resource. I don’t usually go out at night – at least not yet. To be honest, it’s a bit intimidating. Dabiss comes alive at night. With my hut in the center of everything, all I ever hear is the millions of kids running around and screaming. Seriously, people are so dark-skinned here, I’d be afraid of running over a kid or something. And with no electricity, I’d never know where I was going or who I was talking to without using a flashlight and making a spectacle of myself. Really, it’s hard enough leaving my place in broad daylight and making rounds in the village. Nighttime is harder for some reason. Dabiss is a different town at night. I’m sure I’ll be out there before long, but for now, I’m content to just stay in my hut. I get visitors here anyway. So I usually end up going to bed around 11:00. That’s a good 10 hours a night. I’m lovin’ it. So that’s a typical day for me. I’ve done other things and other things have happened, but that’s the general formula.
For those of you who know me well, I’m sure you can see that I’m in heaven with all this free time. I’ve always been a fan of sleeping a lot, playing guitar, sitting around, and hanging out. I’m constantly told by other volunteers that this is the normal Peace Corps life and that I shouldn’t worry about how much I’m “accomplishing”, especially in my first three months. I’m also reminded that a big part of my job here is the cultural exchange – in other words, the “hanging out” part of my job. I think that part comes naturally for me. Everyone here is really nice. Usually I can just walk up to a group of people and greet them and I will immediately be offered a seat. I can just sit there and listen to them speak in Landuma and try to see if I can pick up bits and pieces of the conversation, but usually they will try to engage me in their discussion. Mostly they speak Landuma and teach me phrases. I don’t think many of them speak French, and those who do aren’t very good and don’t seem to enjoy speaking it. That makes me all the more motivated to learn Landuma. Yes, this will be my third language I’ve begun to learn here. French is coming along well but my progress in Susu has stopped because I’m now focusing on Landuma and two languages are enough. Now, none of these languages have any significant similarities, but everyone basically knows Susu, they can all understand it and speak it well enough. So for those who speak no French at all, I can at least use my Susu until my Landuma is up to par. Landuma is by far the hardest language, but this is a Landuma village and that’s all they seem to speak. So Landuma it is.
Besides the language barriers, I think the hardest thing for me mentally, is being OK with where I am in terms of integrating into my community and figuring out how I can best serve them. It’s easy to see the problems that face people here. Likewise, it’s easy to criticize myself for not constantly putting all my effort into trying to help these people. There are always voices in my head telling me I’m apathetic and deriding me for not saving everyone’s life. My living allowance, while meager by American standards, is a fortune to Guineans. How can I stand by and be content with what I have, while I could probably be working harder at improving “Public Health” in Dabiss? Maybe in another letter I’ll go into how we are actually supposed to help as Peace Corps volunteers, but the point is, I have lots of free time that I often invest in selfish activities such as reading, sleeping, and playing guitar, and it’s hard not to criticize myself for it. But the truth is it’s hard to get out of bed some mornings. I consider making pancakes a success right now. It’s not easy to walk out of my hut and try to “integrate”. There’s a reason we’re here for two years. They say it takes a year before volunteers are able to do anything that’s actually effective. So I try not to let those voices get to me and just go about my business.
Also, I don’t try to hide the fact that I’m here for selfish reasons. I joined the Peace Corps because I was interested in discovering a different/new culture. I thought it would be a good chance to learn something about myself. It would be a good challenge for me. I think that all the volunteers have some selfish motives for being here. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s good to believe that what you are doing is important and useful, but if we weren’t getting something out of it as well, I don’t think any of us would be here. So I allow myself to enjoy all this free time and use it to do things that I love. I gotta stay in good spirits.
Recently, I’ve been going through some physical trials that have made it difficult to be in good spirits. I had dysentery once, but what I have now I consider to be far worse than dysentery was. It’s called the Prickly Heat Rash. According to my health handbook, “’Prickly Heat’ is a common term given to a mild skin irritation that usually occurs as a burning or itchy red rash on the neck and back and in the skin folds… The actual irritation is probably due to the acidity of copious sweat acting on heat-stressed skin. The condition is generally self-limiting and will go away with a minimum of treatment.” I’m quite sure this is what I have, although my own experience does not agree with the above statement. This rash started over two months ago and it’s worse now than it has ever been. Self-limiting? Yeah, right. It’s actually barely noticeable to look at, but it has spread to virtually all parts of my body (minus hands, feet, and the ‘parts that matter’, if you know what I mean, and I’m quite thankful). And while it started out as prickly, now it feels more like I’m being stabbed by needles, not prickled. Seriously, when it gets aggravated, it’s the most uncomfortable feeling you could ever imagine coming from a rash. I have some talcum powder, which offers some relief, but I’m told there’s nothing that really cures it. I just have to wait till the rainy season when it cools down around here. Apparently, it starts in mid June or early July. It’s so hot here. I think right now we’re entering the hottest part of the year. We avoid the sun at all costs.
OK, time to wrap this up. Thanks for those of you who read this far. As always, I’d love to hear from you, which can be done via email or snail mail or blog comments. Sorry I don’t manage to write you all individually. It’s just that I’m now separated from everyone I know back home and that’s a lot of people. But I do think about all of you a lot. I love and miss you all. I hope thing are going well.
