Various Greetings,
I was walking past the American Embassy on Kairaba Avenue yesterday and the smell of fresh cut grass and lawn mower exhaust hit me like a mud-brick wall. There's plenty of grasses to be found in West Africa but not the varieties most commonly found covering your backyard. Pretty much no one aside from embassies, ambassadors and high end politicians can afford the luxury that is a lawn. I honestly cannot remember the last time my olfactories detected this redolent odor and it took me to a state of reminiscence like few things aside from the sense of smell can. All at once I was consumed by the idea of America, home, friends, family, pork, ice cream, pork-flavored ice cream, beer, flying cars (I assume they exist now); ideas that I've become all too good at blocking out because to think of them too long can lead to bleeding orifices and existential crises. Eh, minor hyperbole, but you know, out of sight out of mind and what not. February 2nd marked the end of my second year in Africa and I can't quite grasp how it came to this. Where did those two years go? Did I really do all those weird ass things I remember doing? When did my African life become normal and the idea of American life become borderline terrifying? Well, I still have five weeks left so I won't start waxing philosophic yet. We'll save that for the next and most likely final post of my career as a volunteer. Anyways, here's an update on my happenings and doings over the last couple months...
Guinea
I took a vacation to Guinea Conakry (not to be confused with Guinea Bissau or Equatorial Guinea) towards the end of November. I went with five other volunteers and spent nearly two weeks hiking all over. Guinea was one of the countries I could have transferred to after Mali along with Senegal, Burkina Faso, or Cameroon. It was interesting to think what could have been had I finished my service there. The country is much larger, more diverse ethnically and geographically, and considerably more beautiful than the Gambia. We spent most of our time hiking in different villages throughout the Fouta Djallon Plateau which covers much of central Guinea. It was gorgeous. Incredible vistas, waterfalls everywhere, 3,000 - 5,000 foot cliffs, and no touristy bullshit to deal with. What more can you ask for? The best hiking was in a remote mountain village called Douki. We stayed there for four days at a compound owned by a guy named Hassan Ba.
Born in neighboring Sierra Leone but ethnically Fula with family roots in Guinea, he spent much of his youth traveling all over Africa and Europe. He speaks English, French, and Spanish fluently as well as probably half a dozen local languages. Now in his early 50's, he's finally "retired" to his family's ancestral land where he takes in backpackers from all over and gives them the best tour of his country that can be found. $25 a night will get you a bed in a mud hut, three delicious meals a day cooked by his wife (including local coffee picked and brewed that day...amazing), endless hiking, and Hassan's unique brand of humor. He knows the mountains literally like the back of his hand (except for that one time we got lost) and has a number of planned hikes with names like Indiana Jones, Wet and Wild, Vulture's Rock, and Chutes and Ladders. The difficulty ranges from 'beginner' to 'holy shit I might die'. Chutes and Ladders involves a more or less vertical ascent up the face of a 3 or 4,000 foot cliff using only the local ladders made of tree limbs and vines. A misstep or the untimely breaking of a ladder could easily be fatal. One ladder after another, we climbed our way to the top. And just as we really began to feel like true bad asses, down comes some shoeless 50 year old woman with a baby on her back and a 25K rice bag balanced on her head without breaking a sweat. Africa's always good for reminding me that I'm really not that much of a bad ass. It wasn't all grueling though, just about every hike featured at least one waterfall fed, resplendent pool of refreshing mountain waters, complete with small fish that would nip, not unpleasantly, at our skin while we swam and washed away the day's dust and sweat. After Douki we traveled on to Dalaba and finally to Kindia. Then came the long trek back to the Gambia over some of the worst roads I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of piss poor roads. On my way home I continued to ponder what my life as a volunteer in francophone Guinea would have been like but I kind of doubt I would have made it long had I gone there. The ability to speak English in the Gambia has been a life saver and even with that benefit I was a hair or two away from quitting back in August.
Work
I still have a bit to do before I'm out, but my work is rapidly drawing to an end. My garden design and methods have long been implemented and soon we'll be harvesting carrots, cabbage, cucumber, and hot peppers. We devoted more space, time and energy to tomatoes than anything else in the garden but found out the hard way that the soil was extremely calcium deficient. All of the 300+ tomato plants are suffering from blossom end rot and none will yield fruit worth much of anything. This year's crop is lost but on the bright side, it is a very treatable problem. We'll re-lime the soil with burnt and crushed oyster shells from the coast and that should take care of the deficiency for a couple years to come. The pigeon pea is doing great as well but won't harvest until next year. Our tree nursery is still young but we have healthy moringa, mango, baobab, lime, orange, malaina, and various acacias transplanted and ready for transplanting.
Beekeeping seems to be going well. It's still largely a mystery to me but perhaps that's because the less I'm involved the better. Bees do what they tend to do quite well and I just try to snag some honey every now and then. I haven't been stung since my first outing, the colony is still strong and they're currently laying lots of drones in anticipation of all the virgin queens that are about to hit the market.
I plan on pumping out a world map mural at my school with the help of the teachers, students, and fellow volunteers at the end of this month. I was also supposed to get a visit from acting Peace Corps Director, Carrie Hessler-Radelet (Western Samoa 1981-1983), but her plans changed last minute. She is touring through the West African posts including the Gambia. My site would have been the only volunteer's site she was going to see but now she only has time to hit the capital before moving on to the next country. It would have been nice to host her for an afternoon but at least now I don't have to worry about purchasing new, non-tattered clothing.
Changes
I moved into yet another house about a month ago. This is my 5th residence since being sworn in as a volunteer the April before last. I'm still in Farafenni with the same job and I still take my meals with my former host family. I certainly could have just stayed where I was but with my roof collapsing, petty thievery, and my school offering to put me up in a larger, housier house with electricity and running water, I couldn't resist. Somehow my host mother was never informed of this decision and was unpleasantly surprised when my counterpart from the school showed up with a donkey and cart to move my belongings up the road. She thought I was leaving for America that day; I assured her she'd know when I was leaving for good because Peace Corps would actually send a vehicle to pick me up. This quickly assuaged her concerns and she told me the Domada would be ready around 8 as usual and don't forget to bring my spoon. Mmmm, Domada.
Cold Season, as brief as it is glorious, is ending abruptly. As the Starks never say: Hot Season is Coming. It seems to have been a shorter, hotter cold season than last year's. I've only spent one here and one in Mali so its hard to truly compare. Regardless, I can't even express how glad I am I'll be missing most of this new hot season. It's not just the heat that is coming, but the death as well. Even back in November at the beginning of the cold season, I could already see the first signs of the great purge. It starts slow but then one day you look up and realize all the green is gone. The lush, verdant grasses and bush that flourished from the heavy summer rains are suddenly PPffffftttttttt... going, gone. All the life receding back deep down into the soil, the soil hardening to stone. The colors drain out of this world until we're left with just shades of brown, red, and gold. Soon enough gold will join the others, hibernating in anticipation of June and the next rainy season. Like so many other things, my closest friends here are leaving or have already left. Our service is at an end and we're slowly staggering off to whatever it is that comes next. Those two raucous red silk cotton trees in my host family's backyard stand quiet now. All the birds have gone. They've flown to some place else, somewhere more alive, and soon so shall I.
Peace/Love
Rege
