Livin for the City

Ok ok ok, so I promised more frequent blogs now that I have internet at my fingertips at all times of day... and I made that promise two months ago. It took a departure from Dakar and the crazy pace of life there to have a moment to sit down and write. Let me back up...

Since my last post, I spent my time preparing for an All Volunteer Conference we held in Dakar, traveling to see other projects, and shooting instructional videos.

All Volunteer Conference

Our country director asked a group of about five third-year volunteers and me to organize a two-day conference for every Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal. We also reached out to other West African Peace Corps countries and invited all of them to send as many representatives as they could. At the beginning of February, we had about 180 participants from six different countries. Sessions were offered throughout the day about best practices for twenty different types of peace corps activities. I gave a session titled "Approaches to Multimedia as a Tool for Counterpart and PCV Education," that had a pretty good turnout.

On the second day of the conference, we had an applied technology fair with volunteers explaining different types of machines that can be made with locally available materials to make life easier here (like a solar fruit drier made from oil barrels). Then we offered field demonstrations on urban gardening and agroforestry techniques, held a seminar on grant writing, and had a national meeting for our gender and development organization, SeneGAD.

I think the conference was a success, overall. I videotaped the whole thing, but haven't had a chance to put together a feature yet. For now, click here to see the page of our website with all the details: West Africa Peace Corps Volunteer Conference, Sharing Best Practices from the Field

Velingara Malaria Prevention Campaign

I also had the opportunity to do some traveling to observe and document mosquito net distributions in Saraya and Velingara (a department of Kolda). Let me back up...

Almost a year ago Ashtun Kutcher challenged CNN to a race to one million Twitter followers, and said that he would buy 10,000 mosquito nets if he won. The challenge spread, Oprah, P-Diddy and some others got involved, CNN matched the offer, and suddenly $500,000 was donated to Malaria No More. Peace Corps Senegal applied for some nets, citing our success in smaller scale distributions.

80,000 mosquito nets arrived in Senegal this winter, 7,000 headed to Saraya (the department I lived in) to finish the distribution we did there last summer and the remainder to Velingara, which is also in southern Senegal, to give the entire health district - 230,000 people - universal coverage.*

In January, Malaria No More's Chief Marketing Officer, Jeff Smith, the mosquito net company's marketing director, Lisa Goldman, and a professional photographer, Maggie Hallahan came to document the Saraya distribution. I was lucky enough to travel with them for about four days, helping them as a translator as they took their photos, and assisting Maggie as a producer in the field and logging all the photos she took afterward. To see a slideshow of some of the photos she took, look here: Malaria No More slide show.

To see the page on the Peace Corps Kedougou website about the Saraya distribution, click here.

In February, the PC/Senegal Country Director, Chris Hedrick, and I traveled to Velingara to document the first few days of the distribution there. Once completed, the Health District of Velingara will be the largest area in the world to have been provided universal mosquito net coverage. I put together a short video feature and, having recently been designated as the PC/Senegal webmaster, created a page about the distribution for our website: Velingara Malaria Prevention Campaign.

Given the scale of this distribution, it is receiving some international attention. Anderson Cooper 360's producer has been writing about it on his blog. Click here to read what he has to say about it: Lifesaving Tweets: Malaria nets distributed in Senegal

* Universal coverage means a net over every bed in a community. We work with local health relays to do a census of every household, counting the number of beds, and the number of mosquito nets already hanging. We use those numbers to calculate the need of each household and distribute accordingly.

Instructional Videos

While visiting an Agroforestry volunteer to show a visitor the work he had done, I videotaped his giving a brief description of how he pruned a particular species of tree into a live fence. I edited it into a short, 90-second tutorial with a low production value. The country director loved it and we've run with the idea.

Over the next year we hope to create as many instructional videos as possible (he says he wants 100). They will be short tutorials - maybe ten seconds to two minutes long - that demonstrate efficiently, without any frills, specific techniques and technologies.

The videos will be compressed and made into video podcasts for volunteers to take into the field with them on their iPods. They'll also be dubbed over in local languages. The idea is that before demonstrating something like composting, a volunteer can watch the instructional video in English to regain confidence on the topic, and then watch in a local language to secure his confidence in the necessary vocabulary. He can even show the local-language versions to his counterparts on his iPod if he needs to clear something up.

I plan to spend much of my time over the next putting as many of these together as I can. Here's an example of the pilot one I did.

