Madame, PARDON!

Happy six month anniversary, Guinea. Well actually, as I write this, I'm nearly at the seven month mark. But six months sounds like a nicer, rounder number so we'll keep it at that.

Greetings from Kankan! Not going to lie, I really needed my monthly weekend away from Cissela. It's a breath of fresh air to be out of there. Things at site this month were up and down, up and down, up and down. The ups definitely outweigh the downs so I'm still feeling good, but I think my two days away will be rejuvenating.

Coming back from Senegal felt really great. I was so happy to see my host family and give everyone their gifts. Over the past few months, I've gotten much closer with my family. It definitely helps now that my Malinke is getting better, since the only member of the family that speaks French is my host father, and he's never there. I'm finally starting to figure out who is who in the family, which is not an easy task as there are upwards of 25 people. My host father has three wives (polygamy is permitted and really common here). The eldest was actually his brother's wife, but his brother passed away some years back so he "inherited" her (yes, I am very uncomfortable with this and can write more about it later). She has two sons. The second wife, Fanta, lives in the hut next to mine. She has four daughters, including two twins that are in 4th grade. His third and youngest wife, Bintou, has two boys, Mamady and Bakary. But that isn't even the half of our family members! The three women I spend the most time with, Hawa, Bantan, and Diama, are all somehow related to my host father, but I haven't quite figured out how. Perhaps they are nieces? Hawa says she is 22 (I don't believe her -- she looks so much older), and Bantan and Diama are a few years older. Both Hawa and Bantan's husbands live in different cities and they hope to join them soon. Hawa has a one-year-old, Saran, who is maybe the cutest thing ever. Bantan's daughter, Fatoumata, is the child that died in my compound a few months back. She has another daughter that lives in Conakry, the capital, with other family members (it is very common in Guinea to have children live with aunts and uncles, usually for financial reasons). As far as I know, Diama is unmarried and has no kids, which is really rare in Guinea. She's a tailor and the only woman in the family that knows a little French. There are many more people that live in our compound: three men, two women, and a number of kids, but I still can't quite figure out how they figure into the mix. Let's just say that "family" is a very loose term here. When people introduce others as their "big brother" or "little sister," I can't really trust that as I would in the states.

Regardless, I spend a lot of time with my host family. Usually after teaching, I spend a few hours grading and lesson planning, sometimes I bike to my principal's house for lunch, but almost always I cook dinner with Hawa and Bantan, even if I don't end up eating with them. Pretty much 100 percent of the time we are making rice and sauce, and I will say I'm getting very good at it. We cook outside, behind my host father's hut, over fire. Now that I've done it a bunch they let me actually do things like pound the onion and dried fish with the giant mortar and pestle. Baby steps! One night Hawa went to go shower and left me to cook the entire meal for twenty people by myself. I must have looked hilarious, as my students kept walking past and yelling "MADAME!" in shocked voices. I actually end up eating with my host family about twice a week. As much as I don't like the food, sometimes I just don't want to go into my hut, close the door, and cook a meal for one. I eat using my hand with the ladies and kids, out of one giant, communal bowl. Afterwards, we light a fire and sit around talking. Right now it is cold season and it is TRULY cold at night (in the high forties), making it nearly impossible to get out of bed for school in the morning. I do, however, love being bundled up, and I'm dreading hot season which is coming in a few weeks... Anyway, I'd say Hawa is the reason my Malinke is getting anywhere. I did manage to find a real Malinke teacher who I adore, but speaking is always a little intimidating. Hawa grabs me a stool, sits next to me, and makes me talk, talk, talk. It's great now that we can actually have conversations, even if I do sound like a toddler.

January 15th was Tess' birthday, so after class I biked to her village to spend the day there. We cooked an incredibly lavish meal, fajitas with homemade tortillas, which we couldn't believe we were able to make in a HUT! Unfortunately on the way back I had a pretty nasty fall off of my bike due to a plethora of cows on the road. I was very beat up but fortunately a lady was there walking back to her village and she cleaned off all of the blood. The downside is that Guinea is maybe the dirtiest country ever so despite my greatest efforts the deepest cut on my leg still got infected and I got a very high fever one night, but I promptly started antibiotics the next day and I'm still on the mend. Also I still managed to not miss a day of school, although I did bleed through my clothes for a few days there. The following weekend, a bunch of volunteers came to my village to stay in the fancy shmancy hotel that is up at the paved road for a little birthday celebration. It is a weirdly nice place owned by a man from Benin, but we certainly enjoyed ourselves, and everyone in my village officially thinks I'm the weirdest person ever for paying to stay there when my hut was only 2k away. To be fair, the rooms were about $2 per person.

So I'd say right now I'm living two lives in my village: the life where I go to school and it's not particularly pleasant, and the life after school that is wonderful. School has certainly gotten easier than it was at the beginning of the year, but it's still a hurdle. Fortunately, my second round of tests in nearly all of my classes was met with much a higher success rate than the first round, which was encouraging to say the least. I've been particularly happy with the 10th grade, where I see students who originally seemed unmotivated getting their act together. Also, we finally got a math teacher last week! Thank the lord. Biology has been a struggle. First of all, as I mentioned before, the students' level of French leaves something to be desired, so it's really tough to teach them when they don't understand every other word that comes out of my mouth. I am struggling to come up with creative ways to present the information and keep the students going or simple experiments we can do with the few materials I have. This past week was perhaps the worst couple of days I've had at school. My principal has been out of town, so it's just been us teachers, meaning I'm the only one that shows up on time. On Tuesday I had my 8th grade Biology class. 8th grade has always been the most troublesome in terms of behavior, but I've managed to keep them under control. However, on Tuesday they completely lost it, ending with a physical fight in class. I ran out to find another teacher to help me break it up, but the school was deserted... all of the other teachers had gone home early. When I came back into the 8th grade, it was like they remembered I existed and they all went silent. I told them that until things changed, I would no longer teach 8th grade. They all flipped out and asked for me to forgive them (screaming PARDON! PARDON!), but unfortunately I know those apologies are empty for most of the students. Well, long story short the next day the 8th graders that acted out had to bring in their parents to talk to the Directeur des Etudes (basically assistant principal), ending in a giant, school-wide apology to me. I think that we were all a little embarrassed: me, for letting my class get so out of hand, and the school, for the behavior of the students. We'll see how things go next week.

I don't want you to think that school is a horrible disaster everyday, but I just don't want to sanitize my blog posts. Honestly, I do love my students and most days I end up having fun in the classroom, but this week really pushed me to the limit. I did have some really fun lessons, including a giant scavenger hunt in my 9th grade English class (jolly ranchers were the prize at the end) and an experiment we did in Biology locating our taste buds using coffee, limes, sugar water, and salt water. There are definitely days that I leave school feeling jazzed up and optimistic. My principal is such a good guy, and he really pours his heart into the school, so it's encouraging to see someone that is so optimistic about education.

Christmas came late this month, too: I got FIVE packages. A bajillion thanks to those who have sent me love from America. I truly did have a Christmas celebration in my hut, thanks to the Santa hat Molly sent!

As a postscript, I'll just mention some sad news: nearly a fifth of our training group has gone back to the states, both for personal and health reasons. It is really sad for all of us, since we did get so close during training. In a few weeks we have our In Service Training (IST), so those of us that remain will be reunited to share stories and ideas for teaching. I'm very much looking forward to seeing so many people that I haven't seen in four months! To those that went home, we'll be missing you. Eat a burrito for me.