Greetings from the Fouta. Rainy season is moving into full swing and everybody is out in the fields growing the rice and cassava they will eat for the rest of the year. It really is beautiful this time of year. I have always known that I would be leaving Guinea at the height of the rainy season, and I am glad I will remember it this way.
Rainy season is also malaria season and flu season of course. The health center is very busy. I saw a little girl with whooping cough the other day. Something you don't see often at home. Unfortunately all the health centers are desperately low on medications. In a related development the Guinean health minister has, after initial denials, admitted the truth of a report on French radio that more than a million dollars in health funds has disappeared without a trace. This scandal, though unremarkable by itself in Guinean terms, comes on the heels of the announcement of a government anti-corruption campaign. Apparently the military mutiny in February convinced the president that public discontent was getting out of hand and he was in danger of going the way of the presidents of Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia (deposition in a military coup) unless he cleaned things up. In April he made a remarkably honest television speech, castigating the corruption of his own administration and promising to put in place a special commission to investigate corruption in public administration.
The country was generally pretty skeptical, considering that the president is considered the crookedest member of the whole crooked bunch. Stories abound of secret midnight shipments of gold buillon to the border of neighboring Guinea-Bissau. One time, they say, his own wife was arrested by French police for trying to smuggle diamonds through the airport in Paris. He was obliged to go there himself to get her released. When he was accused of stealing government money to finance his re-election campaign, he responded, "That's where I work. Where do you want me to get it?"
So far the anti-corruption campaign has had two notable results. The first is to bring down the roadblocks on the national roads. These roadblocks are manned by the Gendarmerie, or national police, ostensibly for the purpose of checking for proper documentation of vehicles and travellers. In reality they function as freelance tollbooths as nobody, papers or no papers, gets through without paying a bribe. (Except for Western development workers like myself who are excused by tacit understanding.) They can't actually arrest someone if they have the right papers, but they can pull them over to check and simply not get around to letting them go on their way. Anyone who doesn't pay the bribe is liable to spend the night there. If they try to leave without permission, they can and will be arrested, possibly beaten and thrown in jail.
Anyway, a recent announcement on national radio said that these roadblocks were to come down. Sure enough, when I went to the Thursday market in Pita last week, there was no roadblock on either side of town. Maybe the Gendarmerie are going to have to start living on their salaries. It will certainly save drivers and travellers a lot of time and trouble. Just between Pita and Conakry you can get stopped a half-dozen times, and traffic backs up behind each roadblock as the drivers and gendarmes negotiate the terms of each bribe.
(A Cameroonian acquaintance told me of a recent trip he took to Bamako, the capital of Mali, with a group of Guinean associates. While driving around the city they were pulled over by police and the Malian driver went back to confer with the policeman. When he returned, the Guineans in the car asked him, "How much did you have to give him?" The Malian driver informed them indignantly that he was not so foolish as to offer money to a policeman. You get in a lot of trouble for that. The Guineans looked at each other in surprise. In Guinea, you get in trouble for not offering money.)
The other notable result of the anti-corruption campaign has been the customs fire. Two days before an investigative commission was to begin its inquiry into the customs office of the international port in Conakry, possibly the most notorious bed of corruption and graft in the entire country, the second story of the customs building was destroyed in a fire of suspicious origin. The accounting department and all of its records went up in smoke. Now the notorious Colonel Bangoura, the head of the customs service, is going around belligerently challenging anyone who accuses him of corruption to back up his claims with evidence. A pretty safe challenge,now that the evidence has been burned.
One minor incident has been the suspension of the prefect of Beyla, who is apparently responsible for diverting $25,000 collected from the population there for the government's biggest pet project, the hydroelectric dam at Garafiri. This is really a positive sign as in the past, cases such as this or the million dollars missing from the health ministry budget would have just been quietly swept under the rug with a few well-placed bribes or "gifts." Perhaps indeed the government is serious about cleaning up the public administration, as unlikely as this would seem in the West African context in general and the Guinean context in particular. If they are, I certainly wish them luck. Guinea without ubiquitous corruption would be something to see. I don't know if I would recognize it.
On the local level, nothing much is new. I'm spending one or two days a week at the health center which as I said is busy. My erstwhile collaborator Cece has become even more apathetic, if that were possible, since was passed over for Chef de Centre de Sante back in January. I have given up on trying to teach him the principle of putting the vaccination files in order by date of birth. He'll never get it in a hundred years. I just go through them first thing in the morning and put them back in order before the patients start arriving. It's a pain, but it saves me spending a half-hour looking for the file every time a mother shows up with a kid to be vaccinated.
On two recent inspection visits, Cece got yelled at for re-using needles in vaccinations (Guinea is beginning to discover AIDS) and came hair's breadth from having his government motorcycle taken away for his stupendously chaotic management of the leprosy/tuberculosis program in the health center. His bosses are finally figuring out how worthless he is. Of course he'll never lose his job; functionaries are simply not fired in Guinea. It goes without saying that he'll never change either. To think they once considered making him Chef de Centre. That would have been scary.
On the other hand, I really enjoy working with the new Chef de Centre, Dr. Bobo. He is an interesting guy, intelligent and well-read (the only Guinean I ever met who could discuss Taoism), hard-working, proud of his competence, and polite. Meeting him in Guinea has been like coming across an alien from outer space. He put in a well next to the health center at his own out-of pocket expense; an improvement never even contemplated by the local authorities. Now he wants to plant pine trees around the building. We have spent many hours working together on my project of an expanded six-tape version of the Pulaar public health information cassette. Sort of an African version of a home medical encyclopedia. He is as enthusiastic about it as I am, which never fails to amaze me. It is certainly refreshing to work with somebody who has such a positive attitude. (Maybe he feels the same way.) I am only sorry that he arrived here so late in my stay in Maci, and that I am so busy with other projects that I can't really initiate anything very ambitious with him.
Well that's about all for now. I hope this letter finds you well and enjoying summer in Colorado. It is a little strange to think of it being summer, as here in Guinea the season is cool and rainy and is in fact referred to as "hivernage" (French for "winter"). But then that's only the least of the dislocations of living here. I'm looking forward to getting home in about three months, as much as I know I'm going to miss Guinea and at least some Guineans. Still I have a lot to do before I leave and am working hard on finishing it all up. Wish me luck. I'd better go.