Peanut shelling machine

Written Sunday, 28 September 2008

 

 

My village has recently received a peanut shelling machine from a very generous American donor (Thanks, Lanny!).  Up til now, women had to shell peanuts one by one, by hand.  It takes hours.  Most of the time the women do it after lunch, during their "resting time".

 

But now, with the machine, they can just dump the peanuts into it and push the handle back and forth, and voila! the peanuts are shelled.  It still takes a while to do a large batch of peanuts, but since now there is a machine involved in the process, it has suddenly become a much cooler chore and the men and kids are willing to do it.  (It still remains to be seen whether if this will last once the novelty of the machine wears off, though). 

 

But for now, at least, I think it will make a big difference for the women.  Maybe they will even actually be able to rest for a bit during their resting time!  It could be a revolution!

 

Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a little, but I am excited about it, and so are the women.

I've been doing lots of work

As you can tell from my pictures, if you've looked at them, over the last few weeks I've been really busy: teaching health classes, English class, teaching women in my and two other volunteers' villages how to make neem lotion and baby porridge, weighing babies, and helping to plant a mango orchard (okay, really all I did was take pictures of the mango planting).

 

While I was out at the mango planting, the president of the local Association of Health Agents asked me to help the association get funding to buy some bikes, wheelbarrows, rakes, and other items, to help support their village cleanup and health class activities.  I thought it sounded like a pretty decent idea, so I'm looking into doing a Peace Corps Partnership proposal.  (Which if it goes through, means I will soon be hitting up all my friends and family for money - watch out!)

 

But the morning after the mango planting, when I saw my village counterpart and told him about the proposal idea, he got really mad.  He told me I should be bringing money to the village before I go helping anyone else get funding.  I've been in my village for a year and a half and haven't done anything for them so far!

 

Which made me really mad.  I haven't done anything?  What about all the health and English classes?  What about all the money that people (my counterpart more than anyone) have "borrowed" from me and never paid back?

That fight hasn't been resolved yet.  I'm still going to try to do the proposal, but I'm not sure right now if I'm going to bother with continuing health and English classes in my village.

I'm a real Volunteer now!

Finally I have become a real Peace Corps Volunteer: I got my first parasites of my very own - amoebas, and maybe giardia.  Not to worry, I am taking meds and they will be gone soon.  I feel like this is a Peace Corps rite of passage that I have finally made it to.

New photos!

Finally got some new photos up!  Check them out:

http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr/JuneJuly2008

http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr/August2008

http://picasaweb.google.com/aidworkr/MariamaSVillage

Man-eating rat

Written Monday, 4 August 2008

A few days ago I was sitting in the Peace Corps house in Tamba,
watching a movie, when I felt something bite my toe. Of course I
jumped and yelled, so by the time I got around to looking down to see
what it was, it had run away. I thought it was a mouse – our house is
overrun with them. But a little later, as I was finishing my movie
(with my feet pulled out of reach on my chair), it came out and hung
out long enough for me to get a good look at it – a rat! Gross,
gross, gross.

Some of the other volunteers had recently said that there was a rat in
the house now, but I thought they were exaggerating and it was a big
mouse. But this was definitely a rat. Luckily its bite hadn't broken
my skin, or I would have been high-tailing it to Dakar to get myself
some shots for rabies and bubonic plague and anything else I could
get.

When one of the boys came to Tamba yesterday I told him about the rat
and asked him to try to buy some poison or something and kill it. We
hadn't managed to find strong enough poison in any of the stores
nearby yet, but this morning when I woke up he told me that he had
trapped the rat in our garbage can. And then a little later our
security guard killed it for us.

So, the current score is: Volunteers: 1. Tamba house rodents:
approximately 1000. But I've gotten pretty used to the mice now; if
we can keep the house rat-free, I think I'll be happy. The war is
still on with the devil-cat in my hut, though.

Porridge and baby weighings

Written Monday, 21 July 2008

After I got back from Tamba last time I started bugging my counterpart that we needed to do some more health activities – baby weighings or health classes. Since it is the rainy/farming season, people don't have much free time, so we decided to forgo the baby weighings for now since they take all day, and instead do some health classes, which only take about an hour.

So after some discussion, we decided to do the classes on nutrition, and also a baby porridge demonstration, which I did once last year. I knew that the women wouldn't start making the baby porridge after I taught it to them, even though it only requires fairly cheap, easily available ingredients; we included the porridge demonstration mainly as a bribe, to get the women to come to the class – because when the demonstration is done, the women can feed the porridge we made to their babies. Also I knew that if I did a class about nutrition, telling the women they need to feed their kids a balanced diet, that they would tell me that I should be giving them the money to buy such things (even though they can fill the protein and vitamin categories with peanuts and baobab and other leaves that are readily available).

So I bought them off with the porridge demonstration, and the class went great. They even asked me when I'm going to do another baby weighing, which made me really happy.

I'm going to do the same class again tomorrow for a different group of women. Hopefully it will go just as well.

Rain!

Written Monday, 21 July 2008

The rain has finally come! And with it, freezing cold weather – it is down to at least 90 degrees, maybe even 85 or 80 (my thermometer is broken – I blame the devil cat).

Strike

Written Saturday, 19 July 2008

My host brother told me that he is going on strike against God because the rain hasn't come. No more praying, no more going to mosque. I told him that sounds like the sort of thing that gets you smited by lightning. But he said he doesn't care, he's mad and he's going on strike.

I told him I had a better idea – why not convert to Christianity? Maybe God likes Christians better, and then he'll make the rains come. Good idea! my brother said. After all, it always rains in Christian countries, and Christians are rich! (Guess he wasn't thinking of all the poor countries in Africa and Latin America that are majority Christian).

So chalk me up for one Christian convert so far.

* Just in case it isn't clear: this conversation did actually happen, but of course neither of us were serious, except about being worried about the rains not coming.

Devil cat

Written Thursday, 17 July 2008

Last time I came back from Tamba I discovered that a cat had found its way into my hut and decided to make it his personal toilet. After moving pretty much everything in my room, I finally found where he had left his stinky present: under my bed. So I cleaned it up and thought that would be the end of it. Surely now that I was back the cat would stay away.

But no. In the last few days the cat has come into my hut four times and left me "presents". One of the times, he'd actually done his business up on a rafter – took me a whole day to figure out where the awful smell was coming from, and then I had to figure out how to get it down without benefit of a stool or even a decent chair, and without knocking it down onto my head.