Take care,
Anders
P.S. If you do send me snail mail, send some pictures. I’ve found that pictures are quite comforting to me. Pictures of people I know preferably.
P.P.S. I am developing a passion for the infamous rivalry of Guinea vs. Guinea Bissau in a way that none of you will ever understand.
Anyway, I’ve been here at site for 3 weeks now, with a short trip to Boké for a few days somewhere in between. Being at site is such a completely different experience than stage. It’s hard to explain. Coming here after training was like leaving for the Peace Corps all over again. It was just as nerve-racking, if not more, and I was met with a whole new wave of culture shock, homesickness, and other challenges and experiences I wasn’t prepared for. Stage was just long enough for us to all feel comfortable and acquainted with Guinean life, but nothing prepares you for being completely alone in a small village in Guinea. It’s just crazy. So crazy. That’s the best was I can describe it.
The first 3 or 4 days were the hardest for me. I expected them to be hard, but there was a death in the village on the second day and being there for that just made everything a little too real. I’ll try to give a quick recap. Like I said, it was my second day at site and I was in the process of settling into my hut. A bunch of little kids (petites as we refer to them) came by and wanted to wash my bike because it was dirty. So I gave them some soap and they went to work. When they finished, I went out and thanked them and gave some candy to the biggest kid who did most of the cleaning. You should have seen his eyes light up. It was a small piece (I didn’t have much), but he managed to share it with most of the other kids. I let them all come into my shade hut (a hut without walls, not my ‘hut’ hut) and sit down. The one big kid asked if I would bring out my guitar and play for them. I was still feeling grateful for them cleaning my bike, so I went and got my guitar. As I started playing, I could see this was an even bigger treat than the candy. Half of them got up and started dancing. But I hadn’t even played for two minutes when they heard some screams coming from across the village. Before I knew what was happening, all the kids were gone and the one kid that was left told me, “Someone just died. Sorry, we have to go” and he ran off. The screams all around me got louder and louder as people began to realize what had happened. I ran and put my guitar away and then followed the screams and the running villagers. I showed up at the scene not knowing what to expect. I’d obviously never seen a Guinean mourning process before. It was crazy – I can’t really describe it. Women were running all over the place screaming and crying and falling over and passing out incessantly. I stood a little ways back with the rest of the village and watched it all happen. This was my second day at site and here I was in the middle of a tragedy. A 17 year old girl (a normal age for having a baby here) had just died while giving birth to her first baby. Her body was simply too small to have it, so they had to operate. The baby lived, but the girl had lost too much blood in the process. As all the women were running around crying and screaming (a few men were doing that too), most of the men started gathering under a mango tree and talked amongst themselves. I went over and sat with them for a while. They chatted with me as if nothing had happened. A man was collecting money for the family, so I gave some. Eventually everything calmed down and I went back home. I felt very overwhelmed and didn’t quite know how to process the whole thing. It was hard, but I was glad to have witnessed it. It was an unreal experience, and it probably won’t be the last.
Now, I won’t tell the next story, though it is interesting, because the last one took too long and I’m tired of writing. But I’ll just say that the next day a young boy in a nearby village died of malaria and the whole mourning process occurred again within earshot of my hut. This time I stayed home. It was too much. I just felt depressed about it. That was my third day at site. All that piled on the stress of moving to site was hard on me, to say the least. But in general, things improved from then on.
Actually, once you get settled in, life here isn’t too bad; it can even get boring. Unlike training, I have unlimited freedom in terms of how I spend my time. And in terms of working, or “my job”, I have complete freedom as well (or close to complete). In fact, during the first three months, I’m not even supposed to start any projects. My only direction is “get to know your village”, which for me means “hang out with people”. I can handle that. All I have is free time.
Here is an average day. I usually wake up around 9, take my time eating and making breakfast, and then read for a good hour or so. I think reading is my American equivalent of watching TV now (nerd alert!). I also spend a few hours each day playing guitar and studying Landuma (and sometimes French). On my busier days, I can be seen walking around or riding my bike somewhere. And when I’ve decided to finally buckle down and do some “work”, you can usually find me sitting with some Guineans drinking tea. The tea here is great. They drink it all the time and put tons of sugar in it. I’m usually back at my hut by 5:00 for a bucket bath and dinner (ALWAYS rice and sauce – I still like it though). The sun goes down around 7:30 every day and that’s when I usually return to reading or playing guitar. Occasionally, I treat myself to some music, but the battery life on my MP3 player is a precious resource. I don’t usually go out at night – at least not yet. To be honest, it’s a bit intimidating. Dabiss comes alive at night. With my hut in the center of everything, all I ever hear is the millions of kids running around and screaming. Seriously, people are so dark-skinned here, I’d be afraid of running over a kid or something. And with no electricity, I’d never know where I was going or who I was talking to without using a flashlight and making a spectacle of myself. Really, it’s hard enough leaving my place in broad daylight and making rounds in the village. Nighttime is harder for some reason. Dabiss is a different town at night. I’m sure I’ll be out there before long, but for now, I’m content to just stay in my hut. I get visitors here anyway. So I usually end up going to bed around 11:00. That’s a good 10 hours a night. I’m lovin’ it. So that’s a typical day for me. I’ve done other things and other things have happened, but that’s the general formula.
