These are letters Stephanie Chasteen wrote home during her service.
What We Think We Know
I.
This African sunset.
You read these words and think
one thing, but
I tell you
it is another.
I thought it would be like
Out of Africa, that I would be
Meryl Streep
in white
so romantic, breathing the plains,
stamping into dust, raising
my throaty voice towards
"Thoughts About Fous"
Every town has a "fou" or two or, for the more politically correct among us, the "uninstitutionalized mentally disturbed". There's the Finger Fou of Labe, who will helpfully show you his extremely enlarged index finger and ask you for money. There's the rarely-sighted Naked Lady Fou of Kankan, who will smile and greet you pleasantly. I had the fortune to be the very first to sight and classify the Rolling Fou of Siguiri, who gleefully rolled on the ground in front of each market stall, and laughing, ran on to the next. She caused an equal amount of mirth in passers-by. That's the kind of fou I like. Not like the Goggle Glasses fou of Fria who, wearing dark shop glasses, will follow you silently for a good long time, until you realize with a start that he's standing right behind you, staring. Or the fou that recently came to our health center.
Our fou is big, tall, strong. Apparently he was fine until his grandmother died and, in his grief, he drank some potion he found in her room. Since then, he's stabbed his father and brother, caused all sorts of trouble, and escaped from the jail by lifting up the roof. So, when he came to the health center and ran from door to door, "Who locked this door without informing me? Where's the key? Who locked this door?", our female pharmacist, Bama, alone except for some women and babies, sat silent and didn't move.
Final final newsletter (Home in the US)
December 5, 1999
Hello everybody, and happy holidays!
I’m certainly grateful for many things this holiday. I’m grateful for the chance to be with my family after many years of separation. I’m grateful for the experiences I’ve had in Guinea – the many kindnesses and the many hardships. I’m grateful for my life. And I’m grateful for my future, which might be a little cheeky, but I really am excited about what lies ahead for me. Even more important, I’m grateful for all my family and friends in a deeper way than ever before. Thank you, all of you, for being in my life. Thank you for what you have taught me. Thank you.
Last Newsletter -- May 1999
Hello everybody! Here is my final newsletter from the Dark Continent. I return at the end of August. Overall, life is going well - I'm finishing my work with only minor stress. Getting a lot of reading done. I hope to start War and
Peace soon. Taking these last months to look back over the past two years - long, strange, hard, glorious, boring ... I'm feeling more satisfied than I could have predicted even a few months ago. As you must know, it hasn't been the romantic African adventure I may have expected. But it was an adventure, and I'm coming back changed. I'm apprehensive about re-integrating into U.S. culture, as in the last year I have come to wear my Guinean persona like a second skin. I'm very comfortable here, and rarely think twice about my daily life. I'm sad to leave, yet I can hardly wait. That, at least, is completely predictable.
I'm enclosing here some writing I've done, thinking about leaving, summing it up. Enjoy.
Steph
Read more: 5/99: Last Newsletter. Thoughts on leaving Wawaya.
Newsletter #8 - February 1999
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!
Letter #6 - December, 1998
December 6, 1998
Hello to all! My last three months here since returning from my harrowing vacation have been full and productive, which is not to say frustration-free! I've been working to plan a training for village agents who will sell condoms and oral rehydration solution (for diarrhea) in the villages, and we've started pulling together a proposal to build a health post (a very basic health care facility) in a village 15 km away. It's hard work. I don't enjoy working on these projects, they require a more western system of planning ahead and scheduling, and after the 5th missed meeting I'm ready to tear my hair out. I prefer my daily tasks, the friendships I'm developing more deeply, cooking, reading, teaching my little brother to read.
The wet season is over, but the real heat of the dry season hasn't started. It's about 90 degrees in teh afternoon, but it gets quite cool at night, so I can sleep. By February, everything will be dry and dusty, the heat will be 110 degrees during the day, and the night cool won't be enough to dispell the heat from my sunbaked house.
Newsletter #7 - December 6, 1998
Hello to all! I hope you all had a Merry Christmas. My last 3 months here since returning from my harrowing vacation have been full and productive, which is not to say frustration-free! I've been working to plan a training for village agents who will sell condoms and oral rehydration solution (for diarrhea) in the villages, and we've started pulling together a proposal for funding to build a health post (a very basic village health care facility) in a village 15 km away. It's hard work. I don't enjoy working on these projects; they require a more Western system of planning ahead and scheduling, and after the fifth missed meeting I'm ready to tear my hair out. I prefer my daily tasks, the friendships I'm developing more deeply, cooking, reading, teaching my "little brother" to read.
Newsletter #4 - September 10, 1998
I am sitting now in the Peace Corps office in the capital, having just completed a handbook on the activities of the Women in Development committee (WID) in Guinea. And so I find myself thinking about women. I find myself thinking about women's work, and how gender changes our experience of the world. I think about myself as a woman, and of the lives of a few of my Guinean women friends.
The average number of children borne by a Guinean mother is 6.8, versus 2.1 in the U.S. About one-half of girls are married by the age of 16, half have children during adolescence, and half are just one of several wives. One-half of women between 14 and 49 are malnourished. Ninety percent of women are circumcised. Eighty percent have received no formal schooling.
But this is too big for me to get angry about. It's like trying to wrap your fist around a tree. Instead, it has taught me something. It has taught me about gratitude. About respect. About a truly difficult life.