I am starting to feel that this cat has declared war on me, and only one of us is going to make it out of this alive. If I ask my villagers, I'm sure they will remind me that cats work for sorcerers, so this probably means someone has put a curse on me. Whatever the case may be, this devil cat is starting to push me over the edge.

English class is getting complicated

Written Thursday, 17 July 2008

I re-started my English class when I got back from Guinea, with two new students: the village teacher and the park ranger, who are both Wolof speakers from Thies and are easily the most educated people in my village. Then today someone new asked to join: a Gambian man who knows some English ("I speak English small-small," he told me) but doesn't know French and is completely illiterate. So the total now is: two educated French/Wolof speakers, one semi-educated Mandinka/French speaker, one illiterate Pulaar speaker, and one illiterate Bambara/English speaker. To top it off, the Gambian man speaks really fast and mumbles, so I can barely understand his English (and I don't understand his Bambara at all, although he usually understands my Mandinka).

How in the world am I supposed to teach this class? I don't even know what language to teach it in anymore, to say nothing of coming up with lessons that are appropriate for everyone.

Where is the rain?

Written Thursday, 17 July 2008

It has been over a week since it rained in my village, and before that another week since the previous rain. The crops are still green, but the ground is dry and hard, which makes plowing and hoeing really hard. And people are starting to worry.

New well!

Written Thursday, 17 July 2008

A new well has just been dug (partly financed by an NGO) less than 50 feet from my front door! The water is not as clean as the well I used to go to, but I am hoping that a lot of the sediment is from the construction and it will settle down soon. In any case, it is definitely nice not to have to carry water so far and to be able to see if there is a long line at the well without even leaving my hut.

Senegalese village names

Written Thursday, 17 July 2008

Some Senegalese village names, in translation:

• The Woodcarver's Place
• Under the Diala Trees
• The Men's Place
• Life is Good Here
• New Home
• Gate of Peace
• Next to the Government
• Train Station
• Modu's Village
• Demba's House
• Home of the Tambas

And my favorite, so far: 

• Bean Party

More on how poor are my villagers

Written Tuesday, 8 July 2008

 

 

I've just started reading The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs (finally!), and he classifies poverty into three groups: extreme or absolute poverty, moderate poverty, and relative poverty.  Extreme poverty means that "households cannot meet basic needs for survival.  They are chronically hungry, unable to access health care, lack safe drinking water and sanitation, cannot afford education for some or all children, and perhaps lack rudimentary shelter (like a rain-proof roof) and basic articles of clothing such as shoes."  Moderate poverty "refers to conditions of life in which basic needs are met, but just barely."  Relative poverty is "a household income level below a given proportion of average national income", where basic needs are met but consumer goods (like a car or phone) that are the norm in a particular society are unaffordable.

 

So according to that scale, my villagers mostly fit into the "moderate poverty" category, which according to Jeff Sachs (and the World Bank) means my villagers are probably earning the equivalent of $1 to $2 a day.  It also means that there are over a billion people in the world poorer than my villagers.  Scary thought.

 

On a related note, right now is the hungry season in Senegal.  My family has started cutting back on food – we still eat every meal, but there is just not enough anymore to fill everyone up.

A bandit is caught

Written Tuesday, 8 July 2008

 

 

Recently a bandit who had stolen ten of my host family's cows over the last six months was caught.  My host brother was able to follow a stolen cow's tracks to the butcher in another village.  He called the gendarmes, who demanded that the butcher produce the head, feet, and skin of the cow whose meat he was currently selling (by which the cow could be identified).

 

The butcher, trying to be crafty, instead produced the hide of a cow that had been butchered some time ago and tried to pass it off as the cow killed that day.  Unfortunately for the butcher, though, that cow had also been stolen from my family and their brand was on its hide.  So the butcher was caught as a receiver of stolen goods.

 

Apparently without too much pressure he gave up the name of the actual cattle rustler: a man from another village who has been living in a neighbor's compound in my village and working as a farm hand.

 

My favorite part of the story is this: the gendarmes were clever and waited to come apprehend him until the hour when he was likely to be bathing, so that he would not be wearing his gris-gris (amulets) that would have protected him and allowed him to escape.  They came to his door and knocked as if they were just regular visitors, and when he came to the door gris-gris-less, they grabbed him!  He asked to be allowed to go back into his room to get dressed, but they knew that then he would put on his gris-gris and become invisible or turn into a bug or something, so they refused and took him straight off to jail, where he remains (gris-gris-less).

Written Tuesday, 8 July 2008

A bandit is caught

 

Recently a bandit who had stolen ten of my host family's cows over the last six months was caught.  My host brother was able to follow a stolen cow's tracks to the butcher in another village.  He called the gendarmes, who demanded that the butcher produce the head, feet, and skin of the cow whose meat he was currently selling (by which the cow could be identified).

 

The butcher, trying to be crafty, instead produced the hide of a cow that had been butchered some time ago and tried to pass it off as the cow killed that day.  Unfortunately for the butcher, though, that cow had also been stolen from my family and their brand was on its hide.  So the butcher was caught as a receiver of stolen goods.

 

Apparently without too much pressure he gave up the name of the actual cattle rustler: a man from another village who has been living in a neighbor's compound in my village and working as a farm hand.

 

My favorite part of the story is this: the gendarmes were clever and waited to come apprehend him until the hour when he was likely to be bathing, so that he would not be wearing his gris-gris (amulets) that would have protected him and allowed him to escape.  They came to his door and knocked as if they were just regular visitors, and when he came to the door gris-gris-less, they grabbed him!  He asked to be allowed to go back into his room to get dressed, but they knew that then he would put on his gris-gris and become invisible or turn into a bug or something, so they refused and took him straight off to jail, where he remains (gris-gris-less).

A bandit is caught

Written Tuesday, 8 July 2008

 

 

Recently a bandit who had stolen ten of my host family's cows over the last six months was caught.  My host brother was able to follow a stolen cow's tracks to the butcher in another village.  He called the gendarmes, who demanded that the butcher produce the head, feet, and skin of the cow whose meat he was currently selling (by which the cow could be identified).

 

The butcher, trying to be crafty, instead produced the hide of a cow that had been butchered some time ago and tried to pass it off as the cow killed that day.  Unfortunately for the butcher, though, that cow had also been stolen from my family and their brand was on its hide.  So the butcher was caught as a receiver of stolen goods.

