World Wise Schools program, Letter #3

Second Letter to Kris Lynes' grade 3-4 class at Mast Way School in Lee, New Hampshire

March/April 1998

Hello to all! Thank you again for all your wonderful drawings. As soon as Easter vacation is over, I plan to show them to the children in the local school, and ask them to make some drawings for you, too. If you have questions to ask them, please send them to me, and I'll translate them into French.

Several of you asked if there are schools here. The answer is yes - there are schools and post offices and banks and stores, just like at home. The difference is that things don't work quite as well here. The stores are small. The banks are inefficient. The mail is slow. Roads are bad. Things, such as buildings and furniture, aren't built as well in general, because they don't have enough money for good cement, wood, or for power tools (carpentry and construction work is done by hand in the villages). In the cities, where there is more electricity and more money, things are done a little bit better. So, truly, things here are a lot like at home in the states, just very poor. And there are no lions, zebras, or hippos roaming around, like in your drawings. Those types of animals are in East Africa (I'm in West Africa), and even then, they are in special game preserves, not right near people. Here, if you go out into the "bush" (the wilderness) you might find snakes, or a monkey, or a wild boar, or a deer. Or, more likely, somebody's stray cow or goat.

Yes, many people do live in thatched huts made of mud bricks. And, to tell you the truth, they're much cooler than the concrete "modern" houses with corrugated iron roofing. In town (my closest town is Fria), things in general are more modern, with running water and electricity most of the time. Often, water and electricity are intermittent, though, and are turned off during the day, or for days at a time, to save money. Such development also decreases with distance from Conakry, the country's capital, such that towns that are on the other end of the country from Conakry are much less likely to have reliable water or concrete buildings. This is somewhat similar to the U.S., in that if you're in the suburbs of Boston, everything is very city-like. When you get further away, such as Lee, there are more forests and smaller roads and wood houses instead of brick.

As I said, the towns are more developed than the villages -- people in town are more likely to have running water and electricity and mud houses. This is because people in town have more money, and are more likely to have "real" jobs, and get paid. In town, there are doctors and teachers and factory workers and shopkeepers. In the village (such as Wawaya where I live), people are more likely to be farmers, growing enough rice for their family and a few extra things from the local market. They make enough money to get by, but not enough to improve their lives, or to have concrete houses.

You can think of the difference between the village (Wawaya) and town (Fria) as the difference between Lee and Portsmouth. The pace of life in Lee is slower, and there are farms and bumpy roads and old-fashioned houses. The community is small, and you can go to the Lee Library and see a lot of people you know. In Portsmouth, there are streetlights and lots of pavement and sidewalks and highway overpasses and apartment buildings.

The streets are full of people and you rarely see someone you know. Housing costs more in Portsmouth, but people who work there have a lot of jobs to choose from, and are paid very well. However, the Wawaya-Fria, Lee-Portsmouth comparison only goes so far, because America is a very very rich country whereas Guinea is a very very poor country, so the small towns of America are much richer than the small towns of Guinea (or Russia, or China, or Brazil, etc.).

Many of you asked about water. I'm sitting here with my friend who makes tea for a living (he sells it for about 10 cents a cup). We're right next to the pump. There's a steady traffic of villagers going to and from the pump. The pump is a foot-pedal pump, and they jump up and down on the pedal to slowly fill a 20 gallon jug (you can see this on the video my mom has). When they return, they carry the jug on their heads back home. I live about 1/4 mile from the pump, but many people live farther. In the smaller villages away from the center of Wawaya, water becomes a real problem, and may have to be carried several miles from the nearest well or pump. Clean water is always a problem, and when people drink from dirty wells or streams, they often get sick.

Because water-carrying is a menial daily chore, it is done by women and children. Men are considered too high-status for that sort of work. From the time they are 5 or 6 years old, children start pumping and carrying water for the family. They also do other household chores - catching chickens, fetching bread or other items from the market, washing the clothes, cooking the meal, gathering wood, working in the fields, herding cows, and many other little chores. I just asked my friend: "What sorts of work do the children do here?" and he replied, with emphasis, "Oh they do a lot! They do everything!" So the next time your mother asks you to wash the dishes...don't complain! If you were here, you would be working too much to play or do homework, especially the young girls. This is another reason why education here is lacking -- often families will take children out of school at a young age because they need his/her help at home. Maintaining an African household takes much more time than an American one: the families are much larger, and there are no machines so everything has to be done by hand. Even the rice, which is the basic food, does not come in little supermarket bags. It has to be pounded in a large mortar and pestle to get the husks off, and then cleaned and separated.

So, as you can see, because the people are poor, they take the kids out of school. And so the kids don't go to university and get a good paying job and send money home to the family. The family's poverty keeps them poor.

It's a cycle that's hard to break. It's like that all over Guinea. Guinea is one of the poorest countries in all of Africa.

That's all for now! I hope you all are well, and I look forward to hearing more of your questions.
Love,

Steph