Letters from a return trip to Guinea

I served in Guinea, West Africa, from 1997-1999, in the village of Wawaya. I help run the Friends of Guinea group. In Summer 2004, I returned to my village in Guinea, West Africa. Here are the letters that I wrote home about the experience.

July 10. Ruminations from Guinea

July 26, To the Village and Back Again

August 10, Dazed and Confused

July 10. Ruminations from Guinea

Hello everyone,

I’m in Guinea! The short story is - we arrived exhausted, but there were no problems. It looks
likely that we won’t have email access again until July 28th. The place feels so oddly familiar,
like returning to a childhood home. Even though you forgot the color of the house, you remember
the curve of the stairs, the hiding place in the eaves, or this vague impression of light in the
living room. Guinea feels familiar. It’s certainly not home to all of me, but it is home to an
important part of me.

For the longer story, read on…

I spent the first night in New York City seeing my friends Alex and Andy (& his wife Maureen and
charming kid Aidan). I met Mom at JFK and we found the Air Maroc check-in desk. This is when the
steady transformation began. Even before we left New York, we gradually left western culture.

The Air Maroc desk was at the far end of the airport, a small row of check-in counters hidden by a
long line of Africans - women in their colorful robes, men in the little cupcake-shaped hats,
young men with slick t-shirts and jeans. The line was permeated with the earthy smell of African
body odor (a distinctive smell unlike no other peoples I’ve met), and piled high with immense
pieces of luggage and taped boxes. I thought my luggage was huge, but it was dwarfed by those
huge suitcases full of gifts and goods from the US. The lady behind the Air Maroc counter was
disdainful in that polite way that I’ve encountered several times. I get the sense that they’re
thinking that just because I’m white, they figure that I think that I’m better than them, and
they’re prepared to take me down a peg. There’s a certain superciliousness in the air. She
smiled sweetly at us and, as we found to our dismay a few hours later, gave us some of the worst
seats on the plane.

The next step along the transition towards African-ness (and away from Western-ness) was at the
gate. We heard no announcement, but about a half-hour after we were supposed to board there was a
sudden rush to stand in line. Almost as an afterthought, as we started to board, they announced
that boarding was to begin. And on this huge transatlantic liner, 3 times as long and twice as
wide as a domestic jet, they just called “all seats, all rows.” Welcome to the madhouse.

On the plane, I heard people greeting in Pulaar, women in elaborate robes brushed by us
self-importantly on their way down the aisle, and everyone stood too close to me in line. I never
got over the different conceptions of personal space even in the 2 years that I was here.

Take one more step down into Africa. Waiting to go through security in Casablanca, a group of self-important
women in colorful robes walked past the entire line, and pushed right in front of me and Mom. The
gate at the airport in Casablanca had just one or two working toilets, and one had no pipe
connecting the sink drain to the plumbing. So every time that someone used the sink, water flowed
directly onto the floor creating a widening puddle the crept down the hall. And again, there was
no boarding announcement, just a sudden mass movement for the door, where we stood for a
half-hour. Inexplicably, a few people would be let through the door at a time, and then no more.
The same self-important women brushed by us in line, pushing us aside to stand directly in front
of us. We had the feeling that no matter where we had been standing in line, they would have come
and stood in front of us, just to prove something (but what?). We just smiled and stepped aside. We finally began boarding at about
the time we were scheduled to depart. When we got to our seat, there was a woman sitting in my
seat. This was a different type of Guinean woman than the ones who had pushed us by - this is the
educated, French-speaking woman from Conakry (the capital) who also holds some grudge against us
because of the color of our skin, or perhaps simply enjoys getting some status hold over anybody.
She pretended to think that 19C was the window, not aisle seat, but I prevailed and she moved over
one seat to sit between mom and I, where she purposefully spilled over both sides of the seat so
that both mom and I were squeezed to the edges of our own seats. Oh well, at least I got the
window so that I could see the Sahara below.