 

Apparently without too much pressure he gave up the name of the actual cattle rustler: a man from another village who has been living in a neighbor's compound in my village and working as a farm hand.

 

My favorite part of the story is this: the gendarmes were clever and waited to come apprehend him until the hour when he was likely to be bathing, so that he would not be wearing his gris-gris (amulets) that would have protected him and allowed him to escape.  They came to his door and knocked as if they were just regular visitors, and when he came to the door gris-gris-less, they grabbed him!  He asked to be allowed to go back into his room to get dressed, but they knew that then he would put on his gris-gris and become invisible or turn into a bug or something, so they refused and took him straight off to jail, where he remains (gris-gris-less).

Written Tuesday, 8 July 2008

A bandit is caught

 

Recently a bandit who had stolen ten of my host family's cows over the last six months was caught.  My host brother was able to follow a stolen cow's tracks to the butcher in another village.  He called the gendarmes, who demanded that the butcher produce the head, feet, and skin of the cow whose meat he was currently selling (by which the cow could be identified).

 

The butcher, trying to be crafty, instead produced the hide of a cow that had been butchered some time ago and tried to pass it off as the cow killed that day.  Unfortunately for the butcher, though, that cow had also been stolen from my family and their brand was on its hide.  So the butcher was caught as a receiver of stolen goods.

 

Apparently without too much pressure he gave up the name of the actual cattle rustler: a man from another village who has been living in a neighbor's compound in my village and working as a farm hand.

 

My favorite part of the story is this: the gendarmes were clever and waited to come apprehend him until the hour when he was likely to be bathing, so that he would not be wearing his gris-gris (amulets) that would have protected him and allowed him to escape.  They came to his door and knocked as if they were just regular visitors, and when he came to the door gris-gris-less, they grabbed him!  He asked to be allowed to go back into his room to get dressed, but they knew that then he would put on his gris-gris and become invisible or turn into a bug or something, so they refused and took him straight off to jail, where he remains (gris-gris-less).

Baby with a rock in his ear

written 27 June 2008

 

Yesterday my sister came into my hut and told me her almost-two-year-old baby had stuck a peanut in his ear.  I grabbed a flashlight and aimed it at his ear, and sure enough, there was something in his ear.  Way, way down in his ear, so far it looked like it was in the middle of his head.  Definitely not something we were going to be able to get out ourselves.  So I told her she had to take him to the health post in Dialacoto.  She agreed, but there was a problem: she doesn't know how to ride a bike, and rainy/farming season has started, so everyone's out working in the fields, so a donkey cart is out of the question.  So she asked me if I would take him.  I said sure, no problem, thinking he could ride on the luggage rack on the back of my bike (I've taken him on short joy rides around the village that way, which he loves, so I know he's old enough to hold on).  But my sister said no, the ride to Dialacoto is too far, he will fall asleep and fall off the bike.  He has to be carried tied onto someone's back, traditional style.  So I said okay, fine.  My sister of course didn't think a toubab could handle carrying a baby African-style that far, so she insisted on my 15-year-old sister (who does know how to ride a bike) going along as a backup baby carrier.

 

So we tied the baby (who was being very quiet rather than screaming his head off, as I'd been afraid he would – Alhamdoulilah!) onto my back, and we were off, ten kilometers in the middle of a hot African day to the Dialacoto health post.

 

When we got there, the nurse looked at the baby almost right away, but he said that the peanut was too far down in the baby's head for him to get it out – he was afraid of puncturing his ear drum.  We'd have to take him to the hospital in Tamba, where they'd have more equipment and could anesthetize him if necessary.

 

Tamba is far.  And anesthesia is probably really expensive.  And we'd have to go back to the village and get his mom, and then get her out to the road somehow (on the back of my bike? I'm not sure I'm strong enough to carry an adult over the mountain to the main road on my bike). I did not want to have to do that. 

 

So I asked the nurse if they might be able to help him at Kinkeliba, the private French hospital about 15 kilometers up the road.  This was somewhat of a risky question, because the nurse is essentially in competition with the hospital, and I've heard that he doesn't take it very kindly when his patients go there.  But I really did not want to have to take the baby to Tamba, and I figured hopefully he couldn't get too mad, since I'd come to him first and we were going to have to go somewhere else for care regardless.  Luckily, he didn't seem offended, and just said, sure, give it a shot.

 

While I was at the health post, the two other volunteers in Dialacoto region, Fonsa and new volunteer Hawa, happened by, and I was able to talk them into coming with me to Kinkeliba (officially so that we could all learn more about health services available in the area, but really just to keep me company).  And I got even luckier in that there was an Africare (an American NGO) car heading that way, so we were able to hitch a ride. 

 

My back-up baby carrier of a sister, however, punked out on me, not wanting to go to Kinkeliba because it would be a long bike ride back.  So I told her fine, I could just meet her back in my village.  But she said she was scared to bike back to the village by herself (because there could be bandits on the road), so she made me promise to come all the way back to Dialacoto, which is several kilometers past the turn-off to my village, to pick her up after we were finished at Kinkeliba.

 

So a few minutes later we arrived at the hospital, which didn't seem to have any other patients so we were able to see a doctor right away.  He shot water into the baby's ear with a little pump to try to squirt the peanut out.  It wasn't successful, but it did make the peanut move enough so that he was then able to get it out with some tweezers.  And it turned out to be a rock rather than a peanut, which is probably a good thing because that means there won't be any crumbs left in his ear to cause an infection.   So the baby was once again good as new, and it only cost me $2.

 

It was about 1:30 by then, hot as the surface of the sun, so I was not about to bike the 20 kilometers back to Dialacoto, and then another 10 kilometers to my village, with a baby on my back, just yet.  So Fonsa and Hawa and I bought lunch from the hospital canteen (rice with vegetables), and relaxed in the shade while the baby took a nap.  Then at about 4:30 we biked (with the baby tied on my back) back to Dialacoto, where my friends left me to go home to their own villages, and where I discovered that my punk of a sister, who I had been counting on to carry the baby the last ten kilometers home, had left and gone home without me.  So I had to carry the baby the rest of the way home.  Did I mention that this baby weighs nine kilos and that it was hot out?

 

But eventually I made it back with both me and the baby still in one piece (or rather two pieces, one each), and his mom was waiting for us right at the edge of the village and was so happy to have her baby back minus foreign objects in his head. 

