In this Issue: To the Village and Back Again by Stephanie Chasteen Gender Conference Fundraising Coordinator Needed by Donald Parker Recipes Needed for Cookbook to Benefit Peace Corps Museum by Woody Colahan Financial Report by Jody Sites GPS and Listserv Report by Marilyn Pearson Projects Report by Donald Parker Membership Report by Stephanie Chasteen Cholera Raises its Head in Guinea by Mohammed Diallo By Stephanie Chasteen (Wawaya, ‘97–’99) I was miserable for over half of my Peace Corps service. I felt lost in the culture, isolated from comprehensible human contact, and didn't have many close friends in the PCV community. I often felt the ache and pain of switching from my American skin to my Guinean skin: Stephanie Chasteen was quiet, talked passionately with her friends, and went to bed while the other volunteers went to the nightclubs. Aicha Diallo was sarcastic and popular. I felt like I was going crazy. But halfway through my service, I was medevaced to DC, and I was immersed in American culture. Hey, I wasn't crazy! I was just American, among a bunch of Guineans. When I returned, I was happy. It was a hard-won bliss, and so I latched onto Wawaya like a new lover in that last year. I wanted to always remember how it was to live surrounded by people and chickens, intimately connected to the comings and goings of the village, to the weather, to the community. It wounded me to leave. I
couldn't stop thinking of
July
10 – Upon Arrival in
I
hear that you can get up to 2900 FG to the dollar. When I first arrived
in
We went out for our first tastes of Guinean food this afternoon. We left the Peace Corps compound and dodged puddles on the narrow road filled with potholes. We leaped into the mud on the side to avoid the taxis careening wildly around the corners, stuffed full of people. We passed old men with the little muslim hats, young girls carrying plates of bananas on their heads, little storefronts selling tomato paste and small plastic bags of sugar, and kids running around. We went to a Senegalese rice bar and got some riz gras (salty rice with tid-bits of meat, sour spinach-type stuff, and funny little squashes) and yassa poulet (chicken with onion sauce) – yum! The two plates together cost us a dollar. There is now a mail run that leaves every month, driving directly to each PCV's village! We used to get mail about once every 3 months, when someone happened to be coming... (Continued below) Gender Conference Fundraising Coordinator Needed Donald N. Parker, (Kaalan, ’01–’02), Projects Officer projects@friendsofguinea.org The Annual Gender Conferences, now in their seventh year, are one of Peace Corps Guinea’s greatest success stories, as well as the prime focus of Friends of Guinea’s support of PCV projects. Volunteers are currently gearing up for the 2005 Conferences, and FOG is looking for an active member to take over the position of Girl's Conference Fundraising Coordinator. Here is how the story began: In 1997, Peace Corps Volunteers in the Forest Region
of Guinea organized and facilitated a conference for girls to provide
a forum for self-expression and the exchange of ideas and experiences,
in the hopes of encouraging them to pursue their studies and to consider
options beyond traditional village life. It was so successful that
the following year, Peace Corps Guinea expanded the initiative to
include a separate conference in the Haute Guinée region. Soon it
was clear the Gender and AIDS Development Committee (GAAD) had a hit
on its hands. In 1999 and 2000, the Girls’ Conferences were held in
all four regions of
Participants in the Girls’ Conferences are girls and
young women aged thirteen to twenty, who are middle or high school
students, and who have been nominated to attend by their own communities.
