Hi From Haute

Bonjour tout le monde!

It’s time for a long overdue update. So I’ve been in Guinea for just about a month and now that my life in training is pretty well established I figure I’ll give you guys an overview of how I spend my time here.
Monday through Friday I have to be at training site by 8:00am which means I’m up by 7:00. Before I leave for the day my mom gives me breakfast which is always bread and tea. At the training site we have 4 different courses each day with small breaks in between. There’s always at least one language course and the rest are a mix of technical training, culture, health, safety and security, and more lang.
Our trainers are mostly Guinean and they’re an awesome group of people. All of them are completely over qualified for their jobs (there are two former Fulbright scholars on staff) and the fact that they’ve decided to work with Peace Corps instead of taking a higher paying job elsewhere really says a lot about their dedication to their country’s well being.
At midday we get a break for lunch. Tuesdays and Thursdays they feed us at the facility and we usually get some combination of rice, sauce, salad, and various other deliciousness. Bureau lunch (as it’s called) is always a cause for celebration.
Monday, Wednesday, Friday we’re on our own for lunch and I usually go to the market and get food there. Choices in the market are pretty limited and I usually get rice and sauce, an egg sandwich, or meat on a stick.
Rice and sauce is by far the most popular meal here. I’d say the Guineans I know eat it for at least two meals a day. Every day. Always. There are three different kinds of sauce, leaf sauce, soup sauce, and peanut sauce. It’s all pretty good but it can get a little monotonous at times. And there are rocks in the food because everyone dries their rice by spreading it out on the street.
After lunch there’s more training until 5:00. At which point I usually head home and hang out with my family. My family here is really amazing and my parents are two of the kindest people I’ve met in my life. They’re always willing to help me with my French and they never lose their patience with me no matter how inept I prove at figuring out life here. They don’t have any direct children but the family unit in Guinea is really fluid and right now I have two cousins living with us.
I usually eat around 7:30 or so and dinner is always plain spaghetti with meat, avocado salad, or french fries. That is, of course, my dinner. My family eats rice and sauce. For some reason my mom doesn’t believe that I can eat rice and sauce everyday with them and she insists on making me a separate dinner during the week. On the weekends I get rice and sauce with them and it’s awesome because my mom’s a great cook.
After dinner it’s dark and that means not a lot goes on. The town I’m in gets a few hours of electricity at night every few days. So days with power mean the whole family watches poorly dubbed B movies from the states or static on the TV (which is the only thing my family’s antenna picks up).
Nights without power usually consist of sitting in the dark living room with my family listening to French radio. None of which I understand. Sometimes I’ll listen to the BBC in English in my room or read a book with my headlamp. After a few hours of that I go to bed so I can start all over the next day.
Those are the weekdays however, weekends are a whole nother ball of wax. And by that I mean the time I would be at training turns into me sitting around with my family some more. Highlights of the weekend include hand washing my clothes (which takes forever), playing soccer, and rice and sauce.
There’s also usually at least one opportunity to hang out with the other trainees and go to one of two bars here. I use bar in the loosest sense of the word since almost everyone here is Muslim and doesn’t drink so we’re usually the only people there. I honestly have no idea how they stay in business but I don’t ask questions. It’s the only place in town to get a cold beer and if you’re willing to wait the hour they take to make you can get french fries too. They even have Ketchup!
So that’s pretty much my life here for the time being. We all found out last week where our sites are going to be and now we’re on a week long trip to visit our sites. My site’s in the north eastern corner of the country and I’m about 20km away from Mali, which means that anyone who wants to come visit can fly into Bamako and we’ll be relatively close to my site (maybe 8 hours or so).
My region is the hottest in Guinea and supposedly temperatures during the dry season can reach 125 degrees. Yay! Right now I’m in the regional capital, KanKan. Hence the internet access. We just got in last night but so far the city seems really cool. It’s the second largest city in the country after Conakry so there’s a lot going on. The market is supposedly gigantic and there are a lot of really cool artisans here from Guinea and Mali. Tomorrow I get to go visit my site and I’ll finally get to see my home for the next two years. I can’t wait. I’ll try and post an update when I get back if I can make time. For now though I’ve got to go since my time at the internet café is almost up. I hope everyone is doing well back home. Peace.

