Phone numbers for Guinea houses and office

There are phones in most towns and cities.  There is also internet access in the capital, Conakry, and soon there will be internet access at other locations in the country.  The phones are expensive, so most likely your PCV will call/email you, or another parent will phone you, to tell you to call them at a particular place at a particular time.

Shop around for a low phone rate to Guinea. You can bargain with the phone companies and get several offers. You can also ask the Guinea List e-mail list for suggestions on this. You should be able to get under $1 a minute.

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Don't panic if you haven't heard from the Volunteer in a while. Mail can be slow and letters can be lost. If something had happened to the Volunteer, you would receive word before you noticed a delay in the mail.  The mail is not regular and mail being sent home is often dependent on someone willing to take it to the States.

You can see who is travelling and willing to take packages/mail to Guinea on our Traveller's List., and there are frequent updates on the Guinea List.

We have a list of useful addresses you can use to contact your volunteer.

Post Boxes

It can be very frustrating to contact to PCVs in Guinea because of the unreliability of the postal system and the telephone system there. One thing for a PCV to consider is to get a BP in the prefecture nearest their site. Now this is not a fool-proof method because it's still relying on the Guinean postal system.

From stories I've heard, each prefecture's post office has a different level of reliability. Some are very regular and others mail rarely arrive to. I think the best bet in this case is for the PCV to open a BP but only give the address, initially, to maybe their family or whomever. That way, the family can send a few test mails (nothing important, obviously) and if it works, the PCV can distribute the upcountry address more and if not, they can just go back to the old system.

If the Post Box works, it's tremendously useful.  One PCV opened up a box in Kissidougou. Instead of receiving mail once every two or three months when he visited Conakry or on the rare occasions when someone visited me, he was receiving mail once or twice a week. It was great! Letters from New York state arrived to me typically in two weeks or less (one took only 5 days). And that was to the interior.

Of course, Kissidougou was probably lucky because it had a couple times weekly flights from Conakry, which I'm sure facilitated mail delivery. But if your PCV is in the prefectoral capital with any frequency, this is an option to consider. It made a huge difference for me.

I'm not sure I'd send packages to the interior but as for just regular letters, this might be an idea for some. Especially since the phone service seems to be getting more and more dodgy (ironic considering SOTELGUI's alliance with Malaysia Telecom several years ago was supposed to improve things).

We have good reports on the Post Offices in Fria, Pita, and Kissidougou, Dinguiraye, and Mamou.

Comments on the Mail

Mail is slow slow slow. The length of time varies mostly depending on the volunteer's distance from their regional capitol or from a roadway frequently passed by Peace Corps or other friendly expat vehicles. If all of the stars are in alignment, a letter can arrive in a volunteer's hands up-country within two weeks of being sent. This is enough of a rarity that volunteers discuss and marvel over it when it happes. 3 months is not rare. For packages, 2- 12 months is average (like that spread?).

Once your mail makes it to Conakry, it sits in the embassy until Peace Corps picks it up. Once Peace Corps picks it up, it sits in the PC office until: a)the volunteer comes to get it. b)someone else takes it to the regional capital. If someone takes it to the regional capital, then it sits in the regional house until either the volunteer comes and gets it or another person (usually volunteer) comes through the regional capital on their way to visit the volunteer who has mail. (This could also be a trip out to the site by the regional rep.) I know it can be frustrating not to hear anything from someone for a really long time, but when the PCV finally get all the packages and letters - it's magic, like Christmas, better than your birthday.

If your PCV is far from the regional capital, it will take time for mail to reach the person. And then the reply will take time. One PCV who was in Banko, which is in the center of the country, it says it took two months to get mail and two months to send it out again. So a reply could take up to 4 months - because the only mail system that PCVs use is an informal mail system. Very few PCVs send things through the Guinean system; and when they do it is only from a regional capital - most sites have no post office.  

When you do send mail to a PCV, be sure to include and highlight the words "Corps de la Paix Américain" in the address. Not all Guineans write the numbers the way we do in the States--especially the numbers 1, 7, and 9, and those are 3 of the numbers in our Peace Corps address's "B.P. 1927." Yet everyone in Guinea knows about Peace Corps, and every letter or package with "Corps de la Paix" on it will go straight to the Peace Corps's mailbox in Conakry. This will hopefully get more letters and packages here to where they are intended to go.

