Hello everybody, and Happy New Year!

I had a good Christmas, traveling with some friends in a cooler part of the country. We did some hiking, cooked some food. It was nice to get away. I've been in Guinea an entire calendar year now (if you don't count my trip home).

Well, my work here is really taking off now. When you come into Peace Corps, 2 years seems like such a long time. But it's just after you've been here a year that you finally know everyone, start to understand how it works, and who everyone listens to, etc. So, I finally feel capable, and now I only have 6 months left. My official COS (Close of Service) date is September 1, and I plan on finishing a month early on August 1 (most PCV's do this). And it should be a busy 6 months!

I've just finished running a community health agent training. I had been planning it since August, and I am so relieved to have it over with. It took much longer to plan than I thought it would, and then we got caught by Ramadan and had to wait until that was over. When people are fasting from dawn to dusk, they can't very well sit through days of training. The agents come from districts & villages up to 12 miles from the Health Center. They will be selling condoms and ORS (Oral Rehydration Solution), for people with diarrhea, in their village, giving health talks on diarrhea, family planning, and AIDS-STD's and act as a general liaison between the Health Center and the district, sending kids in for vaccinations and other stuff. I'm fairly optimistic: the training went very well, but it will take a lot of follow-up work. The hardest is the health talk. We found the most literate people we could, but they're still not very educated for the most part. It was hard enough to get them to understand the information we were giving them, let alone to talk to a group of people about it. I hope to work with them to practice. We're also giving them about $1 per health talk, which is quite a bit of money. So that should motivate them. Logistically it's a nightmare, but as I say, I'm optimistic. We worked with a local NGO (Non-Government Organization) - Population Services International - for funding and planning of the workshop.

I'm also turning in a proposal for funding for a Health Post - a satellite to the Health Center in a district 10 miles away. There were two districts that wanted health posts, but one was obviously more motivated and organized so we went with them. But the other is upset, and spreading rumors. It's kind of messy. And I'm worried as it is, because we're starting kind of late in my service. If the proposal is accepted this month, and we get the check in March or April, and it takes us 2 months to build the health post, that's June. That only leaves about 6 weeks leeway, and in Guinea, you need a LOT of leeway. Like that health agent training I thought I would do that in October or November, and it wasn't until the end of January. So, I'm concerned, because Peace Corps won't let us go home unless our projects are finished!

I'm also planning a couple of things with the school in my village. For quite some time we had been talking about painting educational murals on the walls of the school. Right now the rooms are bare concrete rooms filled with desks and a blackboard. For only a little more than $100 we can paint murals on all the walls, as well as something nice on the outside. I've been corresponding regularly with two classes in the U.S. - a 4th grade and a 6th grade class. With car washes and bake sales, they managed to raise more than enough money for the murals. With the extra money we may put a well in at the school, or I'll keep my ears open for something really good that we could put the money towards. Children are great.

My interaction with these classes has been some of my most fulfilling work. They write such fun and interesting letters, and I feel like I'm able to open the world up to them a little bit, as well as to make them realize how much of an effect they can have on the world. Not just in regard to fundraising, but also in communicating with others. I took their letters, writing about their dogs and cats and best friends, and read them to the village children. The gap in understanding between the two sets of children is HUGE, but the village kids still smiled when they got letters addressed to them, and shyly answered the questions asked of them, and drew some pictures.  They're really not used to working with older people (i.e., me) in a conversational way like that, so they were afraid to tell me what they really thought. But I was surprised to find that when I asked them to respond, and they dictated their letters to me in their halting and stiff French, once translated into English their letters sounded remarkably like the letters I had received from the children in the U.S. It's heartening to see.

In general, I'm doing well. The fact that work is going well is really buoying me up. I'm bound to have problems with stuff in the future, but I'll deal with that when I get there. I'm sure I'll storm into my house and close the door many more times before I COS, but I do hope the rest of my service is relatively calm. I've been getting very close with my village mother, Adama, and our relationship keeps me going. I can say I'm close to loving her, but it's hard because there's still such a gap between our experience. I certainly admire her as a strong-willed, hardworking mother, but there are some things I can't understand.

With Adama, I got to see my first live birth last month. It was the day of the fete of Ramadan and we were waiting for the procession of men to come back from prayer. A man came up and told us there was a birth at the health center. Since Adama is the midwife, she went and asked me to come. I've wanted to see a birth for a long time, but they always happen at night. Well, the woman was quite ready, so she helped her up on the examining table, pushing the foot stirrups to the side. The woman was a Susu, so I couldn't understand most of what was said. The Pulaar women rarely give birth at the health center.

The maternity is one of the nicest rooms in the center, with tiled floors (because of the blood), but it's still just a bare room with a table and bed and cabinet. We were almost out of gloves, so Adama only had one glove on. They reuse the gloves, washing and powdering them after each use. I was pretty useless during the birth, just standing awkwardly to the side, but handing over scissors and clamps when asked. And they're so darned blase about everything: they work a little bit, hardly saying anything, the baby comes out, Adama grabs it by one arm, does a little scrubbing the baby with a scrubby thing. The baby's hollering the whole time. Adama didn't tell the woman if it was a girl or a boy, and I wasn't sure if there was something cultural going on there. I cradled the baby carefully in both arms, and felt guilty holding the baby before his mother did. I handed him to her, and she tried to make him suckle, but she was tired and handed him back to Adama, who took him with one hand. By this time the maternity nurse had come, gave a bored look in, and asked me to bring the baby in to be weighed. The first excitement I saw in this whole affair was when the father saw the baby as I carried it in to be weighed. His whole face lit up and I used my limited Susu, "I bara to?", (you see?). He nodded. He still didn't know it was a boy, but I'm sure that would make him happy too. So, that was my first birth. The next day another woman came in, but that birth didn't go so well and she was referred into town for a C-section. The baby didn't make it.

So, that's what I've been doing over here, in Guinea. I'm looking forward to coming home, relatively soon. My plans right now are to live with Mom in NH from September to December, taking some classes at UNH and recovering. I have my application in right now at University of California at Santa Cruz for the Ph.D. physics program. My chances look good. Although I didn't finish as a physics major at Bard college (I did start as one!), I have always shown a strong aptitude for the subject. Going back to school for it is completing an old dream of mine. We'll see where it leads me. I'm also hoping to keep doing a lot of writing.

Take care all, and keep me in mind! Thank you all my friends and family for your wonderful support and your goodness over the year. I'm appreciate what you've done for me, and I wish good things for you.

Thinking of you,

Stephanie

Post Script from Mom . . .

Stephanie has been accepted into the Master's program at Santa Cruz. And the mural has been started on the school wall. The health center has been funded.