We first flew over a series of brown hills, and between the peaks I could see the glint of water
and small mud-colored villages clustered around small areas of green. Roads snaked along the
ridges of the hills, probably taking a day to travel from one village to the next. Some villages
looked as small as 20 houses. Those hills gave away to a brown desert with surprising variety in
the land. Knifelike ridges extended for miles, and fractal-like fingers extended like veins from
flat swaths of brown that must have once held rivers but were long dead and dry. Odd little dark
plateaus stood out, like flat islands in the middle of a sandy sea. And from time to time the
variety gave way to an unbroken, blinding beige sea of sand. Here, there is no sign of water, or
life. After some time, the variety gave way completely to unbroken sand, like a huge beach.
After a half-hour of haze, I fell asleep. When I woke up, there were dark clouds below us, and
the lush green of Guinea.

I bribed a customs official $5 to bring us through customs, so that there was no chance of items
being stolen from our bag, and paid a guy $3 to wheel me and my bags to a waiting taxi, where I
bargained for 5 minutes for a $4 ride to the Conakry Peace Corps house. I changed money while I
was there, too, and was amazed at the exchange rate. The official exchange is 1800 Guinean Francs
to the dollar. He offered me 2700 GF to the dollar. I hear that you can get up to 2900 GF to the
dollar. When I first arrived in Guinea 7 years ago, the rate was one-third of that: 1000 GF to
the dollar. The currency fluctuation, and inflation, has been killing the local economy. The
price of rice is rising, and the government is printing tons of new money to make up the
difference. One Peace Corps volunteer told of the complaints of one of her villagers, who waved
Guinean bills in her face and said “this is worthless! This is paper! What you have is real
money.” He didn’t, of course, throw that 'worthless paper' on the ground!

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. I only heard "Fote na ra" a few times -- "there's a white person" -- because the Peace Corps house is so close by, they're sort of used to us. 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 $1. We are *so* not going to need all the money we brought with us.

We had the good fortune to see my friends Brad and Estel Willits, two missionaries who lived in Fria (the next town over) when I was in Wawaya. They were very good to me while I was here, and we spent an hour chatting and catching up. They tell me that the road is now paved all the way to Fria, and that the road to Wawaya has been graded. I'm excited to see it. We also met the new Peace Corps director, Lisa Ellis, who was charming and very helpful. We talked about the situation of Peace Corps over the years, and how much easier Peace Corps service is for current volunteers than for either her (she served in the Gambia in the 80s) or for me. 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 through, or if we went to the regional house. I saw Mohammed Fofana, the APCD for Education. It's amazing to me how he remembered my face, my name, the village where I served, even with all the volunteers who have passed through the country in the 5 years since I left.

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 Guinea (casually happy, bitter and jaded, MacGyver party boy, responsible and quiet). A couple just returned from their first 3 months at site and one of the first things he asked me was, “why did you come back?” I said it was to find the part of myself that fit here.

And there is a part of myself that fits here. Going down the road to the boutique, I see the
familiar products - the Nescafe, little packets of soap, bottled water, powdered milk - and I feel
happy. “Bonjour, tanti” (hello Auntie) I say to the woman behind the counter. Her old husband
looks respectfully at the floor as he greets us. And then down the dirt road to the brick oven to
buy a warm baguette. It all feels so familiar in its strangeness. I hear snatches of Pulaar and
Sousou as I walk down the road, and the rhythms feel soothing. My Pulaar is coming back, and I feel comfortable speaking it. I am so very, very glad to be here.

July 26, To the Village and Back Again

Well, folks, we just arrived back in Conakry
after 2 weeks "en brousse" (in the bush) and I'm
exhausted. It was a day of bad choices & bad
luck. The wrong taxi, missed phone connections, the
wrong choice of eating establishments, wrong
choice not to bring an umbrella, trying email a
half-hour too late. But it's ended well, and I
just washed my hair for the first time in 10 days
and am sitting groggily typing this note. The
next two days will be a whirlwind so, tired though I
am, I might as well take a moment to write a
little.

