Site visit stories...

As I mentioned in the last post, site visit was a crazy but excellent experience. Here are a few brief stories to paint you a picture of my life during the last week:

The Introduction
The day I arrived in Gougoudje also happened to be the last day of Ramadan, meaning that the fete de Ramadan would be taking place the following day. I wasn't sure what to expect. The only thing I knew for sure is that there would be a lot of eating involved because everyone had been on jeune (fast) during the day for the last 30 days and was looking forward to eating when the sun was still out. I woke up around 8:30 on the morning of the fete and chatted with the physics teacher who lives right next to me for a bit. Around 9:30, everyone changed into fancy outfits and started walking toward the center of the village. They invited me to come along so I put on a nice shirt and joined them. We made our way to a spot designated for communal prayer and everyone unfolded their mats and sat down. Someone was playing a drum close by which was cool. More and more people kept filing in and the prayer space quickly overflowed. After about 200-250 had arrived, we prayed and listened to something read in another language (I'm guessing Arabic). After that a few people left and the people in the front motioned for me to come and sit down with them. Then the sous-prefet started making a speech. Instead of using a microphone, he spoke to another man in French who translated it to Pular (the local language) and then relayed it to another man who stood up and yelled it. I imagine most small villages have a "yeller" like this for large community meetings. I was so intrigued by this new system of communication that it took me a minute or so to realize the speech was all about me. I didn't understand all of it but I gathered that the sous-prefet gave me a very nice introduction and thanked me for my future two years of service to the community. The experience was very moving and got me pretty pumped about teaching math in Gougoudje. Also, I am now known as Monsieur Ben.

The pump by my hut where I get good cellphone reception and sometimes water

Telimele
On Wednesday (8/22) I left Gougoudje for Telimele to meet up with Rick and Jeff for our trip to Conakry. I thought the road between Kindia and Gougoudje was bad but it turns out that the last nine miles between Googoudje and Telimele were exponentially worse. There were spots where we had to drive through streams, over solid rock, or straddle ruts deep enough to swallow the whole wheel. The 15km trip took about 45 minutes. The road was almost exclusively uphill and I quickly realized that biking to Telimele would be a serious workout. I was dropped off at a gas station where I met up with Rick and we walked back to his house. His house was donated by a wealthy family and is very nice. When Geoff arrived we chatted for a while and then ventured out in the dark and pouring rain for some late night food. Normally walking around a town at night is not much of an adventure but then again, most towns that I've adventured in before have power and paved roads. We headed out with our headlamps and impermeables (rain coats) and after a 15 minute walk we arrived, soaking wet, at a late night restaurant in central area of town. A burger was on the menu but I was a little skeptical so I ordered an omelet instead which turned out to be just fried eggs but was still pretty good. Rick tried the "hamburger" which was actually an egg sandwich with a little bit of beef as well. He said it was good though so I think I'll try it next time. Also, there was a TV with Gladiator playing. Eating fried eggs under a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling watching Gladiator with a generator humming in the background pretty much sums up the experience. After dinner we walked back to Rick's place and went to bed early because we were going to catch the 7:00am taxi to Conakry.

Waiting for our taxi to be ready in Telimele (that's the "road" behind me)

Telimele to Conakry by Bush Taxi
Geoff, Rick, and I woke up at 5:30am on Thursday morning to find a bush taxi going from Telimele to Conakry. Rick's supervisor was kind enough to get the taxi situation organized for us. We walked to the gare with him around 6:30 and handed over the 80,000 GNF for the voyage to Conakry. After grabbing some baguettes for breakfast, we piled into the Peugeot 505 with 11 other people and some live chickens lashed to the roof. It took a while for us to leave Telimele because we kept stopping to pick up more people until we got to 14 total which seemed to satisfy the driver. At one point, we stopped on a bit of a downhill and the driver got out to round up some more passengers. He had left the car in neutral and we started to roll down the hill without him but luckily he was only a few steps away and jumped back in and applied the brakes. We finally left around 7:30 and for some reason, I had to use the restroom 3 times in the first 3 hours. Luckily, we stopped 3 times and I got to run off into the woods or behind a building to relieve myself. We stopped in a small town for a food break about 3 hours in and I got one of my favorite market snacks: sugared peanuts. After about 5 hours on the "road" we arrived back in Kindia and took another short break. We bought some petite gateaus or small bits of fried dough which were delicious. Then we had paved roads the rest of the way to Conakry. It took us another 3 hours to get to Conakry and we had to pass through several military/police checkpoints where they checked the IDs of everyone in the car before we could continue. At one point, the right rear wheel started making an unpleasant sound so we stopped and the driver got out and did something that did not involve changing the tire but apparently fixed the problem because the noise stopped. We arrived at a gare (transportation hub) in Conakry at 4:30 and climbed into another smaller taxi which took us to another gare. From here, we attempted to walk to PC headquarters but made a wrong turn and had to ask for directions. We found a taxi driver who said he could take us there for 25,000 GNF so we climbed in his taxi because it was going to be getting dark soon and we didn't want to be lost in Conakry at night. Unfortunately, the driver didn't actually know where the office was and we had to ask some people on the street. It's a good thing Geoff and Rick have good French skills because my French speaking abilities decrease exponentially as I get tired and I was pretty exhausted at this point. The guy we asked ended up getting in the car with us and telling the driver exactly how to get there. We finally arrived around 7:30 just as the sun was going down. We dropped off our stuff at the house and then walked down to the beach to get some food and relax after a crazy 12 hours of Guinean transportation.

Our ride to Conakry