About thirty girls attend each regional conference every year, representing
every prefecture, sub-prefecture and district in
Many PCVs feel that the Girls’ Conferences are the single most rewarding part of their Peace Corps service. Kathy Palakoff, the mother of a PCV, told us that "this is a really important project. My son, PCV Matthew Edwardsen, talked about this as being one of the really great things that he has participated in. He believes that it is one of the projects with truly sustainable results." Former Guinea Country Director Kathy Tilford says, “I had the privilege of being the Peace Corps Director in Guinea from 1996 to 2000 and I sincerely believe that the Girls Conferences are absolutely the very best thing I've ever seen Peace Corps do – and I'm speaking with twenty-plus years of Peace Corps experience as a PCV, APCD, PCD and PST trainer. I am absolutely convinced that many of these young women find the conferences a life-changing experience and that in the not-too-distant future, we will see these women in positions of responsibility and power. That in itself would be reason enough to support the conferences.” One American expatriate in Conakry tells us the story of a young Guinean woman named Rama
who attended the Girls' Conference about five years ago. “She was
so excited when she returned from the conference that she threw herself
into her studies in an effort to achieve the goals she set for herself
during the conference. Last year, she received a scholarship from
a university in the
But those who appreciate the conferences the most are those young women and girls who participate. Two high school students from Gaoual, Fatoumata Sow and Fayelle Ly, put it this way: “It is with great pleasure and satisfaction that we write you this thank you letter about your great effort and the help you provided for us Guinean girls. We sincerely thank you and the Americans from the US Peace Corps. (…) Now with the subjects we have learned, we can help our families, our community, and our classmates thanks to you – the Americans who helped us and supported us.” Friends of
It’s time to start this important work for the 2005 Gender Conferences. We have about $8,800.00 left to raise. We need your help to pull it off! Anybody with a few hours to spare can help, and we are particularly looking for someone to coordinate fundraising efforts. We also need volunteers to help with fundraising, help promote the Conferences in the media, and work with FOG’s webmaster to update and improve the conference website as necessary. So, if you have a little bit of time to create a lot of opportunity, please contact Donald N. Parker, FOG Projects Officer, at projects@friendsofguinea.org. Let us know if you would like to coordinate, be on the committee, organize any of the necessary tasks, or just lend a helping hand. (More information on the 2005 Gender Conferences may be found at http://www.friendsofguinea.org/conference2005.shtml.) Recipes Needed for Cookbook to Benefit Peace Corps Museum Woody Colahan (Maci, ‘93–’96), Newsletter Editor newsletter@friendsofguinea.org Most volunteers will agree that part of what made their experience
in
The Committee of the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience (CMPCE) plans an international cookbook of recipes from former volunteers that will help to bring the Peace Corps experience home to Americans where it counts: on the dinner table. Tentatively entitled A World of Food: The Peace Corps Experience, it will include recipes from various countries where volunteers have served, along with cultural and background information that will help readers better understand each particular food item and its place in the lives of people in different parts of the world. The cookbook will be then published and sold to benefit the planned Peace Corps museum in Portland, Oregon. For more information on the museum project, visit www.peacecorpsmuseum.org. Martin Kaplan (
In addition to detailed recipes and the information about them, he asks that volunteers not forget to include their name, and country and years of service. “It would be most helpful if each recipe classified the food as to type, for example as an appetizer, main dish, side dish, dessert, or beverage,” he says. He promises that no personal information will be divulged to others for any purpose, but notes that by sending in a recipe, individuals will be granting permission to use the information they send for the Museum cookbook at no charge. So, let’s let the rest of the world in on what we already know:
that the food in
You can also
find recipes for
(Thank you to PC Guinea country Director Lisa Ellis for allowing us to
peek at the in-house newsletter distributed to volunteers. Thanks
also to FOG PC Guinea Liaison Nancy Fleisher for facilitating this
and all other communications with the folks in-country, and to Steph
Chasteen for preparing this summary. Below is a summary of the main
points from the Peace Corps
It’s the rainy season again in
Elhadj Thafsir Thiam is back in town, on a short- term contract from June through August. In
addition, 18 new education PCVs arrived in
Too bad! Many RPCVs gratefully remember shipping a multitude of stuff home in trunks through the bauxite company, CBG. Unfortunately, the process has become too difficult and complicated because of changes in import regulations since Sept. 11. PCVs are looking into other ways to send the trunks home. The Peer Support system is being re-introduced to
