So, I was back in Gougoudje and my right foot was starting to swell up. There was a small red bump on the top and a large bump on my ankle. Foot infections are very common in Guinea, probably because it is pretty hard to keep your feet nice and clean all the time. You either have to wash them constantly or where close toed shoes all the time which can be a pain. During the rainy season, exposed feet get covered with mud. During the dry season, exposed feet get covered with dust. And there isn’t much in between the mud and the dust. I suspected that the swelling was being caused by an infection of some sort. By this time you may have already heard about this incident because I believe my mom made a post about it on facebook. Anyway, I was also concerned that the lump on my ankle (which seemed to be growing) being caused by something else. I’ll warn you now, if you’re easily grossed out, you may want to skip the next paragraph.

So, during PST we learned about several nasty sounding insects, one of which was the Tumbu Fly. This fly lays its eggs on your clothes while they’re outside drying. Then when the eggs hatch, they burrow under your skin and grow. When they have reached adult size, they emerge from your skin and fly away. Super gross right? Well, I had recently suffered a particularly itchy mosquito bite on my ankle which I had stupidly scratched open. The wound had almost healed but the skin was new and very week. A perfect place for the fly to lay its eggs. I had also just worn socks that weren’t dry yet and had been sitting out all day.

I was concerned enough about the swelling by the time I got back to site that I called the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer) and asked if I could come in for treatment before I left for Senegal. I was very excited to see Kelsey and I didn’t want a foot infection to ruin the trip. I got the ok to come into Conakry and they gave me some powerful antibiotics that took care of the infection which turned out to be the small red bump on the top of my foot. The other bump on my ankle remained a mystery. I still don’t know exactly what it was. But no flies ever came out so it wasn’t the Tumbu Fly! If you don’t believe me that such an awful creature exists, read this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumbu_fly

I had left for Conakry on Friday and by Tuesday night my foot was feeling much better so I hopped in a bush taxi early on Wednesday morning to start my trip to Senegal…

The tale of Geoff’s cursed keys...

On June 7^th, 2013 Geoff Delperdang and I climbed into a bush taxi bound for Kindia. We were promptly joined by Caleb upon our arrival and spent the afternoon waiting at the bank to receive large wads of Guinean francs. After eating some dinner and meeting some volunteers who had just finished their service in Morocco, we made our way to Michelle’s house where we had arranged to spend the night. It was a bit of a walk and when we were about halfway there, someone (probably me) commented on how it hadn’t rained all day. Within 2 minutes it was pouring. By the time we got to Michelle’s house we were completely soaked. We were also pretty tired so we changed our wet clothes and went to bed. The next morning we headed back into town for a day of food and internet. We spent a good portion of the afternoon sitting at a restaurant purchasing whatever the people who walked by happened to be selling. We joked about how we were being “patrons” but in reality I don’t think any of us spent over $3.00. After patron day, we ate some pizza for dinner. Then the group split and half of us went dancing with the Moroccan volunteers and the other half spent the night at Chico’s farm near Kindia where they would be attending various PC functions the following day. It was a wonderful weekend in Kindia and I was a bit sad on Sunday morning when I had to leave. I packed up my stuff which was still a bit damp and grabbed a few of Geoff’s items that he had left drying at Michelle’s place. Then I headed out to climb into a bush taxi bound for Telimele.

Geoff came back on Tuesday and because I had left my bike at his site 30km away, I hopped in the taxi with him when he passed by Gougoudje. I was planning on getting to his site, hopping on my bike, and riding back to Gogoudje the same evening. If we got delayed because of taxi breakdowns or some other such thing, I would just spend the night at Geoff’s and go back in the morning. Perfect plan. The only problem was, as soon as we got to Geoff’s, he realized that he had forgotten the key to his house in his shorts, which he had left drying at Michelle’s in Kindia, which I had brought back to Gougoudje but had now left sitting in my hut. Then it started pouring. We sat on his neighbor’s porch contemplating what to do. This is what we came up with:

1.       We spend the night with our site mate Dee

2.       I borrow Dee's bike in the morning (mine was locked in Geoff’s house) and ride to Gougoudje to retrieve the shorts

3.       I bike back to Telimele on Dee’s bike and hand the shorts and keys off to a moto-taxi who delivers them to Geoff