 

So it turned out to be a good day: baby cured, I earned lots of points with my host family for taking care of him, the baby didn't cry all day long (he also didn't talk, as he usually does – he seemed a little shell-shocked, but he's since back to his usual self), and I definitely win the Peace Corps hard-coreness competition for biking with a baby on my back for 35 kilometers.

I broke a man’s wife

25 June 2008

 

One of my first projects in my village was to get a woman sent to Tamba to be trained as a matron, or midwife.  The project was started by my ancienne, the volunteer who came before me, so I didn't actually have to do much work for it, but in any case the villagers give me credit for it.

 

Which is relevant to this story because the woman's training was supposed to last six months, which means she should have finished in May.  It is now the end of June, and she hasn't come back to the village.  Now my counterpart tells me that the woman's husband is going around complaining that I "broke his wife", meaning that now that she's had this training, she wants to stay in Tamba where life is a little cushier and where it will be easier for her to earn money with her new skills, rather than come back to the village and cook and clean for her husband all day long.

 

Can't say I blame her.

 

So when my counterpart came and told me that I am being accused of breaking this man's wife, even though I know it could have serious repercussions for my ability to work in my village (theoretically, if word of this gets around, the men might forbid their wives from working with me, although I don't really think that will happen), I could not help but laugh.  And smile and feel proud of myself. 

 

So my counterpart said that I have to fix this problem.  I have to prove that while I did help this woman go to Tamba and get matron training, that I always intended for her to come back and that I was not trying to help her leave her husband or otherwise "break" her.  And truthfully, I do want her to come back and provide matron services to the pregnant women in my village, because my village needs that.  I just don't happen to feel too sorry for her husband, who in any case has another wife to cook and clean for him (I suspect that it is really this wife, who is probably tired of being responsible for all the chores, who is pressuring her husband to complain about the other wife not being back yet).

 

So I called Sira, the woman who is getting trained, to ask about when she is coming home.  She said the training isn't finished yet, and she'll be home as soon as it's over.  Which may or may not be true, but in any case I did my part and could then tell her husband that I told her to come back when her training is done. 

 

So hopefully she will be back in the village soon, and this whole drama will be over.  Except that I have found a new mission for the rest of my service: break as many wives as possible.

 

--written by Rebecca Semmes, Professional Wife Breaker

International politics, from the perspective of my villagers

written 24 June 2008

 

Someone in my host family has a lighter with a flashlight built into it that projects an image of Saddam Hussein's face.

 

"Do you know who that is?" I am asked.

 

"Yes, it is Saddam Hussein," I say.

 

"The president of Iraq!"

 

"The former president of Iraq.  Now he is dead," I say.

 

"Yes, because the Americans killed him.  He was a good president because he made Iraq produce oil, but then the Americans killed him, and now there is no more oil from Iraq."

 

"He killed many Iraqis so that he could stay in power," I say.

 

"Oh.  Then he is not good?"

 

"No," I say.

 

"Do you know who Bin Laden is?  Did he kill many Americans?"

 

"Yes, he killed many Americans."

 

"Do you know why the Americans can't catch him?"

 

"Why's that?"

 

"Because he is a sorcerer, and he can change himself into a bug or even into dirt, so whenever the soldiers are coming he just changes himself into a rock or something until they are gone again."

I want to take my sister (and the cute babies) back to America with me

24 June 2008

 

Yesterday one of my host sisters, who is about 15 years old, came to visit me in my hut.  She is the first girl in my family, and probably in my village, to get an education.  All the women who are older than her, even just by a few years, have never been to school.  They can't even write their names.  So it is a huge feat that this girl, my sister, has managed to make it all the way to middle school (most kids, and especially girls, drop out after primary school, if they go to school at all) and even to be one of the top students in her class.

 

So while my sister was in my hut, I asked her how school was going and her plans for next year (she will be in the equivalent of 9^th grade).  She's been living in a neighboring village with relatives during the school year, so as to have a shorter commute to the middle school.  She told me she'd like to go to school in Tamba next year because the relatives she's living with now make her do so many chores that she never has time to study.  But no one has offered her a place to live in Tamba so far, and there's no particular reason to think another host family would give her fewer chores.  And in any case, in the next few years her family will most likely decide she's had enough education and they will arrange a marriage for her to a second or third cousin.  And then, as my other sisters were teasing her last night, all she will do all day is cook.

 

So I started thinking about whether there is anything I can do.  Pay to send her to school in Tamba?  Wouldn't solve the problem of the chores, or the looming arranged marriage.  Take her back to America with me?  Her family would love it, but I haven't got the means to support myself yet, much less someone else.  So I'm still thinking.

The American Club

Written 28 June 2008

 

While I was in Dakar, I went one day to The American Club, which is essentially a country club for expats.  From what I understand, it was originally only open to Americans (hence the name, which was actually changed some years ago because of security concerns, but everyone still calls it The American Club), but now it's open to all expats.  It's got tennis courts, and a pool, and a little canteen that sells American food like hamburgers.  And Peace Corps Volunteers can get in free, no membership hassle required.

 

Unlike the Senegalese, who (I am told, I haven't actually read the rule book) can't get in at all.  Not as a monthly dues-paying member, and not as the guest of a member.  Which just seems awfully racist to me.  So here's my problem: I like the American Club.  It's nice to have a place to go where I can speak English, and not be hassled by people asking me for money or to take them to America, and where I can wear culturally inappropriate clothes (like a swimsuit).  But it feels like I'm patronizing a white-only establishment during American Jim Crow times or South African apartheid (not that I ever experienced either of those).

 

So, tell me: is it wrong to have a club only for expats?  What if it were a club only for doctors or lawyers?  No one would care about that.  So is a club only for expats any different?  (Or maybe no one does care, except for me.  It's not as if the Senegalese are staging a protest outside the door).

 

So someone please tell me if it is okay for me to go there, because I like it and would like to go back, but I don't want to support racism.

Dakar Mid-Service Health Exam

Shortly after getting back from my vacation in Guinea, I had to go up to Dakar to get my last vaccination (of about 50 I've had to get since coming here, or so it seems anyway), and also for my mid-service health exam.  The Peace Corps nurse checked my vital signs, proving that I'm still alive, and tested me for tuberculosis (which you can get from drinking raw milk, which I do every chance I get, which isn't that often) and for schistosomiasis (which is a parasite you can get from swimming in infested water, which I did in Kedougou).  She also offered to test me for giardia and amoebas, but I haven't had any stomach problems at all lately, so I decided to pass on that one.