PCVs are reminded that with the rainy season comes the friendly Tumba fly. While most PCVs have never seen one, the little buggers were the subject of horrified fascination during training for many of us, an instance of a tropical disease we definitely did not want to get. The fly lays its eggs on drying clothes, which hatch and burrow when put in contact with warm skin. Eww.... Aicha Magazine, produced by the GAAD coordinator in Conakry, is still going strong. FOG has several sample copies available from past years. If anybody would like to help us scan these and convert them to PDF for archival on the website, please contact Stephanie at membership@friendsofguinea.org. We hope to help support Aicha through fundraising in the future, and it will be helpful to have sample copies to show potential donors. APCD Sean Cantella’s a dad! He writes: Suus and I are happy to announce that Xavier Seamus Cantella arrived around 6:15 pm on July 15. He weighed in at 3.545 kg, or 7 pounds 13 ounces. He has a full head of dark wavy hair and is simply the most beautiful boy in the world. Mom and baby are resting at the Deventer hospital. It was a tough delivery but in the end, after about 12 hours of labor, the little one arrived screaming and peeing, much like his father when he’s angry. APCD for Environment, Abdoullaye, responds to PCVs concerns about promoting potentially invasive non-native species. He writes: “In our ever smaller world, invasive species are receiving more attention than ever before. And for good reason: as they out-compete native species and threaten native ecosystems, they impose enormous costs to agriculture, freshwater fisheries, bio-diversity, and human health. While it is estimated that only one percent of introduced plants become invasive, those ‘aliens gone wild’ are the second leading cause of species extinction worldwide, after habitat destruction. African nations alone spend an estimated US $60 million annually on the control of alien water weeds. He suggests that PCVs use the precautionary approach: Focus on, and work with native species first. Only work with non-native species you are certain will not become invasive in your context.” Jody Sites (Beyla, ‘94–‘96), Financial Officer finances@friendsofguinea.org Greetings to all! I am very happy to report that Friends of Guinea is doing fairly well. We currently have around $9,000.00 in the bank. $2,500.00 to $3,700.00 of that total is earmarked for financial support of next year’s Gender Conferences. We also have a couple of hundred dollars in our PayPal account, which is how we receive on-line membership payments. During the past quarter, expenses have included the funding of Wayne Kleck’s project (see Donald’s Projects Report), and income has included around $ 1,200.00 from sales of Peace Corps calendars. Marilyn Pearson, PCV Parent
Membership in the Guinea List, a free email
discussion list for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, current PCVs,
Guineans, and anyone interested in Peace Corps matters relating to
to stay in touch. To sign up, visit www.friendsofguinea.org. There are currently five Guinea Parent Support
(GPS) listservs, one for each PCT departure group since June 2002.
The groups include 161 parents, grandparents, friends, and family
members helping each other and their PCVs in
The premise of the GPS system is that experienced PCV parents help the new parents and family members adjust to the PC experience. Our GPS groups have been extremely successful, due largely to our wonderful group leaders. A huge “Thank You” is overdue to all the GPS group leaders: Jane Fowler, Oct ‘02 leader; Betty Walker, July ‘03 leader; Carol Mermey, Jan ‘04 leader; and Linda Anderson, July ‘04 leader. For more information or to join a Guinea Parent Support group, email me: gps@friendsofguinea.org. Donald N. Parker, (Kaalan, ’01–’02), Projects Officer projects@friendsofguinea.org Hi Everybody. I would like to report that in the past quarter Friends of Guinea successfully funded PCV Wayne Kleck's Map Project. The project included painting maps at the Falessade, Kalifayah and Dougounia elementary schools. It was designed as an educational tool to teach students, teachers and the community world, African and local geography. The total amount funded by FOG was $71.00. I would also like to take this opportunity to remind PCVs that we can only fund projects through the Peace Corps Partnership Program. This is the only way that Peace Corps in Washington will allow us to funnel money to volunteer projects. It seems a bit cumbersome at times, and so we have really tried hard to streamline the process by working with Peace Corps to speed it up, but so far we haven’t been able to modify the existing system to any really significant degree, so we are stuck doing things the old way. So what I would like to ask PCVs to do, if they would like Friends of Guinea to consider a project for funding, is to apply for funding through PCPP, and write a note at the top of their approved PCPP application to the effect that they would like to request funding from FOG. This will alert the Peace Corps Office of Private Sector Initiatives, which administers the PCPP, that we are interested in the project. At the same time, I would like to ask them to please contact me at projects@friendsofguinea.org. That way, I can get a head start on getting project funding approval from our own Board, and provide better overall assistance.
Cholera Raises its Head in
Mohamed Diallo, Guinean Journalist senguinee@yahoo.fr (Ed. Note: Mohamed Diallo,
reporter for l’Araignée, published monthly in Conakry,
has been keeping us to date on events on the ground in
In the last few weeks, cholera has resurfaced
in
The capital, Conakry, is uneasy. New cases are recorded every day. On Monday, August 9, a young man died in Koloma, in the outskirts of the city. It must be recognized that the city of Conakry suffers a lack of sanitation that verges upon the scandalous. There are districts that have not seen pump water run in their faucets for years. Plumbing is likewise inadequate. And even since the presence of cholera was declared, no great public education effort has taken place to promote its eradication. In Kindia, where we were last week, the situation is alarming. Situated at 130 kilometers from the capital, the epidemic revolves around the gare routière, where there has been no running water for four months. Sub-prefectures affected include Séméfoula and Madina Oula. Other prefectures affected include Coyha, Forécaria and Boké. The urgency of the situation is plain to see. According to Dr. Sékou Sylla, the chargé of disease prevention at the Kindia DPS office, it is essential that the public adopt appropriate habits of hygiene, such as boiling their drinking water, washing their raw fruits and vegetables, and in general observing proper personal hygiene. However, one must note that public education is hampered by the illiteracy of most of the population. Radio Rurale in Kindia is therefore playing a fundamental public education role in this important effort.
