It's been a while since I've written so I guess it's time for an update. The last week of May I took a trip to Kankan in the eastern part of the country. A gruelling 36-hour voyage by "bush taxi" (a Peugeot station wagon with eleven passengers) which I don't think I will repeat. Kankan is the second-biggest city in Guinea. While I was there I saw lot of other volunteers, most of whom had gathered like myself for a going-away party for Mara, the volunteer with the record for the longest stay in Guinea -- almost four years. (The standard stint is two years.) We all had a great time.
Haute Guinee (Upper Guinea), as the area around Kankan is called, impressed me mostly as flat and monotonous. I was glad to have seen it primarily because it made me appreciate my own region of Guinea, the Fouta Djallon highlands, that much more.
When I got back to Maci, I got a kitten. His name is Colorado. My health center colleague Cece Gbilimou cannot understand why I would do such a bizarre thing as keep a cat around the house. Cece is from the forest region, where a house cat would likely be eaten for dinner. Oh well. Halimatou from the sewing group in Kambaco understands me. Every time she comes over she asks for him, and he usually ends up falling asleep in her lap. He is really cute, with big eyes just like those dimestore pictures of kittens. I feed him canned sardines, which are a little expensive. As he gets older I will wean him onto rice and sauce.
Speaking of Colorado, the district of Kambaco has asked me if they could rename a village after my home town. I suggested Colorado (rather than Brooklyn) and they said they would get together to decide what village would receive the honor and then let me know. Then they'll give me a piece of paper when it is all official. I don't quite know what to think about it, but I guess it must be quite a compliment or maybe they are trying to butter me up for something.
Since then I have been mostly hanging around the sewing group. It is going really well so far (knock on wood). We have sold a few boubous, the proceeds of which have gone into the group's kitty. (A "boubou" is a traditional formal outfit of flowing robes with lots of embroidery. Sort of the West African version of a business suit.) Saikou is building up a stock of ready-to-wear clothes. When we have enough, Halimatou will take them to Conakry and sell them wholesale. Saikou figures that just selling boubous wholesale, we can make about a 45% profit over materials. I'm psyched. Saikou's got a couple of guys from town helping him in the studio and they are turning out stuff like nobody's business. I warned Saikou we can't pay these guys. It is ruled out in the funding application and anyway I don't want the co-op to become just an employment opportunity for professional tailors. (It is supposed to provide job training for local women and girls.) Saikou is vague about the terms under which they are working there. Perhaps he figures he can pay them under the table and keep it off the books. Who knows what murky understanding he has with them. I don't mind. I am trying to keep hands off as much as possible. As long as the co-op makes money and spends it for the good of the group, I'm satisfied. As for Saikou, there is nothing he hasn't done for the project.
Although the studio hasn't been formally inaugurated, I have made a point of dragging people out to Kambaco to see it. My friend Aboubacar, who was a tailor in Liberia for years, was very impressed. He says it is better than any tailoring studio in Pita. He is talking it up all over Pita for us. Maria, my APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director -- my boss in Conakry) came out to see it and bought a boubou. Some missionary friends from Pita did the same. Then I got a letter from another missionary, Jill, who runs a clothing store in Labe. She saw the outfit the Pita missionary bought, and liked the embroidery so much she wants to order ten embroidered shirts for a trip to the States in July. If they go over, who knows -- we might be in the export market! Saikou and I are going up to see her about it tomorrow.
I've ordered a few things from the studio myself, including a couple of pairs of pleated trousers. I like the trousers so much I think I might try Saikou on a three-piece suit. The trousers were six dollars. The suit might run me thirty or forty dollars at the outside. He says it would be no problem. I'm still trying to get my nerve up. I'll tell you one thing: organizing a sewing cooperative sure solves the problem of finding a tailor. Every volunteer should do it.