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surface mail	Do not, by any means, send packages by surface mail.  They will never arrive.
airmail packages	Airmail packages sometimes arrive (50-75% receive rate).  Padded 9"x12" envelopes seemed to work well--they're much cheaper to send than boxes and I suspect they're "inspected" less frequently.
other travellers	Look to see who is travelling on our Travelling List.
DHL	DHL is expensive, and may cost the volunteer to receive it, but it is more certain to arrive if it is something very important.
Fed Ex	Fed Ex doesn't deliver to Guinea.
air cargo	You can send packages via air cargo with Delta Airlines/Air France. It's $16.72/kilo, at least out of New York (1 kg = 2.2 lb). Whereas a 10 lb box costs over $200 to send with DHL, it's about $80 via air cargo. Still a lot, but better than trusting the Guinean postal system and having it never arrive.
M-Bag	M-Bag is for books, and costs less than other mail. One RPCV says: "Last time I sent M-Bags it was 79 cents per pound. My post officeprefers books packed in reasonable sized boxes. You must have 15 pounds of books for an M-Bag. The bags can be up to 60 pounds, but my post office prefers to make the bags about 40 pounds. Try to be as honest as possible, but you can pack those unused spaces with tee-shirts, towels, etc, rather than "plastic popcorn" or wadded up newspapers."

As with the mail, be sure to include and highlight the words "Corps de la Paix Américain " in the address. This eliminates the confusion of not recognizing the way we write 1927 and will hopefully get more letters and packages to where they are intended to go.

Suggestions of things to send:

• Annie's, which makes really good tangy white cheddar mac and cheese, sells individual sauce packets for just $2 a pouch. This would be a great care package item! They also sell Tamarind Tree indian entrees in a foil pouch -- heavy and expensive ($3.99), but a wonderful treat in the village.
• Newspaper clippings
• Magazines and books.
• Pictures
• Music tapes, tapes from the radio
• Tapes of you talking (get a microcassette recorder)
• Batteries and film
• Video tapes for the Conakry house
• Edible goodies: junk food, pasta sauce mix, koolaid, instant meals, ramen noodles, dried fruit, mac & cheese, spices.
• Frivolous surprises (stickers, bookmarks, etc.)
• Cocoa. With cocoa, a PCV can make chocolate cakes and share it with the kids in the village and with other PCV's
• Macaroni and Cheese is a good idea.
• Koolaid is the best thing to send for several reasons:  (1) it's really fun to drink koolaid with your villagers, (2) Koolaid makes that cloroquin tablet slide down and tastes a lot better than the powdered gatorade PC puts in the medical kit! Macaroni and Cheese is a good idea.  Koolaid is the best thing to send for several reasons:  (1) it's really fun to drink koolaid with your villagers, (2) Koolaid makes that cloroquin tablet slide down and tastes a lot better than the powdered gatorade PC puts in the medical kit! 
• It's best to send small packages. 
• Coloring books are fun too!
• A tip for gift giving -- order a book from Amazon.com and have it shipped to Guinea. One parent reports that the shipping was under $15! And they assumed the responsibility for tracking, loss (and the first shipment was lost/stolen). I don't know how they deal w/other items--cd's, electronics, but worth a check.
•  music tapes, packages of instant pasta sauce, hot chocolate, granola bars, magazines,
  even smallish paperback books.
  

Volunteers have access to email whenever they come to Conakry.  We also heard from the Country Director in August 2000 that  there are now iMac computers in each of the regional houses, Labe, N'Zerekore, Kankan, and Boke.  There are established email hookups to the first three, but there are prblems with power and with the servers.  In theory, it is possible for PCVs to access email from three houses.  The one that works best at present is Kankan, which is good because the phone and radio there are sporadic.

Some parents maintain website for their offspring while they're away. If you're not that internet-savvy, you may want to check out TripToSomewhere . This site lets you easily post pictures and messages, and your friends can post messages too. Here is an example of how a PCV used the site.