We spent a week in my village, left for 4 days,
and came back for 4 days. 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. Relatively little actual
information passes in these conversations, even after 5
years. I asked what grade their kids were in,
whether they'd had any more kids, and that was
about the sum total of the news. I got a few
more tidbits of news, but that took some time to
tease out. After that, 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 20
gallon jugs of water on their heads for me in
exchange for a few matchbox cars. We grooved into a
daily routine - wake to the roosters at 6:00, go
back to sleep until 8:00 when the screaming kids
woke us for good. Throw some water on our faces
& dress in the half-light of closed windows.
When we felt ready to face the world, we'd open
the door and windows to let in light, and shout
some greetings to the neighbors. Breakfast was
baguettes of bread or rice porridge or mashed
manioc with onion and oil and eggs, plus some
precious Earl Grey tea we brought along. 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. I
enjoyed hanging out with them - it was relaxed
and we'd joke around. They were my "guards-corps"
(bodyguards) and wouldn't let anybody touch me.
We got fresh bread and good strong tea, and I gave
them little gifts. One was my close friend when I
was here before, and it was good to be around
him again. 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 got tired of it by a week
into our stay, though, and it's certainly no Atkins'
diet. Dancers be warned - I won't be wearing any
tight dresses anytime soon!

I was surprised by how much it has developed.
The road is now paved all the way to Fria (the last
hour was graded dirt before, and I used to arrive
in Conakry with a fine layer of red dust coating
my skin and nasal passages), and the road to
Wawaya is greatly improved. I have no idea how they
got out all those horrible rocks. It now takes
40 minutes instead of an hour. They've also
improved much of the road all the way to Telemele
- a town in the middle of Guinea that used to be
virtually unreachable from where I was. There
were several new buildings in my village 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. They also got a grant to build an improved
market structure, which is amazing, and they
finished a youth center in town. The officials who
were there when I was there are mostly gone, and
the new ones seem motivated (at least the
Sous-Prefet, or mayor, was), and get along well
with the traditional leaders. What a difference!

We visited the town where I built the health post
and that was nice. It was a smaller village
than Wawaya, and the huts were pretty and
well-kept. The elders made some nice speeches, and I
met the first girl to be born in the hospital.
They called her Kadiatou Stephanie Diallo. I gave
her a necklace. We walked around the village,
and took some pictures of huts, of women pounding
rice in a pestle, of the imam teaching the Koran
to some young boys at the mosque.

After that first week we left to go to Boke, a
city about 3-4 hours from my village. The market
there was quite a bit more extensive than in my
village or Fria (the closest big city) and we
bought far too much fabric. Some woodworkers
were carving touristy items out of wood in a open
air hut next to the only museum I've ever seen in
Guinea, and we special ordered a few items from
them. We stayed in the "maison de passage"
(Peace Corps hostel) there, which had exciting things
like electricity and a TV and VCR. We watched
Sweet Home Alabama, Sense & Sensibility, and Benny &
Joon. Hooray. We needed to vegetate a bit after
all that "on" time in the village - always
talking, always the center of attention, trying
to pay attention to every little thing to soak up
the details for later. While we were in Boke we
got a taxi to take us to Bel Aire - a fancy
ex-pat hotel and beach. It was a weekday so we
were the only people in this fabulous
establishment. I haven't seen the likes of it
before in Guinea - 3 stories high, with a nice pool
and lots of shiny glass and tile. We spent
almost as much on our meal there ($25) as on the taxi
ride there. We've generally been eating rice and
sauce for about 20 cents a plate. It rained
most of the day at Bel Aire unfortunately, but
the sun came out for a bit and we swam and it was
wonderful. It's been raining a LOT while we've
been here - it's the start of the rainy season in
earnest, and it rains almost every day. When it
doesn't rain, you wish it would because the air
becomes pregnant and hot and moist. I got a cold
while I was in Boke, so the third day (which was
torrential downpours anyway) we stayed in while I
dealt with my sniffles. I also got a blister
beetle burn - a blister beetle lets out some sort
of liquid that burns the skin, and you get a raw
patch of skin that looks like someone splashed
you with some mildly strong acid. It's still
healing, and doesn't look too pretty, but never
really hurt or anything. So far, that's the most
serious illness we've faced. We were pretty
worried about getting very sick but so far (knock on
wood) it's been fine.

We came back to Wawaya for those last 4 days and
hung out. 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
50 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 $2-3 a day for 8 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.

