A Story

Before I head back to site tomorrow, I wanted to tell a story about something that happened to me today  and something I've been thinking about a lot living here.

Today, Tess (a volunteer living in a village near mine who came with me to Kankan this weekend) and I went on an epic errand spree to get an assortment of items for our huts. There are lots of these you can find here that you can't get in village (teaching supplies, cooking items, foods), so we had a long list and a lot of walking to do. It's hot, sunny, and dusty in Kankan, so walking around for hours on end is exhausting. After a few hours, we stopped at a store to buy paint on our way back home. I've found a painter in Cissela who will paint my hut a pretty blue, but he told me I'd need to buy the supplies in the city. The first paint store we went to didn't have all of the things we were looking for, but the man send us to another paint shop that he knew would have them. Unfortunately because it's a holiday weekend (Tabaski, the Muslim holiday), that shop was closed, so we wandered around a little bit until we went back to the first shop to ask the man if he knew of another place in Kankan where we could find the items on our list. While there, another man told us he knew of a place, but when he explained to us how to get there we didn't quite understand. So... he told us he'd take us. He walked us all the way to the other paint store, talked to the guys there, and helped me figure out the pricing of everything. Once I saw how much stuff I needed to get and how heavy it was, I figured I wouldn't be able to get it back to the Peace Corps house and nearly gave up. BUT this generous man strapped the stuff to his moto, drove it to the Peace Corps house, and dropped it off. When I offered to pay him he refused, we shook hands, and he rode off on his merry way, about an hour and a half after we'd met him in that first shop.

I could spin this in a negative light and assume that the only reason he helped us was because we were white, or I could assume that he had nothing better to do with his afternoon than to help two damsels in distress. However, this generosity and eagerness to help is not unique to this man; it is something I see all the time here. I can think of a number of similar stories. Once, I was nearly stranded in a village 25k from mine because I couldn't get a taxi back and the one taxi headed in my direction wanted an exorbitant amount of money. A man I'd never met argued with the taxi driver, explaining that I was a volunteer and a teacher giving up the comforts of my life for two years to teach in Guinea, and when the taxi driver wouldn't budge the man insisted on pitching in for my fare. Tess' dog was sick this weekend, and a 13-year-old boy took the dog into his own hands to care for, taking him to the vet, feeding him, and checking on him periodically. When another volunteer's bike broke down on a remote dirt road, a man put the bike on his moto and drove it to the nearest village for repair.

Whenever I am annoyed with my situation in Guinea, whether it be when people are incessantly yelling "white person!" at me or when I'm vastly overcharged, I think of these instances of pure generosity. Guineans, generally speaking, of course, are generous people. Whenever a Guinean eats anything around someone else (I mean ANYTHING and ANYWHERE), they immediately invite them to join; this isn't just a courtesy, but a serious invitation, even when they may not have enough food or money to feed themselves. The principal at my school goes leaps and bounds to help me with anything, anytime, anywhere.

Sometimes Guineans ask me loaded questions about America, especially about the generosity of Americans towards one another. They want me to say that Americans are greedy and that they refuse to share anything with anyone, even members of their family. I try to explain that of course, most Americans share their wealth with their families, and many Americans are very generous, but that no, it's not like Guinea. They smile, and say "Oui, c'est comme ça en Afrique." This is an aspect of their culture that Guineans can and should feel proud of, so I shut up.