 

After three wonderful days of cool Dakar weather, good food, and all the internet I wanted I got my test results back: I am TB and parasite free!  Alhamdoulilah!  (Not that I was worried, and anyway if I had been infected I would just have gotten treated, no big deal, but it's nice to know for sure).

Guinea vacation day 12: Senegal border to Kolda

So after just a few hours of sleeping in the dirt, we got up and went to the gendarmes' "office" to get cleared to cross the border.  I wasn't worried at all – I had a valid visa for Senegal, and supposing they wanted to give me a hard time for not having a Guinean visa, what were they going to do – deport me?  The (Guinean) border guard was not so friendly this time, and did, in fact, give me a hard time – he kept asking me where my visa was, and I just kept pointing to my Senegal visa, pretending not to understand.  Mostly I think he was just worried about doing his paperwork – he had to record our names in his book, along with passport info, our parents' names, where we were born, our favorite color, lots of other random information, and our visa number – which I of course didn't have.  The driver of our car was very anxious to leave and kept telling me that I should just "buy a visa" (i.e. bribe the gendarme) so that we could go.  But I wasn't in such a rush and wasn't worried about being thrown in Guinean jail (Etienne, our trusty Peace Corps Security Officer, would have gotten me out), so I just waited until finally the gendarme gave up and said I could go. 

 

So then we piled back into the car, drove a few more hours until we got to Diaobe (I still don't know where it is really), and then from there we took another car to Kolda, and that was the end of my beautiful Guinea vacation. 

Guinea vacation day 11: Labe to the Senegal border

We went to the garage in Labe early in the morning to try to get a car back to Senegal.  We asked for a car to Kolda, but we were told the only car to Senegal was only going as far as Diaobe.  We had no idea where Diaobe is, so we tried looking on our Lonely Planet map, but it wasn't there.  Finally we decided that wherever Diaobe is, at least it's back in Senegal, and from there we could probably get another car to Kolda or Tamba.  So we bought tickets.  And then we waited for the car to fill up so we could go.  And waited.  And waited. 

 

The car didn't fill up until about 2 p.m., and then the car driver decided to go fill it up with gas and tweak the engine a bit in preparation for the trip.  Why he couldn't have taken care of that during the incredibly long morning we spent waiting, I don't know.

But in the meantime, while we sat around waiting all day, we chatted with some of the guys hanging out by the garage.  At one point we asked how long it would take to get to Diaobe, and we were told we should be there by 8:00 or 9:00.  Just after dark – not so bad, I thought.  And then they clarified: 8:00 or 9:00 the next morning.  We'd be spending all night in the car.  Ouch.  Plus, thinking back to how bad the road was between Kedougou and Maali, we thought it was probably not the most prudent thing to be driving over those mountains in the dark.  But we had no choice, unless we wanted to bike the 200 or so kilometers back.  So a rickety car on bad roads over steep mountains at night it was.

 

We also talked for a while with a young Sierra Leonean guy, who told us he had been on his way from Sierra Leone to Gambia to try to find work, but he had been robbed and now was stranded in Guinea, and couldn't communicate with people at all to ask for help or work (Sierra Leone is Anglophone, and this guy didn't even know basic French phrases like "I'm hungry").  Of course he was hoping that Sira and I, the rich toubab tourists, would give him $50 or so for a bus to Gambia. 

 

Sira and I decided that there probably at least some truth to his story – it's pretty common for African migrants to head out without enough money to get all the way to their destination.  They go as far as they can go until the money runs out, and then try to find work wherever they are to pay for the next leg of their trip.  So we figured something like that had probably happened to this guy.  He was definitely going to have a hard time without knowing even basic French, though.  So Sira and I wrote down for him (he was literate) some basic French phrases, like 'I'm hungry' and 'I want a job', we gave him the name of some NGOs in the area who might be able to help him, and Sira gave him a couple dollars so he could try calling his family to get them to wire him money.  After he got the money he left, and I figured we probably wouldn't see him again or ever know if he had just been scamming us, but a little while later (as we were still sitting around waiting for our car to fill up) he came back.  At first we thought, oh no, he's coming to ask for more money.  But instead he said that he had used the money Sira gave him to get in touch with a relative in Gambia who is now going to wire him money to he can get to Banjul.  So he was really happy, and he thanked us for helping him, so we got to feel happy too.

 

Finally, finally, around 3 p.m. the car was full and gassed up, and we could get on our way.  Of course there was the inevitable annoyance of a man trying to convince us that because we are female we should give up our good middle-row seats to the supposedly superior men, and we should sit in the back.  But we refused, and finally the guy gave up and got in the car so we could go.  Even though we were going to Senegal, they still had us seated Guinea-style, with nine passengers in the car instead of seven.  So it was going to be a very comfy ride.  (Yes, I am being facetious).  Sira had the window seat, so to give herself a little extra room, she rode most of the way with her head poking out the window (like a dog, I teased her).  When we stopped for the first break, I got to see the result of that great idea: she looked like she'd been down a brown-colored coal mine, her face was so heavily covered with road dust.  (Us toubabs are always looking filthy and sweaty here, whereas the Africans, except for the children, always look immaculate, even when they've been working all morning.  I don't know how they do it.)

 

The guy who had been trying to convince us that women belong in the back was sitting next to me, and not long into the trip he fell asleep, and soon his head started leaning over onto my shoulder.  Normally I wouldn't mind; I'm used to carrying random kids on my lap and having strangers sleep on my shoulders on my Alham ride between my village and Tamba, but this guy had really annoyed me with all his "women belong in the back" arguments, so I was not going to let him sleep on my shoulder.  So I pushed him off my shoulder towards the guy on the other side of him.  This would have woken a normal person up, but he didn't stir at all.  And pretty soon he was drifting into my space again.  So I shoved him over again, a little harder this time.  Still didn't stir.  This guy is a narcoleptic!  He kept leaning over onto my shoulder, and I kept shoving him off and getting more and more annoyed.  Then I decided to get a little tougher: I popped him on the side of the head with my book.  Still didn't wake him up, but everyone else in the car thought it was really funny.  So we passed the next half hour of the ride with me periodically smacking him with my book and everyone else in the car laughing their heads off.  And the guy, completely unaware, sleeping through the whole thing.  Finally the car stopped for another break, and I convinced Sira to trade seats with me before I murdered the guy. 