Videographe

Happy New Year!!!

I have just finished the first month of my third year in Senegal. After a wonderful thirty-seven days in the United States - visiting home in Minnesota, Dad in Modesto and San Francisco, and friends in Boston and New York City - I was back in Senegal by the beginning of December.

I've had a busy month already:
I participated in a Permagardening workshop led by a specialist in town from Tanzania.
I attended a Food Security Conference hosted in Dakar, including representatives from every Peace Corps country in Africa.
I accompanied an environmental specialist from Peace Corps Madagascar to view some agroforestry sites near the city of Kaolack.

As I plan to do for the next year, I had my camera rolling throughout everything. I've begun editing the material and getting it ready to go online. Most of the videos I create will be posted to our website, http://pcsenegal.org via our YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/pcsenegaladmin. If you're interested in what I'm creating, check out either of those sites.




Now I'm adjusting to living in Dakar, which is a significant change from the village, and learning how to live alone. I make my bed every morning and do my dishes after every meal. Any bets on how long that'll last? Mom?

My blog has become more difficult to write. I've tried for two years, even if sporadically, to provide you all with insight into Senegalese culture and the ways in which I find it interesting and different from what's familiar to me. However, the more accustomed I become to my surroundings here, the more difficult it is to notice those differences. It's hard to identify topics that are blog-worthy any more.

So on this issue I am calling for help. Send me your questions. What do you want to know about Senegal? What do you want to know about my life here? What scares you about Africa the most? What's the biggest mystery about the third world to you?

Coming soon in my next blog... More detailed descriptions of the work I hope to do during the next year, and a virtual tour of my sweet new apartment.

BENEFIT CONCERT!!!

A benefit concert, featuring four of the Twin Cities' best bands, will be held at O'Gara's Garage in St. Paul Minnesota on

September 3rd at 7:00 p.m.

My good friend, Bryce Jasper, has taken the lead on this project and has organized an incredible concert. I encourage you all to go out and enjoy the great music and, at the same time, help a worthy cause: installing irrigation systems for four hard-working farmers.

The Bands
Allison Scott - 8:00 p.m.
GB Leighton - 9:15 p.m.
Doctor Salty - 10:30 p.m.
Soul Tree - 11:45 p.m.

Doors open at 7:00 p.m. and music should go until around 1:00 a.m.
$5 at the door - all proceeds go to Project Irrigation Initiation

I'd like to thank all of the bands participating for donating their time and music to the Project Irrigation Initiation. Thank you to everyone who has helped with organization, I know an enormous amount of work has already gone into planning the show. Thank you to O'Gara's for hosting, and thank you in advance to every one who attends!

Click here for directions


Also, if you'd like to help in a quieter way, please Endorse my project on Africa Rural Connect. If Project Irrigation Initiation receives the most votes this month, it will be awarded $3000. Please note, if you don't receive a confirmation email from the site, it may have arrived in your 'Spam' or 'Junk Mail' folder.

Click here to vote!

Updates and Farewells

Updates

At long last, I sit down to write a blog. I seem to have all but abandoned it this year, but with the changes in my life that I’ll detail below, I resolve to be more frequent and consistent with my writing.

I have said a few farewells recently, but farewell to Senegal shall wait another year. As many of you already know, I have decided to extend my Peace Corps service by a year and have accepted a position living in Dakar and working as the Peace Corps videographer. We have some funding to buy video equipment, so I will spend the year creating short videos: video best practice guides, instructional films, documentaries, etc. Basically, I want to document the good work that Peace Corps volunteers (or other organizations) are doing and post it on our website, available to everyone. Ideally the content will serve as a resource for development workers worldwide and will make interested people more aware of the work we’re doing.

I also hope to create relationships with some Senegalese organizations. I’m currently looking into the possibility of teaching a basic editing course for the university’s film program. I would also like to create a relationship between Peace Corps and the main television station here, in an effort to get some development programming on the air. Over 70% of Senegalese people have access to television so it could be a great medium to teach people ways to avoid malaria and improve their diets. I’m excited to use the education and degree I received (Broadcast Journalism) productively here in Senegal.

I will also make frequent visits back to Kedougou and Pondala over the next year to complete the projects I have begun there. The latrine project is on hold right now for the rainy season. Farmers spend the majority of each day in their fields growing food for the next year, and so don’t have time to dig holes. We’ll pick up again in January when the harvest is in. Thus far, we have thirteen latrines completed, and another twenty-one to go.