I've been feeling rather poorly the last few days. I am reasonable certain I have a slight case of malaria. I made the blood sample slides like I was supposed to and took the prescribed medicine; now I am waiting to start feeling better. Later when I can have someone look at the slide, we'll find out if was really malaria or not. It is an irritating illness. I don't have enough energy to do much of anything, but it is hard to sleep. So I am sitting around being apathetic. Plus I seem to have picked up some amoebas in Kankan and at the same time they found that I also tested positive for "intestinal flukes" -- whatever they are. I would probably rather not know. So now I am sitting around and taking all this medicine, the main side effect of which is that it makes everything I eat taste like metal. Yuck. The thing is, this only happens when I leave the Fouta to go to Kankan or Conakry. When I stay home I stay healthy.
The big overarching news from Guinea is the national legislative elections, the oft-promised follow-up to the presidential elections eighteen months ago. They passed off without mishap last Sunday. there have been some reports of irregularities, but nothing more than can be put down to incompetent officials and overzealous supporters. 137 opposition supporters were arrested in Kankan, but they all snuck out of prison one morning while the soldiers were at roll call. They were later full of praise for the commander of the garrison who let it be known that their arrest was not his idea, and bought them all cigarettes besides. The general unspoken assumption is that their "escape" was just his way of letting them go.
I went down to the primary school on Sunday to watch the vote for a while before going back home to bed. It was interesting: each voter had to cast two ballots: one for a candidate and one for a list of parties. Like some European voting systems, I think. So there were two sets of ballots, two voting booths, two ballot boxes, etc. They actually got the voters to line up in two lines, one of men and one of women. Then they let them through one at a time. It actually seemed pretty organized, although they were working hard to keep things on track. It seemed like someone was perpetually trying to put the right ballot in the wrong ballot box, or to stuff through the little slot in the top of the box a wadded-up ballot envelope that could not possibly fit. Or dropping their ballots and having to scrabble through the discarded ballots ankle-deep on the floor to find the right one. Or wandering out the door with their ballot paper in their hand, not knowing what they were supposed to do with it. You could see that they have not had many elections here.
Mr. Dioulde, the sub-prefectural education director (in charge of the local teachers) and Madame Fatou, in charge of the health center, were in charge of the voting station. They had five or six people distributing ballots to the voters, making sure they ended up in the right box, and all that. They had representatives of the two locally dominant parties watching to make sure it was all on the up-and-up. (There are 46 parties in all.) After I left, I heard that some Europeans, representatives of some watchdog commission or other, had dropped by and peeked in on things. It all went very smoothly.
One sour note to the elections, though. The community secretary, who knows I have been talking to the people in Donghol about a school (I have also discussed it with the president of the local Rural Development Committee), came up to me today and told me I shouldn't undertake any projects to help people who "are not with the government;" that is to say, who did not vote for the ruling party. Some nerve. I guess Donghol must be some kind of opposition stronghold, which probably explains why they don't have a school already. Unfortunately, African democracy often owes more to Richard Daley than to Thomas Jefferson. But to think he wants to sign me up to his plan to punish Donghol and other sectors that did not vote for the P.U.P. by withholding development assistance -- I could hardly believe my ears. It is probably just as well I have malaria, or I might have had the energy to say something unfortunate. In the event I decided to wait and discuss it with the RDC president, who will hopefully understand how inappropriate that suggestion was.
My goodness, I'm mad again just thinking about it. Well, it'll probably blow over -- these things generally do. It's just one more thing I have to be careful about now. Not letting myself be manipulated into only working in districts that support the government party. I asked the RDC president for the election results. He said I could get them from the sub-prefect when he got back from Pita. I'm going to write them down, district by district, so I'll know. Well that's all for now. Sorry if this letter seems a little spacey. Put it down to the fever. I'm also sorry for the funky paper, but I am out of my fancy grid paper and I haven't been able to get to Labe to get more. This is all I can get in Maci. Happy July 4 and everything.
Love, Woody