(continued from above) through, or if we went to the regional house. The Peace Corps house has been moved since I was here and it is in a beautiful house and a good location, just down the street from the Marine House and from a fancy restaurant (the Riviera). However, the more things change, the more they stay the same – the sink fills with dirty dishes, PCVs gather around the TV, the bunk beds seem to be the same as the ones that were there when I was a volunteer (rickety but solid), and the place has a familiar musty smell of damp Conakry. The PCVs are the same, too – the people
change, but there is something similar. I recognize some of the people
I served with in their mannerisms, their reactions to
July 26, To the Village and Back Again We spent about 2 weeks in Wawaya, with a break in the middle. It was just the right amount of time "au village" – it was enough time to relax into the rhythm, to cultivate that vacant stare as you sit in the heat next to your friends, watching the chickens and chatting to pass the time. Mostly, it was hanging out, chatting, drinking tea with my young men friends at the bakery (a thatched open air hut with a mud brick oven inside and a few sweating hunks pounding flour into submission), throwing a few words of Pulaar around the market to delighted shrieks from the people there, translating the goings-on to my mom, and suckering a few kids into carrying twenty-gallon jugs of water on their heads for me in exchange for a few matchbox cars. I was surprised by how much the village has developed. The main road is paved, and the rocky road to Wawaya has been regraded. There were several new buildings, including a new market structure, and the previous volunteer built a middle school. So there are now more kids in the village and more teachers, which improves the intellectual air a lot. The current officials actually work with the traditional leaders – what a difference! One day we went on an excursion to the local river, with fishing poles made of fishing line tied to branches, with corks for bobbers and some sad little worms the kids dug out of the river banks. Another day we brought some cloth to the tailors in town and explained how we wanted our dresses, handkerchiefs, and pillow covers done. Another day I sat still for 2 1/2 hours and a local lady braided my hair until her hands and my back ached. It was so comfortable to have the tiny braids sitting right against my scalp, very cool and low maintenance. We visited people at their homes, sat, and spent a lot of time at the aforementioned bakery with the aforementioned bakers. We got fresh bread and good strong tea, and I gave them little gifts. In the evenings, someone would usually send us some rice and sauce in two little enamel bowls – a generous offering of food, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed eating rice and sauce again. I'm not even sure what all we did. We found the metalworker and watched him heat metal red-hot using coals in a small depression in the ground (fired hot with a bellows), and then pound it into shapes on an anvil embedded in the ground. We bought some rough-hewn hoes for about fifty cents. It continually amazed me how little everything was worth after the currency conversion. It cost about a dollar to have a tailor spend most of the day making a dress. The bakers earned two to three dollars a day for eight hours of backbreaking labor – chopping wood, feeding the oven, kneading the flour in a huge basin, shaping the loaves, taking them off hot pieces of corrugated iron. On the final day, Mom found this quote: You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place ... like you'll not only miss the people you love, but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way again. (Azar Nafisi) It's true. In Wawaya, I am Aicha Diallo – relaxed, joking, and self-conscious. The village brings out certain core elements of myself – that I worry about what others think about me and so I worry about whether I'm doing the right thing all the time. It brings out my sense of humor and that I like to play jokes. I'm more comfortable, somehow, joking and teasing in the village. August 11 – Home Again I'm now back in Santa Cruz, and not entirely conscious. I'm awake, and jet-lag is almost gone, but I'm still not entirely clear on what I feel. I feel some regret. The time went so quickly in the village, and there are so many conversations that I didn't have. I waited for people to tell me what was going on in their life, and they never did. I told them only the barest skeleton of my life. I feel that we connected, that we shared many experiences together, but didn't share much information. I suppose that what I feel is the sort of post-partum depression that comes with the completion of any important pilgrimage. I returned to my village, and I am joyful that I was able to return, and that my visit was received with such enthusiasm. It will probably take me the next five years to figure out what it meant to me. And then, perhaps, it will be time to go back again. Free personal Classifieds in CaVa?! All active members of Friends of Guinea may place one free personal advertisement per year in this newsletter. We encourage you to take advantage of this free service by emailing your message of 21 words or less to the Newsletter Editor at newsletter@friendsofguinea.org. Please note that this service is available only to current members of Friends of Guinea, so please submit your advertisement under the name in which your membership is listed so that we may verify your membership.
|