Project Irrigation Initiation is still about $5000 short of its goal - $8766. Work cannot begin until ALL of the money is in. Hopefully we reach the sum before January, otherwise we won’t have the money in time to dig the wells during the dry season and the project will have to be abandoned. Look to my blog next week for an opportunity to help raise money...

Videos, latrines, and irrigation will have to wait; for the next two months I’ll be living in Thies – the city in which I was trained. A new group of fifty-two trainees arrives tomorrow morning and I have been working with our training staff for the past two weeks to plan for their training and make sure that we are prepared for every single session. I will act as a coordinator for the entire group – planning events like their visit to other volunteers – and as an assistant to the Agroforestry technical trainer. I look forward to the opportunity to work with some fresh faces and to pass on some of the knowledge and experience I’ve gained over the past two years.

Once finished with training, I’ll have the opportunity to visit the states once again. Any volunteer that extends for a third year of service gets a free roundtrip ticket to America and a month of vacation. So I’ll hopefully be home in Minnesota from October 24th to December 1st, and intend to visit Modesto, CA (my Dad’s new home), Boston, and New York, with a possible weekend in Chicago. If you live in or near any of those places and want to spend some time together, you know how to reach me (email, duh).


Now, on to the significant farewells I’ve said recently...


Farewell #1

After almost two years of living and working in Pondala, I left a little prematurely in order to arrive in Thies in time to plan for training. It was a strange goodbye. Despite the announcement I made at a village meeting, some of my villagers didn’t know I would be living in Dakar next year, making frequent visits back to the village, and thought I was leaving Senegal for good. So, the morning I left, our conversations went a little like this:
“Boubacar! You can’t leave. Stay!”
“I know! I want to stay with you but my time to leave has come.”
“Ok, but promise that you’ll come back some time to visit!”
“Oh but I will. I’ll be back in about six weeks with my replacement volunteer for a few days to train him or her on the area and introduce everyone.”
“You will? Well then what’s all the fuss about? See you soon. Bye”

And the drama was over. With the exception of my family and the few people who didn’t realize I was staying in the country, few people were very concerned with my departure as they new I’d be back so often for the next year.

But it was still a farewell for me. While I know I’ll be back, I know that as I rode away looking out the back window of the small, junk-yard buss, that I was leaving something behind – something I won’t ever be able to take back. Pondala is no longer mine.

I have had many people come to visit me in Pondala, both friends and family from home and other Peace Corps volunteers. Regardless of how long other volunteers have been in Senegal, or how well they speak Malinké, no one was able to slip seamlessly into my Pondala life. No one has been able to observe the way I interact with my villagers when it’s not a show, no one has been able to observe my typical daily routine, and no one has been able to observe the work I do. All of that is only for me, and I’ve let it go. I won’t ever be able to interact with my villagers honestly or wander aimlessly into a compoud looking for someone to talk to. From now on, I will be always a visitor in Pondala.

But I found it difficult to communicate those ideas to the people of Pondala, and I found that I didn’t feel any desire to. I like my farewell the way it happened. I did not want a big theatrical display of tears and hugs. I wanted to leave out the backdoor without anyone knowing. My friends in Pondala probably think that they’re saving the big goodbye for when I leave for good, but I know that by the time I’m actually returning to the United States permanently, the strong feelings that often lead to such dramatic goodbyes will have faded and I’ll be able to leave quietly without making too many waves.



Farewell #2

In Peace Corps Senegal, we refer to the group of volunteers with which we go through training as our stage, pronounced like the French word, with an ah, like stahj. These are the first people you meet during orientation in the states before you leave, and the people with whom you spend two months in Thies, stumbling through the Senegalese culture and trying to make sense of it. Such a grand mutual challenge creates bonds often much stronger than those created with volunteers from different stages.

As my stage’s two-year contract comes to a close, people have already started to trickle back to the states, some leaving early to begin graduate school. Watching some of my best friends go was difficult. I have relied on them in many different capacities throughout the past two years and feel, to a certain extent, that my support group is being pulled out from underneath me. But despite the knowledge that they’re headed back to ‘the land of milk and honey’ and that I have such a long time left here in ‘the land of uncomfortable transport and unbearable heat,’ I haven’t had second thoughts about my decision to stay, which makes me confident that I have made the right choice and am in the right place. Here’s to a another year...