I really love Guinea, and it was wonderful to be
back in that part of myself that fits here. It
was difficult to leave again. Mom found a quote
in a book to the effect of "It's difficult to
leave a place because you will never again be the
person you are now, in this place, with these
people." It's true. In Wawaya, I am Aicha Diallo
-- popular, relaxed, joking, and a
self-consciuos. 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. In Wawaya, I'm the
popular girl -- I talk much more than I do at
home, where I fade away (verbally) into a crowd.

We're excited for Morocco, where we go next, to
spend a week in Marrakech. It was beautiful when
I visited Fez, like something out of the Arabian
Nights. The streets twisted through a maze of
markets, and the public baths had stone floors
heated from below, with vats of steaming water in
every corner. There were loaves of nugat larger
than my head. Here's to Morocco!

Love to all,

Stephanie

August 10, Dazed and Confused

Hello friends,

This will probably be the last missive about my trip (do I hear some sighs of relief?), though I may forward some other writings that I do about it at some point in the future.

I'm in New York City as I write this, enjoying a fast internet connection at my friend Alex's (who has graciously given me run of his room while I wait for my flight to San Jose tonight). It's 9am, but feels like sometime in the afternoon, and coffee is my friend. I walked down the street this morning looking for that friendly coffee, and the first coffee shop I found was full of men. I couldn't shake the feeling that it was inappropriate for me, a single white woman, to sit in a coffee shop full of men, so I left. I also can't shake the feeling that everyone's looking at me as I walk down the street, though they're probably not. I'm definitely a bit culture-shocked. New York City feels like another foreign country anyhow -- sprinkled with mexican eateries, all I hear around me is Spanish, and the graffiti tags on the iron storefronts remind me that I'm in a place with just as many mysterious cultural clues and meanings as Guinea. I feel lost. I yearn for Santa Cruz with its beaches and redwoods. I ache for my familiar folk music & dance scene.

Mom and I spent the last week of our trip in Morocco, and it was hard. We had hoped for a relaxing Arabian Nights-style vacation in this well-developed country, but it ended up being very difficult to figure things out. For one, I had the unnerving experience of having difficulty communicating in French. For example, they were using a different vocabulary set than Guineans. In Guinea, there is a set stock of phrases, like "she's managing well" or "is that it?" which I can draw on and the meaning (both literally and culturally) is immediately understood. Those phrases often drew blank stares in Morocco. Plus, things that they said to me somehow didn't make sense, like they were translating poorly from Arabic. It reminded me of an Iranian professor I had in college -- all the words he used made sense, but not when strung together into a sentence.

It was also difficult to decide how to relate to men in Morocco. I had been told not to make eye contact with men. So, how was I supposed to bargain for merchandise? I tried looking at the floor, but that seemed SO rude. I finally noticed that when I spoke to older men (who would not be inappropriately forward, as the younger men might be), they looked at my face, but their eyes were focussed slightly to the side, as if they were examining my earring. So, that solved that problem. I continued to dress fairly modestly, in long skirts and usually covering my shoulders. I noticed that many tourists didn't, wearing tank tops and shorts.

Bargaining was another difficulty. In Guinea, if someone asked for $30 for something, you could expect to pay $20-25. In Morocco, if someone asked for $30, you could expect to pay $10-15. This was a whole different way to bargain -- a long-winded and wide-sweeping pendulum arc on either side of the "real" price, instead of a quick little oscillation with a few jokes and a handshake. I was uncomfortable offering someone $5 for something they asked $30 for, and so I always started too high and probably paid too much. It was frustrating, and I didn't buy much.

The first night, we arrived in Casablanca and stayed in a hot little room in the hotel there. It was fine. We took a train to Marrakech the next day but the A/C started to get overloaded about halfway there and we arrived sweaty and tired. A man in our passenger car offered Mom his Koran as we all left the train, and was disappointed when (flustered) she refused. "Don't you want to learn about our religion?" he asked. (The book looked to be in Arabic, so it might not have been particularly informative). Mom and I stayed in Marrakech in a lovely renovated guesthouse with intricately and colorful painted doors, sinks and showers that looked as if they'd been lovingly moulded out of soapstone, and a cold water jacuzzi in the courtyard. That jacuzzi was wonderfully refreshing in the heat of the day -- it was about 100 degrees on the hottest day. We first went to the main square in Marrakech -- Jemma al-Fna -- a mad circus of performers, snake charmers, henna artists, storytellers, piles of oranges being squeezed into juice, colorful cascades of dried apricots, dates, and nuts, and food stalls dishing up kebabs & snails & sheeps heads from steaming vats. We were assaulted by smells of diesel from the generators, and the pounding sound of drums, and retreated to a safe tourist restaurant overlooking the fray.