4.       Geoff opens his house, hops on my bike and rides to meet me in Telimele

5.       We then exchange bikes and I ride my bike back to Gougoudje and Geoff rides Dee’s bike back to his site

The next morning, I hopped on Dee’s bike and headed out. The plan was complex but seemed to be working alright. It was a little challenging riding Dee’s small bike but I still made it back to Gougoudje in less than 2 hours. I grabbed the goods, got back on, and rode to Telimele where I ran into one of Dee’s counterparts who agreed to deliver the keys to Dee who would in turn deliver them to Geoff. This is where things started to fall apart, after waiting for a couple hours in Telimele and trying to contact Geoff and Dee numerous times, I found out that Geoff was feeling sick (with potential malaria) and didn’t feel up to riding so Dee was going ride my bike to Telimele and then we would exchange bikes as planned. Ok. No problem right? Well, unfortunately I forgot to inform Dee that I don’t use some of the lower gears on my bike because I couldn’t get the derailleur screws set correctly and the derailleur shifts too far into the spokes if you try to use those gears. Lacking this critical knowledge, Dee attempted to use these gears and the derailleur shifted into the spokes and was pretty much snapped in half. I was certainly not able to repair it so we walked it back to Dee’s and I spent the night at Geoff’s place. The next morning I rode Geoff’s bike to Dee’s, then walked my bike to the taxi gare, tossed it on top of a taxi and headed for Telimele. After arriving in Telimele, I hopped on and rolled most of the way back to Gougoudje. Luckily it’s mostly downhill. When I finally got back to site (on Thursday afternoon), I noticed that my right foot was starting to swell up…

I’ve been living in Africa for a year!

Once again I apologize for the long gaps between my blog posts. I really don’t have a good excuse this time. I was even in Senegal recently where the Internet is abundant and I couldn’t bring myself to sit in front of the computer for an hour or two. It can be pretty overwhelming to come back to the Internet after being away for a month or more. Luckily, I am now in Conakry getting some work done and I’ve had enough time to take the Internet in small doses until I could build up a tolerance again haha. It’s been so long that I’m sure there are a few things that I wanted to write about that I have now completely forgotten. Instead of summarizing the last two, perhaps three months, I will tell you about several important events over the course of several automated blog posts. There will be stories and pictures and maybe even a video! I’ll start with a school related update.

The end of school was rather chaotic this year because Guinea’s legislative elections were planned for the 30^th of June, just after the national exams usually wrap up. Because of the close proximity to elections, the government decided to move all the exams up by about 2 weeks. This changed the 10^th grade exam from the second week of June to the last week of May, giving us two weeks less to prepare our students for the exam. Luckily, I was almost finished with the math program and we were able to breeze through the last couple sections and start reviewing for the brevet blanc, a practice for the national exam that I got to write the math questions for. My students took the brevet blanc about three weeks before the actual brevet. I tried to make the questions as similar to real brevet questions as possible so my students would know what level of difficulty to expect. They did alright on some portions of the brevet blanc (biology, history) but they really struggled with my math questions and with chemistry too. After the test, I was in charge of compiling all the scores from the different sections and calculating the overall grade for the test. This is part of my job as the professeur principal for the 10eme class. If the brevet blanc was an accurate representation of the real brevet, it seemed like about 50% of my kids would pass test and continue on to lycee (high school). This was actually a pretty high percentage compared to a lot of other schools. After the brevet blanc was over, a lot of my students stopped coming to class. It was hard to encourage them to come too because the brevet blanc was their last official grade for the year. They started showing up again about a week before the real brevet for the review sessions that I had prepared. The real brevet began on May 27^th in a nearby (18km) town called Sinta that served as a testing center schools in our area. Math was On the very last day of testing so I planned to ride my bike to Sinta on Thursday, which was a non-test day and on Friday to give math reviews. I was excited to see my students show up to my reviews in large numbers accompanied by students from other schools as well. It also seemed like they had done some studying during those days they had skipped class which I guess is good haha.

