season's updates

elephant poo...still warm, they must be close!

Here's a quick rundown of how life's been since November. Or October, I'm slacking. Anyways, here goes...

October...
...was the month of Ramadan, which means everyone fasts during the day and then as soon as the sun goes down starts eating as much as they can stuff in, passes out and gets up at first prayer call (5am) to eat again before sunrise. Oh, no water allowed during the day either, which some people take to mean they can't even swallow so there's a lot of spitting all the time. Gross. I decided to try fasting in solidarity (without the spitting part), can't be too bad right? I lasted 3 days. Ramadan lasts 30. Oops! But I spent my time well, the GRE was being offered out here at the end of October and I thought well hey, everyone in my town is grumpy in the afternoon anyways because it's hot and they haven't eaten all day, might as well spend my time hiding from them and studying for the GRE. Brilliant reasoning, right? Well anyways that's how the month disappeared and now I'm halfway set for grad school once I get back, yay! And then in

November...
...I started teaching health classes at three elementary schools in the district, one in town and two out in the boonies, which means beautiful walks to work two days a week and a two minute commute another day. Plus getting to know some kids in town and trying to pass on important health info all while getting great lessons in French when my 12 year-old students correct me (always fun). That kept me busy until Thanksgiving, when I went to the regional capital to whip up a feast with the Fouta crew. We ate well, real well. The US government was kind enough to ship over a turkey and it made the trip without even getting completely defrosting despite the eight hour taxi ride. And fyi it's amazing how close you can get to pumpkin pie with local squash and papaya. Try it next time you're in the tropics ;). In

December...
I decided that if I had to spend Christmas away from family I might as well make it memorable, so my friend Andrea and I took a trip to the exotic and mysterious forest region of Guinea, home to animists, chimps, and elephants! We got a free ride on the World Food Program flight along with a couple of hundred pounds of rice. First time I've ever landed on a dirt runway in a two-prop plane, felt like a pretty adventurous start. Our first mission was to track and find the elusive forest elephant, so we headed off into the Seredou mountains where we found a guide who knew a village where a herd of elephants had passed the night. We headed off into the jungle on foot behind the machete-wielding, chain-smoking guides, first down a dirt road walled in by thick jungle leafyness and then we came to a tunnel the elephants had muscled through the brush. The guides turned off and then the real fun began, following elephant footprints, jumping over broken tree trunks and dodging vines, fighting of biting ants falling out of the trees, slogging through rice fields in knee-deep mud, generally having an awesomely fun time--but no elephants. We found some elephant poo, but sadly it was cold. Yeah, I checked. After a hard morning of hiking our guard took pity on us and took us back to his village where he had us sit and found us a couple of liters of palm wine to drink. At 9 in the morning. With the whole village watching. But it's ok, they joined in too! Life in the forest is different than life in muslim land....

We were more successful in ForestMission pt. 2, which was finding real live wild forest chimps. There's this town called Boussou where the villagers hold chimps as their totemic animals and have created a protected place for them to live. Andrea and I camped out at a research station there and went off into the mountains where we spotted a chimp dining on fruit above us in the trees, swinging around on branches and chucking down fruit bits on our heads. It was awesome. She climbed down her tree maybe 20 feet away from us, gave us a good look, and scampered off uphill, screaming like a madwoman. We took that to mean "get the heck away from me!" and backed off, but it was really neat!

After feasting on fried plantains for a week we decided that we wanted to spend Christmas a little more traditionally, so we headed off to a volunteer's site up country, going up a road so bad that overturned semis are landmarks and the road dips down into 15 foot potholes gouged out during the rainy season. Bad ride. But at the end we had friends and feasting and homemade Christmas stockings. It was great :)

January...
...started getting a little weird. We got news that a general strike was going to be called against the government so Peace Corps had us sit tight at our sites. I decided to spend the strike at my neighbor Amy's house (her town has actual communication, like cell phone reception and a working radio, plus having people to hang out with is never bad). The four of us in town got together every night and made regional cuisine, like Chinese night (excellent sweet and sour) and Ghetto Southern night (lots of fried things). It was a great time, right up until the strike got violent--not in our town, but in other, bigger towns around Guinea. Peace Corps decided to move us out of the country to wait for things to settle down, so we packed up (one bag each) and convoyed off to Bamako, Mali. Now all 105 of us are hanging out at the training compound here in Mali and waiting to see what's going to happen next.