Marge's Visit to Guinea - by Marge Chasteen
August, 1998
Stephanie and I arrived in Conakry, Guinea, on Sunday, August 9, after spending the night in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, enroute from our trip to Kenya (see previous report). Ethiopian Air kindly put us up at a hotel there because the flight necessitated an overnight stay. They also paid for our meals. On the way to Abidjan, we touched down in Kinshasa, where a number of Americans joined our flight, fleeing the Republic of Congo. In Conakry, we were met at the airport by a Peace Corps official, who swept us through customs, etc. Since Steph's ID was a little sketchy after the theft of all her documents, we really appreciated this help! We were taken by a Peace Corps van to the PC House on the other side of town. We were very lucky to have this "royal treatment", but we needed a little TLC after our harrowing experience. Our drive through the streets of Conakry was a revelation to me: so many people, so much noise, an incredible amount to see. I could hardly take it all in. Stephanie and our PC rep were in constant rapid French communication. I didn't realize until later that he spoke English perfectly well, having attended college in Boston. I kept massacreing French, attempting to communicate with him.
Marge and Stephanie's Trip to Kenya - by Marge Chasteen
Summer, 1998
Our adventure began with my departure from Logan airport in Boston the evening of July 28. My flights went smoothly, and I arrived in Nairobi's Kenyatta airport at around 10:30 p.m. on the 29th. A representative of Utc, the tour company, met me, whisked me through customs, and took me to a car waiting to take me to my hotel. Stephanie was due to arrive the following morning. When the tour company's agent met her plane, she wasn't on it (glitch #1). Stephanie had forgotten to confirm her flight from Conakry (lesson #1: always confirm flights 72 hours in advance in Africa). She was rerouted on an exhausting itinerary which took her to about 3 countries, with an overnight stay in the Cote d'Ivoire. All this time, she wasn't sure whether or not I or the tour company had gotten messages from her, telling us that she would arrive one day late (we did). (Stephanie's #1 panicked phone call to dad).
Newsletter #3 from Wawaya - March/April 1998
As most of you know, my wonderful mother just took me on vacation to the Canary Islands, a group of Spanish-owned islands off the coast of Morocco. I've been back in my village about a week now.
I'm very glad I was feeling happy with life here in Guinea before I left, because it was quite a shock to be back in the Western world again. I wasn't expecting it to be so developed in the Canaries, but Las Palmas is a regular city. There were supermarkets. Shopping districts. Historic buildings. Sushi bars. Ice cream. I even found a Baskin Robbins, and a Bennetton.
It is hard to describe the effect that all of this had upon me. It was a coming back into myself, a reminder of a life. Not quite like waking from a dream, but something similar. I had been losing perspective, cloistered away in the little world of my village. I've adapted here, learned to deal with constant miscommunication, both in terms of inadequacy of shared language and the lack of a shared cultural understanding and cultural cues. That is: we can't talk, the Guineans and I, and we rarely know what we're really saying to one another. I am on an island of one (except when I see other volunteers - then we form out own little cloistered universe of Volunteer Land). I had gotten used to the isolation and, like a constant static, had grown less aware of it.
Read more: 4/98: Return from vacation, thoughts about development
Newsletter #2 - February 18, 1998
I have been in my village for 4 1/2 months now. At the time of my last letter, I had been here for only a month. A lot has changed. At about the second month, culture shock hit me very hard. The villagers have little concept of how different my home is from theirs. Their world is very limited in scope. They know little beyond what they hear on the radio and read in the (limited) textbooks. Few people travel.
It is rare to talk about feelings. People talk about events, who's going where, who died, who was born... but not how they felt about those events. The two words we use most for describing feelings are "happy" and "tired". Anything beyond that, such as "sad" or "angry" or "fulfilled" just isn't in their daily vocabulary. Especially "sad". I think it made people very uncomfortable when I expressed sadness.
Newsletter #1 from Wawaya
Hello!
This is my first official newsletter since I've left home.
I'm in Africa! I made it through 2 months of training in Senegal and one month in Mamou (Guinea). Training was hard, a lot of work, a lot of information, and a lot of people! We all went a little crazy. Throw 50 young people together for several months, add a liberal amount of stress, sprinkle with culture shock and homesickness, stir well and let simmer. We all kind of reverted to high school, and I ran and hid and spent most of my time with one or two people.
Training itself was like being in school, with class hours, mostly devoted to language. My French was good enough that they put me directly into the national language (I learned Pulaar, the language of the Fulani). Other classes were Tech (eg., the actual job - health), Culture, and Medical. Tech was pretty nebulous, because our job is pretty nebulous. We learned about needs assessment, working with the community, letting people come up with solutions themselves. We also spent some time on the actual nuts and bolts, such as vaccinations, nutrition, food preservation. Cultural training was pretty good (though difficult, since we were mostly in Senegal, not Guinea, and the cultures are different). We were pretty disappointed in the medical training.
July 1 - First letter from the field
I've just departed (July 1), so I'm probably freaking out!!! We went to Washington, DC to get all our shots on July 2. Note the typical governmental foresight in giving us our shots and malaria medication the day before we leave (most vaccinations should be given a month or so before exposure...). We then fly from DC to NYC to Paris to Dakar, where we take ground transport to Thies, Senegal. This is where we spend 2 months of our training. The third month will be in Mamou, Guinea (right close to the border of Sierra Leone, where there's that coup now). Those who don't panic and flee (One drop-out estimate was 30%) will be sworn in as volunteers and placed on site.
The toughest time for volunteers is the first 6 months. This has been described to me as "the loneliest time of my life." Culture shock, isolation, and lack of easy international communication will be tough... So, my dear friends, please, WRITE TO ME!!! My addresses are listed below.