After the real brevet was finished the only thing I had left to do was give the final exams for Geography and Math to my 9eme class. After I finished grading these exams I was done for the school year! It was a bittersweet moment because I was relieved to be done with the exhausting aspects of teaching, like grading, but I felt like there were still so many things I could teach my students. Luckily, some of them requested that I continue math review sessions throughout the summer and even more asked me to come to their villages and teach English which I have been doing on a daily basis since returning from Senegal. Upon my return, I also learned that 91% of my 10eme students had passed the brevet and would have the opportunity to continue on to lycee! Although I knew that some of them had probably figured out a way to cheat on a national exam, this was still a pretty exceptional success rate and I was very proud of them for putting in a lot of hard work throughout the year. I’m even more excited about my 9eme students who will get to spend a second yeah with Monsieur Ben. These are the kids who ask me to hold reviews and come during the summer even when it rains. They have great potential and I’m excited to see where they go! So long for now! I’ll leave you with a schedule of future blog post topics so you can know what’s coming. Check back once a week to see if my automated posts are working…

Geoff’s cursed keys

Feet

Senegal

Ramadan

Also, here are some pictures!

This is my awesome collection of Guinean pants! My favorite is the second from the left...

This is what the stinking wind did to the fence behind my hut. It's all fixed now though!

Aussi, le vent a decoiffe notre 10eme! We collected the pieces of the roof and a carpenter fixed it rather quickly.

Luckily the map of Guinea I'd been working on wasn't damaged

It's not finished in this photo. I finished it right before leaving for Senegal but forgot to take a picture...

Happy World Malaria Day!

I'm actually a day late with this post. World Malaria day was yesterday but as I mentioned, here in Guinea we made April Malaria Month.

So what is the big deal with Malaria anyway? It's hardly every mentioned in the US. When's the last time you heard of someone getting Malaria? This is unfortunately not the case in West Africa where Malaria is the biggest health problem facing many countries. The tropical climate as well as a lack of resources and education are the main reasons for this. Guinea is one of the rainiest countries in West Africa, recieving more than a meter of rain per month during the peak of the rainy season. All this rain provides a greed breeding environment for mosquitoes and the prevalence of Malaria rises during the rainy season. The lack of resources to fight malaria is also a problem but this is changing as mosquito net distribution campaigns are currently underway and new malaria drugs are coming down the pipeline. This leaves the problem of general knowledge about the dangers of Malaria.Spreading lifesaving knowledge like how to use a mosquito net, medicines available for pregnant women, and the demographics most affected by malaria is the best way to fight "le paludisme." Education is also where we as volunteers, can have the biggest impact. YOU can help too! Because most people in the US have never even heard of Malaria, telling people about it can raise awareness about the problem that the developing world is facing. Feel free to share any of my stories. The scale of the problem is really crazy. So big in fact, that on average, one child dies every minute from malaria and there were 216 million cases reported around the world in 2010. This is why Peace Corps has developed the Stomp Out Malaria initiative. It's a big deal. Here are some resources if you'd like to learn more:

President's Malaria Initiative: http://www.pmi.gov/
Stomp Out Malaria's facebook: http://www.facebook.com/StompOutMalaria?group_id=0

Seeeeee ya!

Here's another attempt at an automated blog post. For this one I'll give you a quick lesson in Pular, the language spoken in the Fuuta region of Guinea. Pular is a very rich language with tons of interesting verbs and a system of articles. Here are some of the things I say pretty much everyday:

On jaraama = I greet you
Tanna alaa ton? = Is there no evil there?
Jam tun = Peace only
Hii-hi = Yes
O'o or O'owooye = No
Awa = Ok
No marsude? = How's it going?
No marsude seeda. = It's going alright
No marsude fota! = It's going well!
Oo-o! = Goodbye!
En bimbi. = See you in the morning.
En kiikiide. = See you this afternoon.
Si Alla jabi = God willing.
Ko jelu? = How much?
No Moyyi! = That's good!

This is how I would introduce myself in Pular: On jaraama! Ko Mr. Ben mi ineete. Ko min janoowo mathematik. Mi iwi amerik e mi hoday ka la guinee duubi didi. Ko Gougoudje mi woni.

Translation: Hello. My name is Mr. Ben. I am a math teacher. I came from the US and I'm going to live here for two years. I live in Gougoudje.

Hope you enjoyed the Pular lesson! There are apparantly a decent number of Pular speakers living in the US so if you ever meet someone with the last name Diallo, there's a decent chance that they're from Guinea and might speak Pular!

Also, check out this link where you can download the Pular book they give to PCVs:
http://www.ibamba.net/pular/

And here's a picture of me making some fresh peanut butter! That's the Sous-Prefet's wife next to me haha.