For those of you who know me well, I’m sure you can see that I’m in heaven with all this free time. I’ve always been a fan of sleeping a lot, playing guitar, sitting around, and hanging out. I’m constantly told by other volunteers that this is the normal Peace Corps life and that I shouldn’t worry about how much I’m “accomplishing”, especially in my first three months. I’m also reminded that a big part of my job here is the cultural exchange – in other words, the “hanging out” part of my job. I think that part comes naturally for me. Everyone here is really nice. Usually I can just walk up to a group of people and greet them and I will immediately be offered a seat. I can just sit there and listen to them speak in Landuma and try to see if I can pick up bits and pieces of the conversation, but usually they will try to engage me in their discussion. Mostly they speak Landuma and teach me phrases. I don’t think many of them speak French, and those who do aren’t very good and don’t seem to enjoy speaking it. That makes me all the more motivated to learn Landuma. Yes, this will be my third language I’ve begun to learn here. French is coming along well but my progress in Susu has stopped because I’m now focusing on Landuma and two languages are enough. Now, none of these languages have any significant similarities, but everyone basically knows Susu, they can all understand it and speak it well enough. So for those who speak no French at all, I can at least use my Susu until my Landuma is up to par. Landuma is by far the hardest language, but this is a Landuma village and that’s all they seem to speak. So Landuma it is.
Besides the language barriers, I think the hardest thing for me mentally, is being OK with where I am in terms of integrating into my community and figuring out how I can best serve them. It’s easy to see the problems that face people here. Likewise, it’s easy to criticize myself for not constantly putting all my effort into trying to help these people. There are always voices in my head telling me I’m apathetic and deriding me for not saving everyone’s life. My living allowance, while meager by American standards, is a fortune to Guineans. How can I stand by and be content with what I have, while I could probably be working harder at improving “Public Health” in Dabiss? Maybe in another letter I’ll go into how we are actually supposed to help as Peace Corps volunteers, but the point is, I have lots of free time that I often invest in selfish activities such as reading, sleeping, and playing guitar, and it’s hard not to criticize myself for it. But the truth is it’s hard to get out of bed some mornings. I consider making pancakes a success right now. It’s not easy to walk out of my hut and try to “integrate”. There’s a reason we’re here for two years. They say it takes a year before volunteers are able to do anything that’s actually effective. So I try not to let those voices get to me and just go about my business.
Also, I don’t try to hide the fact that I’m here for selfish reasons. I joined the Peace Corps because I was interested in discovering a different/new culture. I thought it would be a good chance to learn something about myself. It would be a good challenge for me. I think that all the volunteers have some selfish motives for being here. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s good to believe that what you are doing is important and useful, but if we weren’t getting something out of it as well, I don’t think any of us would be here. So I allow myself to enjoy all this free time and use it to do things that I love. I gotta stay in good spirits.
Recently, I’ve been going through some physical trials that have made it difficult to be in good spirits. I had dysentery once, but what I have now I consider to be far worse than dysentery was. It’s called the Prickly Heat Rash. According to my health handbook, “’Prickly Heat’ is a common term given to a mild skin irritation that usually occurs as a burning or itchy red rash on the neck and back and in the skin folds… The actual irritation is probably due to the acidity of copious sweat acting on heat-stressed skin. The condition is generally self-limiting and will go away with a minimum of treatment.” I’m quite sure this is what I have, although my own experience does not agree with the above statement. This rash started over two months ago and it’s worse now than it has ever been. Self-limiting? Yeah, right. It’s actually barely noticeable to look at, but it has spread to virtually all parts of my body (minus hands, feet, and the ‘parts that matter’, if you know what I mean, and I’m quite thankful). And while it started out as prickly, now it feels more like I’m being stabbed by needles, not prickled. Seriously, when it gets aggravated, it’s the most uncomfortable feeling you could ever imagine coming from a rash. I have some talcum powder, which offers some relief, but I’m told there’s nothing that really cures it. I just have to wait till the rainy season when it cools down around here. Apparently, it starts in mid June or early July. It’s so hot here. I think right now we’re entering the hottest part of the year. We avoid the sun at all costs.
OK, time to wrap this up. Thanks for those of you who read this far. As always, I’d love to hear from you, which can be done via email or snail mail or blog comments. Sorry I don’t manage to write you all individually. It’s just that I’m now separated from everyone I know back home and that’s a lot of people. But I do think about all of you a lot. I love and miss you all. I hope thing are going well.
Take care,
Anders
P.S. If you do send me snail mail, send some pictures. I’ve found that pictures are quite comforting to me. Pictures of people I know preferably.
P.P.S. I am developing a passion for the infamous rivalry of Guinea vs. Guinea Bissau in a way that none of you will ever understand.
posted by Anders at 5:47 PM
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