 

Around 8 p.m. it started getting dark.  I was scared that we would drive off a cliff from not being able to see very far ahead with the car's pitiful headlights, but I consoled myself by thinking that if that happened, the driver would die too, and he surely didn't want that, so hopefully he would be careful.  And of course it turned out that nothing scary happened at all.

 

Around 1 a.m. we got to the border crossing for Senegal: a string across the road with a sign hanging from it that said Stop.  There was absolutely no one around.  The driver stopped the car and told us to get out.  At first I thought that he was going to go wake up whichever gendarme was on night duty so we could cross the border, but no.  There is no gendarme on night duty, and the regular gendarme would probably not be happy if we woke him up in the middle of the night.  So how about we sneak across the very high-security border, by untying the string across the road?  No again.  The driver said we would just have to wait for the gendarme to wake up in the morning and let us across the border.  Right.  Okay.  So what are we supposed to do until then?  The driver goes and gets a mat out of the car and lies down on it by the side of the road.  It took my brain a minute to process it, but I finally figured it out: we were going to spend the night by the side of the road, with no shelter or stick bed or mosquito net or anything.  And Sira's and my bags were strapped up on top of the car with everyone else's luggage, so we couldn't even get to them to use the clothes as a pillow.  Sira dug a couple of plastic bags out of her purse, and we laid them on the ground so at least we didn't have our heads in the dirt.  And then we lay down on the ground and went to sleep. 

 

Peace Corps volunteers are always telling each other these sorts of stories, implicitly adding up points to see who is more "hard core".  I decided that sleeping in the dirt at a border crossing, on our way to we didn't even know exactly where, put Sira and me way ahead of everyone else in the competition. 

Guinea vacation day 10: Pita and Labe

Sira and I decided that we had seen all the sights in Guinea that we really wanted to see, so we got up early in the morning to start making our way back to Senegal.  We decided to bike to Pita, 53 kilometers away.  It was a perfect ride, almost entirely downhill, so we made it in just a few hours. 

 

In Pita we got lunch at a roadside stand (rice and meat) and guzzled down some bissap (hibiscus flower) juice.  While I was drinking, I felt something solid in my mouth – a bug.  Nice.  Shortly afterward, Sira and I both had stomach aches.  I don't know if it was the meat or the buggy bissap, but we both recovered after an hour or so.

 

From Pita we took a car to Labe, and this time stayed at the Peace Corps "house" – the Hotel La Campagne.  It was easily the nicest place we stayed at in Guinea, and even had a mosquito net for the bed.  We had pizza again for dinner, but theirs wasn't quite as good as at the other place.

Guinea vacation day 9: Dalaba

We decided to go back to the Pont de Dieu and spend another day swimming and reading, since it had been so nice the day before.  Unfortunately, this time when we got there, there were Guineans doing laundry in the best swimming hole.  So we didn't have it all to ourselves this time, but we were able to swim in another swimming hole, and we still had a nice time. 

 

Back at the hotel in the evening, we had millet again for dinner, and then we watched the Guinean (state-run) news on tv, which was mostly footage of the president receiving several new ambassadors.  Not too exciting.

Guinea vacation day 8: Dalaba

After breakfast, as Sira and I were getting ready to go out and do some sightseeing, a Guinean girl came to our room and just stood awkwardly in the doorway.  I couldn't tell if she worked at the hotel, or was a guest, or what. 

 

"Can I help you?" I asked. 

 

"Do you speak French?" she asks me. 

 

"Yes." 

 

So she came up very close to me and whispered in my ear, "I trust you." 

 

"Um, okay, thanks.  But can I help you with something?"

 

"I trust you." 

 

All this time she is looking around at our stuff in the room, and I start to think she's here to look around and see what might be worth stealing after we've left.  Sira sees that I am getting nowhere communicating with this girl, so she tries to speak to her in Pulaar.  No luck.  Finally we get the girl to leave, and Sira and I decide to take all our valuables with us while we're out for the day, even though we don't feel super secure carrying it all around with us, either. 

 

Then as we are almost ready to go, one of the European tourists we had made friends with came to me and asked if I had had rubber straps on the luggage rack on my bike (which was locked up in the courtyard of the hotel).  I had.  She told me that the man they had hired to drive them to some nearby waterfalls for the day (who, coincidentally, was the same man who drove us the day before from Pita to Dalaba) had just taken them off my bike and stuck them in his pocket.  Of course he was still at the hotel, waiting for the tourists to be ready to go, so I went and found him and asked him if he had stolen my bike straps.  He gave them back without any fuss, and I lectured him a bit, asking him what he thought he was doing, taking other people's things.

 

I was starting to think that people in Dalaba are just weird.

 

Finally we were able to leave the hotel, and we went first to the tourism office, where the European tourists had told us they sell a booklet with instructions for going on hikes in the area.  (Although they warned us that the instructions included lots of things like, "turn right at the red door" when the red door had long ago been painted another color or taken down altogether).

 

So we got the booklet and decided to try biking to the "Pont de Dieu" (Bridge of God).  The directions, of course, told us to get there by taking the road heading south out of town and then turning off into the bush, when in actuality we should have taken the road north out of town.  So it took us a while, but we were able to ask people along the way for directions, so we made it eventually.  And discovered that the Pont de Dieu is a natural rock bridge over a pretty little waterfall with some nice little swimming holes.  And absolutely no one else around!  So Sira and I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon there, just swimming and lying on the rocks and reading. 

 

In the late afternoon we biked back into Dalaba, this time along the correct path, which took us through bamboo groves and a pine forest – beautiful!  We got dinner from a restaurant shack right next to the hotel: millet with fresh onion and tomato, only about $1 for enough for four of us (we invited two of the tourist girls to eat with us, so they could tell us their horror story about their day with the crazy driver who stole my bike straps).  Guinean food is delicious. And so cheap!  If I could get a good internet connection, and a job I could do over the internet, I think I would live there. 

Guinea vacation day 7: Douki to Dalaba

The next morning we skipped hiking and went straight into the village to try to get a car back to Pita.  We had to wait for several hours, but a car did finally come, and we were able to get to Pita, and from there to take another car to Dalaba. 

 

In Dalaba we found a nice, cheap hotel to stay at - $2 a night per person.  There were some European tourists staying there, the first other toubabs we had seen on our trip, so we had a nice time talking with them.  Then we biked into town to find dinner.  We had roasted corn on the cob – a treat, since it won't be in season in Senegal until September or so – and we also found a woman selling beans, but they weren't as good as the ones in Mali.