Farewell #3

A good friend of mine from Boston University, Julie Ann, has been serving with the Peace Corps in Mauritania for the past fourteen months. The political atmosphere there has grown less and less stable after the military coup d’etat about a year ago. Recently, they stopped issuing new visas to American citizens. The Peace Corps program was forced to cancel its new group of volunteers, scheduled to arrive in June, because it couldn’t get them all visas to enter the country. Later, an American was shot and killed in the capital city, Nouakchott, after illegally proselytizing on city streets. Foreigners are free to practice their own religions in Mauritania, but are forbidden by law to try to convert others.

Given those events and other concerns regarding terrorist activity in the country, Peace Corps Washington decided to temporarily remove all volunteers from Mauritania and place them in Senegal, so a team could go into the country and assess the safety situation. So the group of about forty five volunteers spent some time at our training center here in Thies, and as I was here planning the training, I got to spend some time catching up with Julie Ann, which was an unexpected and wonderful treat.

The safety analysis was completed this past weekend and Peace Corps Washington was set to give a decision about whether the volunteers could return to their sites by Monday afternoon. Unfortunately, over the weekend, a suicide bomber attacked in front of the French Embassy in Nouakchott, killing himself and wounding two others. The event was probably the ‘nail in the coffin’ for Peace Corps Mauritania; they were told Monday afternoon that they would not be allowed back into the country. They were given the option of transferring to another country or returning home.

I said goodbye as they moved the group to Dakar Monday morning, before they had heard the news. We knew it would be possible that she would have to leave, but were holding onto the possibility that she would be able to return to her village and we would see each other again soon. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would be to leave my village with almost no notice, unable to pack more than what I could carry on my back, unsure if I should be saying my final goodbyes, and then never return.

I’ve heard through the rumor mill that Peace Corps Senegal will be accepting transfers from the Mauritania group. And as Julie Ann speaks Pulaar, the second-most prominent language in Senegal, I’m hoping she is able to come here so she can continue the good work she’s been doing, and, of course, hang out with me a little.

If you want to read more about Julie Ann's experiences, you can read her blog, afrique-in' out, which she updates much more often than I.

Project Irrigation Initiation

As promised, I come in search of funding. I have written a grant proposal named Project Irrigation Initiation, which has been approved by the Peace Corps. For this type of project, the community must contribute 25%, and I need to find the other 75% from other sources. This is where you come in:

I need to raise $8766 before we can begin work on the project.






Sina Danfakha, Diakhaba

Executive Summary
The project will help four farmers from different villages install year-round water sources and effective irrigation systems in their fields, allowing them to improve food security and increase annual income. They will serve as demonstration farmers for the entire greater community


Context
For those of you who don’t know, I have been spending my last eighteen months serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kedougou, which is in the southeastern corner of Senegal. Despite the fact that Kedougou receives more annual rainfall than the rest of the country, it remains one of the poorest regions due to untapped water sources.






El Hadj Fawa Mady Danfakha, Sanela







The Project
I want to install irrigation systems with four different farmers to allow them to irrigate their trees and garden year round. Currently, the unreliability of their water source and the labor hours of hauling the water to their workspace restrict the amount of work the four farmers can do.

With the help of a professional digger, we will install wells in three of the orchards – one farmer already has a well – and then we will build small water towers adjacent to the wells, with a locally made hand pump to get the water into the towers. One hundred meters of hose will allow the farmers to water even the most distant trees, and to garden in multiple sites.

I have already identified these farmers as the best and most motivated in their respective villages, and they are excited to work as extension agents themselves, helping other people in their villages establish orchards and gardens, using their own as a demonstration plot.

The farmers themselves will be contributing 10% of the project costs in cash, which is a monstrous sum for them. The other 15% will come in the form of an in-kind contribution. They will be providing four men to work for fifteen days digging the wells. They will be collecting and transporting all the sand and gravel needed for the cement work on the wells. They will be constructing the tables to hold the basins for the water tables with locally found materials.

Donations for this project will help establish four highly productive fields, rich in both fruit trees and vegetable gardening, allowing local farmers to not only increase their food security, but also to being to meet a rising demand for produce from international mining companies that have begun work in the area. Donations will provide year-round water sources and irrigation systems for farmers who have shown their ability to benefit from them, and who can inspire and help farmers also interested in increasing their productivity and moving beyond subsistence farming.