Hello! I am currently in Kindia wrapping up my spring break. It’s been a good week. Last Wednesday, after giving a review session to my 10e students, I rode my bike out to Geoff’s site where we did a sensibilisation about malaria and talked about the importance of using mosquito nets. This was the start of our malaria sensibilisation bike tour. The next morning we continued to my site where we did another sensibilisation and Geoff and I explored a cave near Gougoudje (hopefully I’ll be able to put up some pictures). On Friday we rode to Sinta, a town about 20 km south of Gougoudje. We led a Malaria discussion with a group of 10e students there and then we talked to the school principal about the school and the village because a new volunteer will be coming to teach there in July. I am pretty excited about this because I will have a new neighbor that I don’t have to ride up a mountain to visit! After being treated to some rice and sauce by the principal of Sinta, we continued on to Konkoure which is about midway between Telimele and Kindia. We gave a sensibilisation in Konkoure and then went for a very refreshing swim in a beautiful river. At one point we thought we saw some poop floating by and thought maybe swimming in the river wasn’t such a good idea after all but then one of our Guinean friends grabbed it out of the water and explained that it was just a type of nut from a tree haha. The next day was a long a difficult ride to Kindia. It was very hot and dusty and the road was very bumpy but after about 5 hours of pedaling and some hydration breaks, we rolled into Kindia around 1 and went immediately to a restaurant to get some food. Then we got in a little bit of internet time and got some absolutely delicious soft serve ice cream. On Saturday night we stayed with an agro-forestry volunteer who works on an organic farm South of Kindia. The farm was very impressive with sections devoted to pineapples, palm trees, cashews, and watermelons, as well as spaces for raising chickens, ducks, and rabbits. They were also working on building an “outdoor restaurant” where guests would be able to pick out the food they eat directly from the garden. On Sunday we had a long but much easier ride on paved roads into Coyah where we met up with Dante and then rode to his site in Wonkifong. The next day we did a sensibilisation in a nearby village and helped hang up some mosquito nets. It was rewarding to do something that would almost certainly directly impact the health of the community. It was also surprising how many people had nets but hadn’t hung them up yet. This was the main focus of our sensibilisations. On Monday night we were joined by Caleb. We spent the next few days hanging out in Wonkifong, visiting Forecariah (South of Conakry), doing another sensibilisation, swimmimg in rivers, and having an epic late night squirt gun battle. In summary, it was a fantastic week. It was really nice to spend some time with other volunteers and just relax for a little bit. The malaria sensibilisations were also a lot of fun and it seemed like we were able to get the message across. All of these malaria related activities correspond with a competition we are having between the 3 different regions of Guinea. Volunteers can earn points for their regions by doing certain activities. At the end of the month, the region with the most points wins. The competition corresponds with World Malaria Day which is at the end of April. However, because Malaria is such a huge problem in West Africa, we decided to make April Malaria month. Check back in a few weeks for a post concerning Malaria in West Africa and the impact Peace Corps volunteers in Guinea are making. So long for now! Hope everyone is enjoying Springtime in the US!

Ben

Gougoudje kids watching a soccer game

Ragoo - a combo of cassava, squash, and sweet potatoes. It's very tasty

The cave in Gougoudje

A really cool tree

Fixing a flat en route a Coyah

Geoff and Dante putting up a net

Successfully hung net!

Sunset during a soccer game in Gougoudje

Swimming in a river near Coyah

Malaria sensibilisation!

Hello!

I would first like to apologize for not posting for so long. It's been difficult to find internet access lately and when it's available it is extremely slow. Right now I am at IST or in service training. We talked a lot about our secondary projects which we will be working on during summer break. I'm not sure fpr sure what I'll be doing yet but I've talked to a few people about starting a school lunch program. Right now students get to school at 7:45 and leave a little before 2, sometimes without having eaten for that entire time. This is definitely a barrier to learning as the students are tired and just want to go home by the time the last class period comes around. It doesn't help that this is also the hottest part of the day and we certainly don't have AC. Some other smaller projects I've been considering are wall murals, Malaria or HIV/AIDS sensibiisations, and a school garden. We had a really cool session during this week of training where everyone shared their project ideas. It definitely got me motivated and I'm excited to see what we accomplish as a group.

There are a ton of stories I could tell now but unfortunately I just don't have the time to type them all up. Geoff and I are planning to go to Conakry in a couple weeks for a traning related to Malaria Month which is this April so I will probably have access to good internet then. For now, I'll leave you with these photos.


Just kidding. The internet is to slow and I can't get them to load. Maybe in a few weeks. Later!