 

By the time we had finished dinner it was already dark, and we still had to bike back across town to our hotel.  Of course there were no streetlights, and we hadn't thought to bring flashlights since it was daylight when we left.  There was, however, a storm approaching, so there were occasional flashes of lightning to light our way.  And my friend Sira apparently can see in the dark, because she zoomed off at full speed back toward the hotel, while I came along slowly behind her, afraid of falling into a hole or making a wrong turn in the pitch dark.  So of course we got separated, and with my bad sense of direction, I missed a turn, which I realized when the paved road turned into dirt again.  So I spent about an hour wandering through the town in the dark, occasionally stopping and asking people which direction the hotel was in.  I wasn't too worried though – I knew I would either make it there eventually, or (probably if it started pouring) I would find somewhere else to spend the night.  But eventually I made it back to the hotel, where Sira was amazed to learn that I don't have x-ray laser night vision like she does.

Guinea vacation day 6: Douki

The next morning, after breakfast of bread and wild honey, Hassan's brother Abdul Rahim took us on the "Indiana Jones" hike, down into the valley where it feels like a rain forest, and then Hassan took us on another hike down a mountainside with beautiful views but if you slipped you were doomed.  (Luckily, we didn't slip).

 

After hiking we had lunch back at the guesthouse - chewy, pounded manioc balls in a peanut sauce.  Not my favorite, but at least it was something different.  Then we went up to the main road to try to get a car back to Pita.  We sat by the road and waited for hours, but no car ever came.  So it was back to Hassan's to spend another night, but he was nice and gave us a discount this time. 

Guinea vacation day 5: Pita and Douki

We decided not to spend any time in Labe, since both Sira and I pretty much hated it as soon as we got there (except for the delicious pizza!).  So we went to the garage and took a car to a small town called Pita (cost us about $3 each), where we planned to get a second car out to a small village called Douki, which according to Lonely Planet has a guesthouse with a "luxurious hut" right on the edge of "Guinea's Grand Canyon". 

 

When we got to Pita we started asking around at the garage for the car that goes to Douki.  The first guy we talked to tried to tell us there is no regular car to Douki, and that we would have to hire out a whole car (his, presumably) to get there.  Luckily we have lived in Africa longer than five minutes, so we knew not to believe him and we went and asked around some more until we found the car.  It took a few hours for the car to fill with passengers and be ready to go, but we had a good time waiting because everyone in Pita (except for the one guy who tried to rip us off) was really friendly.

 

We discovered that in Guinea, the station wagons that in Senegal are known as "7 places" are instead "9 places" because they cram four people into the middle row and two people into the front passenger seat.  However, this can actually make the ride more comfortable - as you are bouncing over giant rocks and potholes, the extra person in the row means that you are crammed in so tightly that there is no room for your body to be sliding around or bouncing up and hitting your head on the roof.  There was some sort of mix up with selling tickets for our car, so when we were ready to go the driver discovered that there were ten people with tickets instead of the regulation nine.  What to do with the extra person?  Have him ride on the roof, of course!

 

After about two hours bouncing up a rocky mountain road, we arrived in Douki.  The villagers pointed us the way to Hassan Bah's guesthouse, about 2 km down a path.  In ten minutes we were there - and discovered that the "luxurious hut" which was going to cost us about $20 each a night was just a regular hut, no fancier than my hut in my village.  And the mattress was just rice sacks sewn together and filled with straw.  And Guinea's Grand Canyon? Nowhere to be seen. 

 

We were pretty disappointed and grumpy to discover that this place was not what we had been expecting.  Luckily, Hassan Bah, the owner of the "guesthouse" showed up right away to take us on a hike.  Which turned out to be absolutely beautiful, which cheered us up right away.  (Although Sira still tried to convince Hassan that $20 a night was way too much to charge people, especially us poor Peace Corps volunteers, to sleep in a hut and eat village food.  But Hassan didn't budge.)

 

We discovered that Hassan Bah considers part of his job to be entertainment, and that he is just Americanized enough to be hilarious.  He grew up in Sierra Leone and worked on cargo ships for years, so he's a lot more worldly than your average villager.  He can juggle and walk on his hands, and he loves making up acronyms: HCH is Hard Core Hiker, and WB is Water Bottle (which he can carry on his head with no hands).  Cigarettes are Cancer Sticks. 

 

So we had a great time, and when we got back from the hike, Hassan's wife had dinner ready for us: the standard Guinean dish of rice with a manioc leaf and peanut sauce.

 

Then it was off to bed on our straw mattresses.

Guinea vacation day 4

The next morning we got up early to finish our bike trip to Labe.  We had planned to give the school principal a little money to thank him for putting us up for the night and giving us dinner, but before we got a chance he pulled me aside and asked me if I could return his hospitality by paying to get his motorcycle fixed.  According to at least Senegalese rules, it is pretty rude to ask for anything in return for hospitality, so Sira and I were surprised and put off by his request.  We decided to just give him the amount we had already planned on, about $5.

 

So we gave him the money and took off.  The villagers had told us that we had about 4 km left of uphill, and after that it would pretty much downhill all the way to Labe.  But it turned out to be the longest 4 km in the world.  For the next two hours we were pushing, and occasionally trying to ride and quickly giving up, our bikes straight uphill.  After about an hour we stopped to take a break and eat a mango, and while we were sitting by the side of the road, who should come zipping up on his motorcycle but the school principal.  He told us that he really appreciated the money we had given him, but he really needed a lot more money to get his motorcycle fixed.  The motorcycle that he had just ridden up the mountain to catch us.  We were so surprised to see him and be asked for money again that we gave him some.  And immediately regretted it.  I am still kicking myself a little bit for giving it to him.  But maybe karma will even things out in the end.

 

So then we continued on.  Uphill.  We passed a house with a big orange grove and stopped to ask if they would sell us some.  We agreed on a price (forget now what it was) for 5 oranges, but then the woman gave us a bunch more for free!  They were the first oranges I've had in months - you can buy them sometimes in Tamba, but they're imported so they're pretty expensive.