Cissé Mady Singoura, Faraba








Donating
Many people have been asking me how they can help with the work I’ve been doing over here, and this is the perfect opportunity. It is a well-planned project that will make a difference for years to come.

I know the economic downturn has left many people strapped for cash, but please donate if you are able and help significantly improve the quality of life in these four communities. Please help me in spreading the word to as many people as possible by contacting any organizations or community groups that may be interested. Ask your book clubs (Mom), your co-workers, or your softball teams to help. I will be taking photos throughout the entire project and posting them to my blog so you can see your donations in action.

All donations (tax deductible!) can be made easily online at the link below:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-118

Thank you in advance to everyone that helps with this.



Sadio Mady Keita, Pondala

Tragedy

Before I begin this rather morbid blog post, I must once again apologize, for it's been almost three months since my last post about election night. I have been busy in those three months, hosting my friend Adam for two weeks here in Senegal, then a two-week trip home to Minnesota, then two weeks back in Senegal with my little sister. The two trips here were incredible, allowing me to see parts of Senegal that I hadn't yet visited, and share familiar parts with people close to me. The trip home was everything I had hoped it would be. It was filled with good food, good beer, and good friends. I can't wait to see you all again.


Hit and Run

On Friday, January 9th I witnessed a terrible accident in Thies. Following is what I wrote about it later that night. Another volunteer, Mandi, and my younger sister Nikki were also present, but here is the account from my perspective. A little background info first though: A talibé is a child who has been sent by his family to study at koranic school. The community is expected to support these kids by giving them food as they walk around when not attending class. So a young boy with a small bucket to beg with is a common sight in Senegal.

As Mandi, Nikki and I walked from Pamanda’s (a local bar) to the chicken dibby restaurant, we heard a loud, crunching crash. Our heads snapped to the right immediately beside us to see a talibé rolling away from the bumper of the taxi that had just run into him.

I instinctively ran straight to him, but quickly realized that I was ill-equipped to handle the situation. I got down and held the boys head still in my hands, not knowing what else to do. He lay on his side in the fetal position, writhing, screaming, and sobbing in pain.

Within moments Mandi came running over and said, “Andy, what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what to do! Call Etienne.”

So while she called Etienne and the fire service, I remained crouched next to the boy clutching his head as a crowd began to gather. Some diverted traffic, a few called for an ambulance, others tried to help me – although we were all clueless – and the rest simply watched. The cab driver had quickly disappeared after the accident.

When another man offered to hold the boys head, I looked down at my hands that I thought had been soaked by the boys tears, but realized they were covered in blood from the back of his head. I tried to tell the others but few people spoke French (I’m helpless in Wolof) and no one seemed to care.

Finally an ambulance arrived and a man jumped out, picked up the boy in his arms, jumped back into the vehicle and drove away.

A bystander saw the blood on my hands and pulled me away to his shop to wash my hands. I returned to the sidewalk as some boys threw dirt on the small pool of blood. A man asked the surrounding talibé questions about who the boy was. But the scene quickly dissipated as business in Thiès continued as usual. The three of us stood and stared for a few silent minutes, with nothing but the lumps in our throats as evidence of the horrific scene we had just witnessed.

I’ve never felt so helpless. I’ve gone through basic first aid training a few times in my life, but I felt completely unprepared and unable to deal with the situation. I know Peace Corps prefers that we don’t get directly involved in administering first aid, and I’m sure they have their reasons. But as a friend reminded me, it’s important to think about how I personally want to react to situations like these, and to make sure I'm prepared with the knowledge and skills I deem necessary to take the appropriate action.



Funeral of Yaya Camara

Somehow, this is the first funeral I’ve attended in Pondala, despite my fifteen months of living here.

We got word shortly after lunch, while I was napping in my new hammock, that Yaya Camara, the old man with the thick glasses had passed away less than an hour ago. I asked how he died and they just said that he had been sick for a long time.

Diangoba, my host father, and I went to the Camara family compound, where a small crowd had gathered, and we greeted everyone to pay our respects and then left for a few hours while the funeral rites were prepared.

When we returned, a large crowd of women had gathered just outside the gate of the compound under a shade structure. Some of them cried. The men were sitting under a shade structure and along the fence just inside the compound while a few of them dressed the body.

