Peace Corps Guinea: January 2006

January 12th I met the new group of Guinea volunteers (G11) in Philadelphia for a few days of general introduction before our flight to Conakry via Brussels. G11 includes 37 public health, agroforestry, and small enterprise development volunteers from across the United States, aged 21-38. We flew above the western mangrove swamps on our way to Conakry. We didn’t see a car, road, person, house... any sign of life... for most of the ride until we hit Conakry. We were murmuring on the plane, wondering just what we were getting ourselves into. Darkness descended and we left the tiny airport for the Conakry night. We were suddenly engulfed in the smells of the capital, overpowered by the stench of burning garbage. Candles flickered all around us as women fried snacks. We piled into our big white bus and drove through the candlelit night to the Conakry office and volunteer transit house. The next day we bussed up-country to a forestry school in Mamou for a few days of general Guinea orientation. The climate changed from hot and muggy to chilly in the evenings in the hills. We learned what not to do (give things with your left hand, for example) and how to perform the most elementary of things (using a squat latrine and showering with a bucket).

A few days later we were piling back into the bus. We drove back west and then south towards Sierra Leone. Lush and tropical, we crossed a bridge over the wide river, drove down the tree-lined road from the market, and entered our new training site office. We had arrived in Foracariah, our home for the next 12 weeks. We nervously changed into our best outfits for the community’s welcome ceremony. The Peace Corps and community officials gave brief speeches, and we chose a member of our training group to deliver a speech in French to our new homestay families.

As they called out our names one by one, we sat with our new homestay families. My new mom brought her tiny young baby, Issiaga, to the ceremony, along with my dad and aunt. Next we dragged our luggage to our new homes, embarassed by the display of sheer wealth in comparison to our new surroundings. We wove between concrete house and mud huts down a hill for awhile and I wondered how I would ever find my way to and from the house for training. The family gave me my own room; the kids all shared mats on the floor in the storage room and my parents slept in their room with the baby. We had a four-room house, with a nicely decorated living room and latrine and shower area out back.

Sometimes I would go to the market with my mom on the weekends to buy produce to make sauce for the rice. I helped pound the vegetables for sauce, pulled water from the well, learned to do my laundry with a washboard, and played with my homestay siblings. My family knew I was working on improving my local language, Pular, and worked to speak with me in Pular instead of French.

Training consisted of group sessions to learn cultural norms, medical self-treatment, security, and logistics. We broke off for smaller groups for sectoral learning (agroforestry in my case) and language learning. Once achieving a certain level of French, volunteers began local language classes. I attended some French classes in the beginning, but chose to continue Pular study on my own. Soon I would return to the village I was previously assigned, so I knew which local language I needed to learn. The new trainees studied French and waited a month before their sites were announced so they could start local language training.

Though a second round of training was at times repetetive and frustrating, I was glad to integrate with the new group of volunteers with whom I would spend my 2 years of service in Guinea. My friends from the previous group helped out with the training in one-week segments, so it was also a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with them. After 6 weeks of training, Peace Corps agreed that I was ready to begin my service at site. Our training group went to see our sites for the first time for a week-long site visit with neighboring volunteers. I had a rare opportunity to do my site visit with the volunteer who was finishing up her service at my site. It was amazing to hear her perspective after 6 months in my village for work projects and insight about community members. She and her husband, who had recently returned to the States to start his new job, had prepared tree nurseries for me in the village. It really helped to have a small project up and running to keep me occupied and focused. The leaders of the village held a ceremony for the two of us, to celebrate her departure and my arrival. We gave them packets of kola nuts, a caffeinated nut traditionally used for ceremonies and given as a sign of respect.