 

Finally, about 2 pm, we made it to Labe.  I didn't like the town - there were lots of empty, half-built houses on the way in and it felt kind of creepy.  And then when we got downtown there was terrible air pollution from cars, the worst I've experienced in Africa.  But maybe I just didn't like the city because I was so tired.  We stopped at a restaurant shack and had lunch - sweet potato leaf sauce over rice - very good!  Then we started asking around for where the Peace Corps house is, but people either didn't know or they told us it was in the opposite direction from where the last person we'd asked had told us.  Finally a kid told us he would take us.  But then he just took us to a hotel.  So we thanked him and he left, and then we went inside to ask the hotel owner if he knew the Peace Corps house.  Found out there is no Peace Corps house; in Guinea, volunteers just get vouchers to stay at a hotel.  Score one more point for Senegal.

 

We decided to stay at the hotel we were at, just because we were there and too tired to go looking around town for another place.  They let us stay in a tent in their courtyard for $5 each, and we spent the rest of the afternoon doing laundry (by hand, in a bucket, of course, but at least they had tap water instead of a well).  That evening for dinner we had pizza in the restaurant hotel - a special treat after our two days of riding bikes straight uphill, and it turned out to be the best pizza I've had in Africa.

Guinea vacation day 3

The third day of our vacation my friend Sira and I decided that we would bike to the town of Labe, about 120 km away.  I was pretty intimidated by this plan, but Sira really wanted to do it and I didn't want to be a party pooper.  And Mali is a higher elevation than Labe, so we hoped that it would be a fairly easy, mostly downhill ride.  And I've often ridden between Tamba and my village, which is 70 km and takes only four hours, so we thought we could make it to Labe in one day.

 

So we got up early, stopped for breakfast in town (just coffee and bread) and by 8:30 we were off.  The first several hours were great - mostly downhill, and we were able to go fast enough to get a nice breeze, and there was lots of shade and almost no traffic on the road.  We passed through several villages that just reeked of vinegar.  It took us a while to figure out what it was, but finally we realized that the smell was coming from rotting mangoes.  They have so many mangoes that not only can the people not eat them all, but the goats and sheep can't either!  This is unimaginable luxury in Senegal.  We stopped in one village and asked a woman if she would fill up our water bottles (we had little chlorine pills to put in them so we wouldn't get amoebas or anything else).  After she filled them up we tried to give her about $0.10 to thank her, but she didn't want to take it - giving water to travelers is just expected here.  Finally she agreed to take it, but insisted on giving us some mangoes - and they turned out to be the best mangoes I have ever eaten.  I started thinking about moving to Guinea - I could live there a really long time with almost no money, with food as cheap as it is.  Only problem is I couldn't live without internet!

 

The good times couldn't last forever though, so by about 1 pm, just as it was starting to get pretty hot, we came out of our nice mountains onto a flat plain with no shade.  No more coasting downhill, and pretty soon we were going uphill.  The soft dirt and gravel road made it really hard to get traction for the bikes, so we ended up having to push them uphill a lot.  It was hot and exhausting.  We would push our bikes up a hill, praying that around the curve the road was flat or even downhill.  And every time, it was just more uphill.  For hours.  And every time we would stop for a few minutes to rest, gnats would attack us, trying to get into our eyes and nose, forcing us to get up and keep going.  I was hating life.  If I had been by myself, I think I might have just given up, laid down by the side of the road and cried.  Or at least tried to hitch a ride on a passing truck.  But I wasn't going to be a wimp in front of my friend, so I kept going.

 

By 4 pm we had only made it about 80 km (compare that to the 70 km in 4 hours I can do in nice flat Tamba!), so we decided it was time to give up for the day.  We started looking for a village where we could ask to spend the night.  The first place we stopped, hardly more than one family, and the woman we spoke to said that all the men were away from the village, so she couldn't give us permission to stay here.  So we had to keep going.  Up the never-ending mountain.  Did I mention I was hating life?

 

But at the next village we came to we had better luck.  The villagers said that we could sleep at their primary school, where the school principal and his family also live.  So they opened up one of the classrooms for us, and we set up our tent inside (mainly to keep bugs out).  The principal's wife gave us dinner - a sauce made of cassava leaves and crushed peanuts over rice.  It was delicious.  It would probably have been polite for us to sit around the fire and socialize with the family a bit, but we were both too exhausted.  Hopefully the family didn't think we were too rude for going to bed right away. 

Guinea vacation day 2

We got up early and went into town to find breakfast - rice and peanut porridge from a woman on the street.  Then we went to the tourist office, where we met a very friendly old man who wanted to escort us all over town.  We had a hard time getting rid of him, but after about an hour we finally succeeded.  We visited the women's cooperative, which was recommended by our guidebook, but instead of women we found one man weaving cloth.  We watched him for a while and bought some cloth as a souvenir.

 

Walking around town, I passed the first woman I've ever seen wearing a full burqa - everything was covered up except for her hands and her eyes.  She even had socks on with her sandals.  I wondered where she's from, why she wears a burqa when no one else does.  I suppose it would probably not have been rude at all, but just very African of us, to go up to her and start asking her personal questions, but the burqa was kind of intimidating so we didn't talk to her.

 

On the other end of the spectrum, we also saw the first drunk person I've seen in Africa.  In Senegal, Christians or Muslims who aren't particularly observant may drink at home or in bars, but no one dares to go out in public intoxicated.  So score one point for Senegal over Guinea.

 

In the afternoon we went for a hike with a local guy we hired as our guide to see the "Dame de Mali" (Lady of Mali), a cliff with the profile of a woman's face that is supposedly entirely natural, not man-made.  The resemblance was so clear, though, that I'm a little skeptical about it being natural.

 

Some first impressions of Guinea:  It's beautiful!  The mountains and greenness and cooler weather were a wonderful change from dusty brown Tamba.  It seemed a lot cleaner too, probably because trash and dirt get washed down the mountains by the rain.  The guidebooks made us think that Guinea was going to be a lot poorer than Senegal, but in Mali everyone lived in nice "batiment" (brick and concrete) houses, and the kids looked much more well-fed, probably because there are so many more mangoes and other fruit growing everywhere.  Another nice change was that there were no "talibes", beggar children asking for money.  Bad news for me, though, only Pulaar is spoken in the region.  Even Jaxankes I met only spoke Pulaar!  So I had a hard time talking to people unless they spoke French, but luckily I had my Pulaar-speaking friend Sira with me, and by the end of the trip I was able to learn a few Pulaar phrases.

 

So the final score at the end of my first day: Guinea 5, Senegal 2.

Guinea trip photos

Photos from my Guinea trip are finally up!

New photos posted

Photos from my trip to Bassari country in Kedougou are up!