Counterpart Workshop and Site Visit

After 6 weeks of training, we traveled to the city of Mamou for our counterpart workshop. Each Peace Corps volunteer is formally linked with a counterpart in his or her program area. Agroforesters are paired with the Forestry Chief for their districts. My counterpart, Mamadou Korka Balde, seemed interested in working with me on reforestation projects and mud stove construction. He also planned on introducing me to the area groupements (organized groups of people with common goals: selling dried mangoes or fruit trees, for example).

We were supposed to travel to our sites from Mamou for a week-long site visit. Unfortunately, there was an assassination attempt on the Guinean President, Lansana Conte, the week before and the police and military had increased their presence on the roads (they stop all cars for bribes at illegal road checkpoints). Peace Corps decided we were not ready to travel across the country on our own with the increased police presence, so site visit was rescheduled and we returned back to the training site.

Two weeks later we traveled to our sites for the first time. A group of us traveling to the Fouta squished into a cab for a 7 hour taxi ride. We met some of the current volunteers serving in the region, ate a yummy dinner they cooked for us, and played a rousing game of "Celebrity." The Labe regional house is a little Peace Corps haven with movies, music tapes, a kitchen with stove and spice rack, and American pop culture magazines on the coffee table. My closest neighbor at site, an education volunteer named Brian, showed my friend Melanie and me around to our sites. Brian's site is a 20 minute bike ride from mine, Melanie's is 1.5 hrs, and Labe is 1.5 hrs. We spent one night at each site and took taxis between them. We donned our traditional Guinean attire each morning as we moved to a new site and met with the village leaders.

We visited my site on market day. I stepped out of the taxi into a sea of color. Women were selling all kinds of fruits and vegetables, peanut butter, plastics, etc. The district president showed me my house. It's concrete with high tin roofs and includes a bedroom, salon, and porch. The house is surrounded by a brick wall and in the wet season corn grows in the front yard. A public latrine is in the front corner by the gate (but hopefully that will disappear when I move in?). There isn't electricity or running water, but there's a solar-powered pump put in by a German non-governmental organization with amazing water pressure in the middle of town.

I met the elders of the village and the leaders of the women's groupement in a formal ceremony in a small room off of the main street. They led me around the village to tour the water pump and schools. The village already uses a sensibilization center (place for community awareness meetings on topics of health and environmental issues) and an adult literacy center. One man I met was encouraging the use of mud stoves and showed me two he had built for women in the center of the village. It was exciting to see a community so motivated for self-improvement.

After a great break from the everyday grind of training, we returned back to the training site outside of the capital for a few short weeks. We practiced giving community sensibilizations on agroforestry topics. My individual presentation was on intercropping possibilities in the Guinean garden.