The next day we explored the Souks -- or marketplaces. They were situated in a maze of twisting high-walled alleys covered with woven slats. The leather souk was full of the smell of turpentine, and a kindly shopkeeper showed how they were pounding leather into pretty (but probably uncomfortable) slippers with pointed toes and sequins, and I almost caught my skirt on fire on their gas burner. We wandered through piles of pretty painted bowls, elaborate hookahs for smoking tobacco, lovely tooled leather bags, and embroidered dresses and robes. We enjoyed the mint tea in Morocco -- not as strong as the dark tea prepared by my baker friends in the village in Guinea, but sweet and minty and served steaming in charming little shot glasses from a silver filligree teapot.

The food in Morocco was also amazing. After a hot day wandering around the city trying to make travel arrangements to go to the desert, we found a nice upscale restaurant and decided to treat ourselves. We ordered the "various salads" and a chicken tangine with onions. The "various salads" came in about 20 little bite-sized bowls -- vinaigered beets, tangy and spicy olives, cucumbers, cooked spiced carrots, tasty lentils... so many little treats. A "tangine" is a traditional moroccan dish -- some vegetables and meat in a sauce, cooked inside a covered clay dish. They're always good, and this particular tangine was so tasty we were talking about it for days. The sauce was rich and sweet, and we sopped it up with thick pita-like rounds of bread.

We wanted to go for an outing to the Atlas Mountains and the Sahara, and had finally found a group outing which would take us for a one-night visit. We knew it was 4 hours through the mountains to Ouarzazate, and the travel agent said that it was then another 1 hour to Zagorat, where we would spent the night in a Berber tent, and then have a sunrise camel ride. We weren't too thrilled about the camel ride, but figured we could skip it if we had to. We packed up a big bag, and climbed aboard the bus ride... the bus ride... to HELL! <ba-duh-ba-duh-BA-DUM!>

1. The bus had no air conditioning
2. We were with 6 Spaniards. We don't speak Spanish. I speak more Pulaar than they spoke English.
3. It was 5 hours (not 1) from Ourzazarte to Zagorat, making for a 9 hour bus ride each day.
4. There was a 2 hour camel ride on Day 1 *and* Day 2
5. We couldn't skip the camel ride because that was how we were to reach our accomodation for the night
6. We couldn't bring our big bag of stuff -- only a day pack per person for overnight (quick, repack!)
7. It gets cold at night in the desert
8. The wind picks up at night in the desert
9. There's a lot of sand in the desert
10. Sand is easily picked up by wind

I was pretty tired and grumpy by the evening because of all the above (plus another unfortunate event, described below). I was talking with an Australian traveler who was in another group staying at the tent, and we didn't quite see eye to eye. He was one of those intrepid optimist adventure travelers to whom everything is always great & amazing, and you have to make the best of every situation. I wasn't feeling particularly upbeat, and didn't feel like trying to feel upbeat, so our conversation slowly and subtly deteriorated. The next day, he was riding his camel shirtless through the Saharan sun, sunglasses on, satisfied smile on his face. If anyone knows this type of young adventure-for-the-sake-of-adventure traveler, maybe you can relate to my annoyance.

But, complaining aside, it was quite an experience to be in the Sahara at night, to see the curve of the moon rising over the dunes and illuminating the camel caravan as our Berber hosts beat softly on drums. We could still see the car lights from the highway, so we weren't exactly in the middle of nowhere, but it was the actual honest-to-goodness SAHARA. A sign in the next town pointed south and said "57 days to Timbouctou" (by camel caravan, that is!). I can't imagine 57 days on a camel. We were pretty saddlesore after a few hours, and chose to walk next to our camels for a good part of the way.