~Jesse

First Impressions

Hello everybody!

So I made it to Guinea in one piece. We arrived in Conakry yesterday around 9:00am after about 20 hours of travel. Our journey from the states was long and very tiring. It began with a bus from Philly up to JFK, then a plane to Dakar, Senegal, and finally another plane from Dakar to Conakry.

Arriving in Conakry was quite an experience. Peace Corps met us at the luggage pick up and I'm sure we made quite a scene with everyone walking around introducing themselves. Meeting a lot of the staff who would be training us and helping us during service was really exciting. There's a group of volunteers who delayed returning to the states at the end of their service so they could welcome and help train us. All the volunteers I've met here have been really awesome and have immediately made us feel right at home. They've been an unbelievable resource for trying to figure out life here in Guinea. I feel like I could pepper them with questions for days and still not run out of things to ask. Fortunately they don't seem to mind.

I haven't had an opportunity to see much of Conakry yet since the only time I've been out of the Peace Corps compound has been on the ride from the airport and on two short trips to the closest market. The little I have seen though has been really eye opening. The poverty here is unbelievable. The streets are lined with little run down shacks and are covered in trash. And I literally mean covered, when I'm walking I have to make a conscious effort to avoid stepping in it.

Despite the poverty the Guineans I've met have seemed genuinely happy and most of them have been extremely friendly to me. When walking down the street many people will greet you and ask you how you are doing. White people are quite a novelty in Guinea and we get a lot of stares as well as people (mostly small children) shouting "Foté" at us (which is Susu for white person). The shouting isn't malicious though, it's almost a game that the kids here play, it's really more of a chant than a shout.

Even though the city is dirty I still really like it here. The climate is really beautiful (although stiflingly hot) and the trash, stares, and shouts lend the city flavor.

The Peace Corps compound itself is really nice. It's walled in and has guards posted 24/7 at the gates. There are two main building which consist of the volunteer house and the administrative building. The living quarters are really nice and another trainee was talking about how it's almost like we're on the set of "Real World Conakry". We even have AC, which is a luxury I won't have once we leave here on Monday for our training. So I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

I'll leave you guys with a picture I took from the compound roof to give you an idea of what it looks like here.

Btw here's my address for people who want to send me mail.

Jesse Reffsin
Corps De La Paix Americain
B.P. 1927
Conakry, Guinée (West Africa)

If anyone decides to send a package send it via the post office and not DHL. You have to pay to receive packages in Guinea and a package via post costs me about $1 to receive whereas a package via DHL can cost upwards of $100.

Ok well I have to go because I'm using one of the only computers here and I don't want to tie it up for too long. I'll probably be pretty cut off from the internet for a while but I'll try my best to keep the blog updated. Until then, au revoir.


~Jesse

The storm before the storm

So, it's been a while since I posted. That's partly because I've been busy and partly because I'm still in the U.S. and I can still talk to most of the people who would be reading this. However, since it's been over a month since my last post, for the sake of continuity (and procrastination) I'm posting a quick update.

I've got eight days until I leave for staging and I just wrote up a to do list. It's so long it's depressing. Most of the stuff is pretty easy but there are just so many loose ends I need to tie up that it's a bit overwhelming. Not to mention I haven't started packing yet... I'm having trouble getting motivated as my current living situation consists of sleeping in my parents' living room with all of my belongings lumped into piles around the house. It makes tasks so much harder when they all have to be prefaced with moving a bunch of crap out of the way to even find the thing you're looking for. But really I'm just being lazy.

It's crazy to think that in 10 days time I'll be living in Africa with a family I've never met who speak a language I barely know and have a ton of customs that are completely foreign to me. I'm excited, but it sort of seems like this is happening to someone else. I don't really feel like I'm about to leave the U.S. for two years. It's been so long since I first applied for Peace Corps last July and I've gotten used to thinking of Peace Corps as something I'll do in the future as opposed to the present. I'm having a tough time wrapping my mind around the fact that it's about to become a reality.

At the same time though I'm really excited that my departure date is almost here. It's been such a long wait and I'm antsy to get going. I've been operating at such a high level of stress and anxiety trying to make sure I get everything done that it'll be a relief to finally be done with this preparatory stage. Even though I know that once I get to Guinea I'll be faced with a whole slew of new challenges I feel about as prepared for those challenges as I could hope for and I'm ready to meet them head on.

