Still in Guinea.

So much has happened and I’ve had so little internet since December that I haven’t been able to post.

What to write about? My parents’ weeklong stint in this beautiful country? The Peace Corps organized regional spelling bee hosted at my school? The nutrition conference that three of my students attended on an organic farm? The ever-persisting battle between me and my 10^th grade students about their work ethic? The departure of two of my best friends from my village, and the ensuing cry fest I had?

The short of it: the second year is inexplicably different than my first. When I first arrived in Cissela, every day was a hurdle. When I got back to my hut in the evening, it was a relief. The highs were unbelievably high and the lows lower than low. This year, the days are hard but for reasons that are more normal. School days are challenging: of course there is the issue of discipline, compounded with differing opinions with other teachers on appropriate punishments. We have received so many new teachers this year that I, the foreigner, have seniority. My principal even went so far as to promote me to assistant principal (although I think he did this mostly because I do all the paperwork without complaining). My relationships with my students this year are intense. I spend so many hours in my 10^th grade each week that we certainly have what can be described as a love/hate relationship. They’ve started coming to me with problems beyond the classroom; typically social issues they are having with other students.

Outside of school, things have become somewhat strained with my host family. Hawa, my dear friend, moved to Conakry to join her husband. She was the link between me and the family; the day she left I was a tearful mess and the family didn’t quite know what to do with me. I still try to spend time with them, but it’s a lot of me sitting and reading while they move about me. On the flipside, I’ve been spending a huge amount of time with my principal’s wife. She and I are the same age, but we have had very different lives. When she was 16, having never gone to school, she was living in Conakry as an apprentice for a tailor. Her parents contacted her to say they had found her a husband, a man she had never met: my principal. Both my principal (who I respect greatly) and Nansira (his wife) have confided in me in the difficulties in their early marriage.  He was in love with another woman, but his parents arranged the marriage with Nansira and would not accept the other woman. As a Guinean man, he could have married Nansira and then taken the other woman as a second wife, but he knows that polygamy comes with problems. He and Nansira have learned to love each other in their own way, but it’s still tragic for me to hear their sides of the story. Regardless, Nansira is a goofball, and has filled the Hawa-filled hole in my life.

The highlight of the past few months was a 2-day conference that I led for young women students from 4 villages across Guinea. The event, called the Young Women’s Nutrition and Leadership Conference, took place in Kindia, a town that is known as the agricultural capital of Guinea. Four PCVs were involved; myself, along with three close friends from my training class. We each selected three of our best female students to bring along. Tess and I, living not too far apart, traveled to Kindia together.

I woke up at 5:30 – before even the first call to prayer – strapped on my headlamp, and biked to my principal’s. Fortunately, the three girls had spent the night at his house since they did not want to be sleep through our departure. Shortly after, Tess and her girls showed up in a 9-place taxi that they had hired from Tess’ village. We spend 10 long, sleepy hours in the car to arrive finally in a small village outside of Kindia. The girls were thrilled – they were constantly calling their friends and family on each step of the journey to give updates, feeling special for being selected among their peers. By 6PM we had finally arrived at the farm, a beautiful setting in tropical Basse Cote. The manager of the farm is a young man named Chico, a Guinean who spent many of his formative years in the states. His family has created an impressive farm; it is a semi-organic, experimental farm that grows a variety of species of plants and raises animals that are not typically found in Guinea but could be easily adapted to diversify Guinean farming and increase nutrition intake (for example, he experiments with different species of bananas and distributes seeds to his community; he also raises fish and rabbits to increase protein availability). The family has also constructed a training center, where they bring in Guinean agricultural groups for information sharing. It was at this center that we held our conference.

The training had two major themes. The first was to inform the 12 participants on basic facts of nutrition and how to improve nutrition using ingredients that are readily available in all Guinean communities. The second was to equip the young women with effective communication strategies and to inspire them to reflect upon their futures. We led sessions on fundamentals of nutrition, nutrition of children under 5 and pregnant women, and a cooking class. We discussed the difference between passivity, aggressiveness, and confidence in communication, and at the end of the conference we had each participant practice giving a mock sensitization, where they taught a food preparer with a specific family situation what they had learned about nutrition that would be relevant to that family. When each participant arrived in her respective village, she was then responsible for visiting three families and giving the cook in each family a nutrition sensitization.

Beyond this information sharing, the highlight of the conference was a panel of two successful Guinean women who came to share their stories. One, Chico’s mother, named Hadja, is an older woman who has had an incredibly rich past. When she was younger, she pushed the boundaries in Guinea and entered the world of politics in the capital. After several years, she chose to leave politics and return to her community, where she began her career of service, starting up the farm and eventually founding an organization called AGUIDEP (Association Guinéenne pour le Développement) in the nearby city of Kindia that continues to do important work today. Through her story, she highlighted the importance of pushing through despite obstacles and discouragements. She went against all norms as one of the only women in the realm of Guinean politics, and she explained to the girls that while it can be incredibly difficult to be the only female in a sea of men, but that perseverance allowed her success. The second panel member was a much younger woman named Mariame. She works for Hadja’s organization AGUIDEP. When she was a high school student, her parents told her they had found her a husband, but she explained to her parents that she wanted to finish her studies and be financially independent before marrying, and her parents respected that decision. Upon graduating university, she visited dozens of businesses, offering to intern for free of charge, until finally her persistence paid off. After several unpaid years at AGUIDEP, she was taken on as a salaried worker, and within a month she married (she explained that men were constantly knocking at her door, but she insisted on being financially independent before marriage); she now has one child. Mariame made a huge impression on the girls: she is young, attractive, married and with a child (which is certainly a dream for Guinean women), but working and financially independent. To see that both of those dreams are possible to attain at the same time was a novel idea for most of the young women. Coming from rural areas, this may have been the first time for many of them to see literate, salaried women. Despite all we as PCVs can tell our female students (“yes you can do it!” or, “stay in school!”), nothing has the effect of actually seeing that it is possible, as both a Guinean and female, to achieve one’s goals. The looks on the girls’ faces said it all.

The conference has made me think a lot about the lasting impressions Peace Corps Volunteers can have on their communities. Many volunteers come in with hopes of building a new health center or creating a new pump, creating a lasting imprint of their two years spent in village, but we as Education volunteers have it a little differently. One thing I can safely say is that those girls will not forget that trip we took together in January 2014. They kept journals, documenting every moment of everyday, and I’ve seen changes in the way they interact with other students and teachers at school. My expectations of what difference I can make in my students’ lives is by no means grandiose, but I’d like to say I’ve expanded their horizons and made them think in a different way. Who knows, considering that’s impossible to measure.

I’m now in Kankan for another Girls’ Conference, this one much larger, for our entire region. There are 27 participants; the conference does not have a theme but is instead aimed at educating the young women on social issues such as environment, sanitation, reproductive health, and nutrition, among other topics. There is something very meaningful in taking young women out of their homes, bringing them into a new place with a group of new faces, and allowing them to see that while they may be one of the few female students at their school, there are many other young, bright, and motivated females in Guinea.

Spring break is coming up; I will be traveling to the capital for a food security training, then taking a few days of rest on the tropical island off of the coast of Conakry. A quick note to those who are worried: I DO NOT have Ebola and am at essentially zero risk for acquiring it. Let’s hope that soon the outbreak will be over; Guinea has had enough trauma for this year. Thank you to all those who asked about my well being!

Til next time. Hopefully that will be sooner than 4 months from now.