They had constructed a makeshift shade structure out of sheets of straw. In the shade and out of sight, they wrapped the body in white cloth, then a sheet of woven reeds. They brought in a bamboo stretcher and tied the body to it. Then they dismantled the shade structure and brought the body out in front of the group. Each person who wanted to took his turn to speak about Yaya and say a prayer. When everyone had finished the men stood up and all faced the body, shoulder-to-shoulder in three rows, took off their sandals, and said a prayer.

Then all the men walked to the cemetery on the outskirts of the village. The same men who dressed the body carried, and a few carried buckets of water on their heads.

When we arrived at the cemetery a narrow grave had already been dug. As we walked many men had grabbed leafy branches from the bushed on the path, which they threw into a pile next to the grave.

We all squatted on our haunches and more prayers were said before the body was untied from the stretcher and placed in the grave sideways, wrapped only in the white cloth. As some men put the leafy branches and a few long logs on top of the body, others mixed the water into the loose earth next to the grave.

The wet dirt was put on first, and then the rest of the dry dirt was mounded on top, filling the hot air with hanging dust that filled my nostrils and lungs. Another prayer was said and we returned to the Camara compound.

The women remained in the same shade structure. All were solemn, some were glassy-eyed, others still sobbed.

The men crowded back into the compound onto benches and plastic mats. Dego (a sweet rice paste) and kola nuts were distributed to everyone, a final prayer was said, and the service was over. Village life resumed its normal pace.


Thoughts

Both of these stories are of brief tragedies that passed without any lasting effect on most of the people in the respective communities. A small child was hit by a car, a large crowd gather, he was whisked away, and the crowd dissipated and the traffic jam thinned, all within fifteen minutes. Yaya Camara woke up on February 1st alive, but by the time Pondala went to sleep that night, he had become a memory.

The rate at which life continues to flow here despite tragedy has had two effects on me. At times it puts me at peace, able to acknowledge a balance in the world and the part that tragedy plays in it. But sometimes it frightens me.


Malinke Lesson of the Day

It's been a while since we've had a Malinké lesson, but here's a proverb I recently learned:

"Inin kilin kilin kunin." (Pronounce, eeneen, keeleen, keeleen, kooneen).

It means, "May we wake up one by one." They say it at the end of the night. The idea is that if there's some catastrophe during the night, we'll all wake up at the same time, but if everything goes peacefully, we'll all wake up one by one to the dawn (or the rooster).

Guinea

Halloween 2008

I’m somewhere in the mountains of Guinea. After buying our tickets two days ago, Steve, Jordan and I waited by the phone until this morning to hear that the car was full and ready to depart Kedougou. We were lucky enough to get cabin seats as we were the first to buy tickets. A last minute phone call telling of a family tragedy kept Steve in Kedougou, so Jordan and I were on our own.

They put two grown men up front with the driver, then Jordan and me in the back seat with two women and a medium child, then they crammed ten people into the tiny bed of the truck on small wooden benches.
At times we had to get out and walk because the road was too steep and rocky for the truck to carry us up. Once we had to stop and dig underneath the truck because we were stuck in a muddy ditch. We stopped for dinner in a village along the road, where we bought rice, sauce, and two large pieces of chicken for $1.80 each. The mountain views are spectacular. We often go up and down small hills, but spend much time on plateaus surrounded by peaks.

The girl sitting next to me in the cab is named Aissatou Diallo. At first she barely reacted when Jordan and I joked with her in Kedougou – a little cold. But now she puts her arm around me a we drive, not for affection, but for necessity.

We stopped because it started to rain so the driver dropped tarps around the cage over the bed so the people in the back wouldn’t get wet, then we pressed on. With the windows closed up front and the engine working hard, the cabin was sweltering. But as the raid faded and the front windows dropped, a lively breeze revived us. But Jordan has a fever so he got the chills and had to put on a sweatshirt.

At about 11:00 we stopped to let the other lady from the cab out (not my snuggle buddy), and the driver decided we’d stop for the night. I pled, “But you told us we’d drive through the night and make it by tomorrow morning, we’ve been waiting for three days to get into this country!” “I know I told you that,” he said, “But I’m tired.” Tough to argue with that. So he showed us to a hut with a couple stick beds and we drank a little Jameson and went to bed. We continue at sun-up.