Alright, well enough procrastination. I need to start tackling this to do list. I think if I start now and don't sleep until I leave that I just might be able to get everything done in time. Here's hoping.

~Jesse

Presenting... Guinea!

The Peace Corps has three goals that form the basis for all of the work the organization does around the world:

1. To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

In the interest of the third goal and to give everyone a better understanding of what my life will be like while I serve, I’m going to give a little information about Guinea and what I will be doing there. Most of my info is coming from the Peace Corps welcome pack, the CIA factbook, or Wikipedia (yay Wikipedia!).

Guinea is a country in West Africa. In 1958 it became the first French African colony to gain its independence at which point Sekou Touré became Guinea’s first president. Following the death of Touré in 1984 General Lansana Conté took over as head of the Guinean state via a military coup. Conté has served as president of Guinea since 1993 when the country held its first democratic elections.

In recent history there have been various protests and strikes against the policies of Conté and his government. These strikes have been spurred by many issues such as government firings, appointees, and the rising cost of living due to increased fuel and food costs. At the beginning of 2007, in response to protest related violence, Peace Corps evacuated all volunteers from Guinea for a period of six months. Things seem to have calmed down considerably since then but there is still ongoing talk of strikes and government protests.

Roughly the size of Oregon, Guinea has a population of about ten million people, two million of which live in the capital city, Conakry. The officially language is French but many other local languages are spoken in the country such as Malinke, Susu, and Pular. 85% of the population is Muslim, 8% is Christian, and 7% practice indigenous beliefs.

Guinea is a notoriously wet country. The Niger river, the third longest river in Africa and the principal river in West Africa, originates in the Guinean highlands. The country’s terrain is pretty varied. It includes four distinct regions of coastline, mountains, savannahs, and rainforest/jungle. There are two seasons in Guinea, a rainy season from June to November and a dry season from December to May.

One of the poorest nations in the world, Guinea has a GDP per capita of $2,100 which places it 209^th out of the 229 countries listed in the CIA factbook. 47% of the country’s population lives below the poverty line.

Guinea’s economy is mostly centered around agriculture and mining. The main export of Guinea is bauxite, accounting for about 80% of its international trade. Bauxite is a general term referring to a rock composed of hydrated aluminum oxides. 99% of metallic aluminum is produced from bauxite which makes the ore a practical prerequisite for anyone trying to manufacture aluminum. Guinea contains about ½ of the world’s bauxite reserves. Other leading exports include coffee, bananas, palm kernels, and pineapples.

While Guinea has a much lower occurrence of HIV/AIDS than a number of other African countries the World Health Organization declared in 2005 that Guinea was facing a generalized epidemic. 1.7% of the population is HIV positive. In the U.S. only 0.3% of the population is HIV positive.

I will be serving in Guinea teaching math to students between 7^th and 10^th grade. I’ll be teaching any number of the following subjects: algebra, geometry, and trigonometry. My class sizes can range from 25 to 100 students with the average class size being 40. I will be assigned to a school located in a village or small town. I won’t find out where until I begin training and the Peace Corps staff can determine where they want to place me.

I’m leaving for orientation in Philadelphia on July 7^th and will be arriving in Guinea on July 10^th. July 10^th through September 27^th consists of pre-service training which covers things like technical, language, health, and cultural training. During PST I’ll be living with a Guinean host family. Housing at my site is provided by the local community and is different from site to site. It could be anything from a one room hut, to a communal living arrangement, to my own house. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Ok well that was a lot of information but at least now you guys have some idea of where I’ll be for two years. After all that, I’ll leave you with two facts I stole from my friend, Lecesse’s, blog which I thought were pretty interesting.

The Peace Corps uses less money a year than the U.S. government spends on coffee for the army. Also, the Peace Corps uses less money a year than the cost of half of one day of war in Iraq. Obviously the military and the Peace Corps are two completely different organizations and it doesn’t really make sense to directly compare their expenditures but I still think it’s worth mentioning. War is expensive and there are many better things we can spend our money on.

~Jesse