But the trip had already been ruined for me because of something that happened on the first day. We had stopped at Kasbah Ait Ben Haddou, the largest walled-city in Morocco. It's been used for such films as Gladiator and the Last Temptation of Christ, so it's a popular tourist mecca. I was curious to see it, but was immediately turned off when we reached the river to the city and we were mobbed by a crowd of local boys offering to take us across on donkeys and horses for 50 cents each. It turned out we could have waded across it, but I didn't know that at the time, and Mom and I climbed aboard a horse. I didn't understand why the young man didn't wade through the water and lead the horse, like many of the young boys seemed to be doing, but he climbed aboard in front of me. Poor horse, carrying 3 people! On the other side, he helped mom down first, and then helped me. I had my hand on his shoulder, and other hand on the saddle of the horse to support myself, and he took advantage of my helplessness to put his hand somewhere where (to put it mildly) that he shouldn't have. I was OUTRAGED. My first instinct was to slap him as soon as I had my feet under me, but something stopped me. What might he have done? I didn't know the culture. In the US, it would have been appropriate to slap him. I just stared at him, open mouthed, and said something weak in French and English to the effect that he shouldn't have done that, that he knows what he did. He just looked at me, not smiling, not glowering, not innocent. Just nothing. And the worst part was, I had to PAY him for taking me across the river. I *knew* some real trouble would break out if I didn't pay. So I had to hand money to this man, who had just violated my dignity and person. I turned away as I let the money drop into his hand. Mom says that, as I did, he called me a slut.

What should I have done? Slapped him? I wish I'd spit on the coin and thrown it in the mud for him to retrieve. But what if some theatrical show of disrespect got me into some real trouble? It probably wouldn't have -- there were 4 Spanish men with us who, even if they didn't know what was going on, would have rescued me if something had happened. I felt humiliated, dirty, and claustrophobic as we wandered the kasbah, with children tagging along and asking us for money. Had I had my wits about me, I think the best thing would have been to find out who he was -- his name, and his father's name, and then seek out the immam (muslim priest) in the village and try to explain to him. But I didn't. Whenever someone insults you, it's always in the days afterwards that you're able to think of all the things you *should* have said, the perfect comebacks. It's your psyche trying to repair the damage that's been done to it, building up little walls and barbs, shooting retaliatory arrows into the night and knowing that there's no longer any chance of hurting the person who hurt you.

We returned to Marrakech tired and dirty, and the bathwater turned brown when we bathed. It's almost worth being so dirty and tired, because then rest and water feels so goddamned GOOD. The next day, we made arranagements to go to a hammam -- traditional bathhouse -- and get scrubbed and rubbed with hot water. In a series of three rooms, each getting progressively hot and steamier, clutches of naked women and children bathed themselves with buckets of hot and cool water drawn from taps in the stone. We lay down on the smooth flagstone floor, which was heated by fire ovens from below, and a strong wiry woman took a pair of abrasive gloves and scrubbed and rubbed our bodies -- discussing things animatedly in Arabic with another woman who ran the bathhouse. We washed our hair, and she combed the conditioner vigorously through it, and dumped hot water all over us. It was just grand, and cost about $5 each. We left feeling refreshed and clean, and the aches from the previous days' travails had almost disappeared.

And that was Morocco. When I left Guinea 5 years ago, I had stopped through Fez and was enchanted by the winding cobblestone streets in the old town and the intricately mosaics on the fountains and mosques. I wasn't enchanted this time, but maybe I was just tired of travel. Maybe I was missing Guinea, and not dealing with my sorrow as I left the village. Maybe it would have been better for us to go to a less touristy destination. But oh well, it's done, and I'm almost home, and that makes me happy.

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Epilogue:

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. Yesterday was a peach of a Santa Cruz day, and I enjoyed the lovely weather and a waffle with fresh strawberries. I felt guilty as I ate my breakfast -- a few feeling in relation to Guinea. Guilt. I always knew that no matter how hard I tried to be one of the villagers, I differed from them in one key aspect: I have a Choice. I enjoyed village life, and loved the people, but I was there by *choice*, and they were not. And here in Santa Cruz, eating my food -- food for taste's sake instead of necessity's sake -- I felt guilty that I'm able to enjoy this easy life. This is a surprisingly simplistic emotion for me to be feeling. That can't be all.

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.

Thanks for listening,

Stephanie