November 3, 2008

We made it to Labe at about noon the next day, just in time to find people waking up from the Peace Corps Halloween party the night before. We decided to spend a few days with the Guinean volunteers in Labe, which is a large town tucked into the mountains. Despite its size and amenities, Labe has no running water. The streets are hilly and crowded and often smell as bad as Senegalese market streets. The Guinean volunteers were more than welcoming and showed us a great time. They seemed to be down to earth, down to work, and down to party.

This morning we left and got a ride in a Peace Corps vehicle to Doucki (resist the chuckle... OK go ahead). The village of Doucki is home to a campement run by a guy named Hassan who speaks five languages, one of them English. He’s a great guide and has multiple hikes with names like ‘Wet and Wild’ and ‘Chutes and Ladders.’ Today, shortly after arriving, we went to ‘Indian Jones World.’ A hike through narrow passageways formed by cliffs and ravines took us into the rainforest. We swung from vines and climbed to the tops of rocks.

Trees on top of the plateau 100 feet higher sent roots down the rock faces to drink water from the pools below. At the end we swam in a pool fed by a stream whose source disappeared into a cave. We watched monkeys fly from tree to tree and gazed by at the rocky maze to wrap it up.

Jordan and I have decided to spend the rest of our trip here at the campement. We have a limited amount of time and don’t want to waste it on the road. And transportation in this country is... testing. With the recent drop in oil costs, the Guinean government announced that they would be dropping the state-controlled price of gasoline, but not yet. So stations are refusing to buy from their suppliers until the price drops, causing a sever shortage of petrol for the cars that go from town to town. Here’s hoping we make it back to Kedougou.


Election Day, 2008

I woke up early but kept on dozing because at this time of year in the Guinean mountains, mornings are chilly: a rare treat. At about 8:30 we set off on our day’s hike with Jill, our British travel writer companion, and Abdoul-Rahim, Hassan’s brother and our guide for the day.

The hike began with a walk through meadows of dew-drenched grass, greeting Pulaar women harvesting fonio as we went. The wet fields made for treacherous terrain at times as we slipt and sled down the gently hills, but we arrived at the edge of the canyon unscathed nonetheless. We then traced a waterfall down the face of the cliff, many times crossing the shallow water on slick stepping stones. We stopped to rest at ‘Bob Marley’ Stage,’ a flat rocky lookout over the Green Grand Canyon. The view was breath-taking, but the moisture in the air formed a haze that dulled the colors and contours of the other side. So the faraway mountains and peaks faded into the sky like blurring clouds.
We pressed on, down into the valley where we trekked through fields of rice and sorghum, greeting more Pulaars along the way. We stopped to eat some freshly cultivated rice and sauce with some men who sat with rifle in had to protect their fields from animals and received the common gift of fresh peanuts from a woman who sat straight-spined shelling them on the ground.


We began our ascent gradually at first, as we entered the woods. We came to a falling river with a stick bridge across it and stopped on a rocky platform to rest and eat lunch. Our guide had been carrying a big pot of beans and squash in a backpack ince morning. Before we ate, we swam in the many pools created by the boulders that the water massaged as it swept by.













After a swim and a meal, we set out to seek our task of the day. The cliff whose foot we had tiptoed along for a few hours pinched at one point to form a narrow gorge, home to a segmented waterfall that fed our playground of pools.

For over a hundred years, villagers have built ladders to ascent the steepest part by lashing vertical logs together with bark. There are eight ladders in all, and the constantly trickling water from above keeps them less than easy to grip.Finally we arrived at the top, after stopping to drink some water that had filtered through hundreds of feet of rock. We found ourselves back on gently rolling meadows, but on the other side of our departure village. So we walked along the ridge, through a few more villages and stopped to lie in the hammocks in the home of our guide’s cousin.

We made it home in time for a quick bucket bath and a meal of fonio and mafé tiga (peanut sauce). The owner of the campement brought out a shortwave radio so we could turn on the BBC World Service. We realized everything would be speculative until deep into the night, so exhausted, we hit the hay quite literally; our mattresses are stuffed with straw.


November 5, 2008. 6:00 a.m.

Jill, Jordan, and I strain our ears to listen past the high-pitched whine coming from the radio. We hear that Barack Obama has won, and in a clip of his acceptance speech, he references “those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world.” We cheered. Some corners are better left forgotten.