nateinguinea

[nateinguinea]

"Doni-doni": Adjusting to a New Language and Community

In Maninka (the local language I'm learning), "doni-doni" means little by little. I've now spent two full weeks living in my village and "doni-doni" best describes my new daily life. In this post, I'll cover my new community and landscape, some of my daily meals and activities, and a few thoughts and feelings as a new PCV (!!) at site.

My site is a village in the Préfecture of Kérouané in the Haute region of Guinée. There are approximately 1000 residents, a mosque, a school, three small coffee shops (that vend packaged items such as candy, soda, over-the-counter meds, etc.), a small health clinic, and a plethora of mango trees (mango season is about to begin AHH!). Nestled amidst rolling hills and small mountains, my village lies in the Guinean forest-savanna mosaic with "gallery forests" (forests along rivers and creeks), upland savannas (mix of grasses and trees), and hillside forests all intertwined. There are two distinct seasons here, dry and wet, with dry season roughly occurring from November to April and wet season from May to October. Currently, we're in the middle of dry season so everything is hot, dry, and dusty. Agriculturally, the village grows rice and fonio in the valleys and has fruit and nut tree plantations (mainly Cashew and Orange) in the uplands. At the moment, the village is in the middle of Cashew harvest season! Cashew 'apples' are amazing - they grow between the cashew nut and branch.

In addition to cashew apples and peanuts, I eat lunch and dinner with my host family (who are my neighbors) and make my own breakfast. For lunch, we usually eat "too" (a mixture of mashed Manioc and water that has a gelatenous texture) and sauce (combination of onions and peppers). For dinner, we eat rice with sauce (different including Potatoe leaf, Manioc leaf, Peanut) and sometimes fishballs. All the sauces are cooked with red palm oil, Maggi, spices, and usually small pieces of meat or fish.

So far, I've spent my days going on morning runs up a nearby small mountain, watering and maintaining my backyard Moringa tree nursery, watering my two small beds of Lettuce and one bed of Green Pepper (that my Counterpart, Djeko, and I planted) in a community garden. Outside the gardens, I hangout at a nearby coffee shop or tailors slowly working on Maninka, walking around the village meeting community members (and trying to remember everyone's names). I also drink Ataya with one of my neighbors, read books hanging in my hammock, pumping my own water at a water pump, studying Maninka, and cleaning and decorating my hut (see my Instagram) for some pictures!). Every Saturday, I bike 12km (~ 7 miles) on a dirt road south to my market town where I buy my host family onions, cooking oil, spices, and a few other items for the week. Since I only have 2G in my village (only enough for basic WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger), I spend the rest of the day catching up with friends and family, hanging out with another PCV, and enjoying cold sodas under a line of mango trees.

The past two weeks have been a large adjustment from even the past two months of Pre-Service Training in Dubreka ("suburbia" of Guinée) with my fellow cohort of Extension PCVs. Life in the village has its ebbs and flows socially, emotionally, and physically. I'm so excited to further explore my village and surrounding area as well as learn from my counterpart, host family, and community members about local agriculture, language, and culture. Although the first three months at Site focus on community integration and language, my counterpart, Djeko, and I are already enthralled to begin projects in and beyond the community soon! Nonetheless, the past two weeks have had challenges of communication and feeling like an 'odd fish' in a 'fishbowl' - constantly gazed upon and often feeling uncomfortable. During the midday downtime and after dinner, I often spend time thinking, "What's my purpose here? What can I meaningfully contribute to this community and surrounding ones? What do I know that community members don't? While tomorrow and the next 23 months will inevitably have their ups and downs, projects will be done (or at least attempted), my community and I will all learn more about each other, and I will continue to remember "doni-doni."

"Ka tele diya" ("Good Day" in Maninka),

~ Aboubakar "Buwakari" Konaté (my local name)

Picture One: The exterior of my hut 🏠😊

Note: Since there isn't a way to automatically receive updates about when I post without a Tumblr account, email me at "nathanielcrail@gmail.com" and you'll receive an update the next time I publish a post!

[nateinguinea]

Moving Times: From Sights to Site

I’ve been in Guinea for two and a half months! 2020 has been a fulfilling and exhausting maelstrom of Maninka language class, AgFo technical sessions, and visiting my future village! AND, I swore-in to become an official Peace Corps Volunteer!

Today, I leave my regional capital, Kankan, for my new home in Kérouané Prefecture to begin working and integrating with my community. Instead of the 8-5 schedule of PST (Pre-Service Training), my schedule will be up to me, including getting to know community members, drinking Ataya, sleeping, running, and writing more blog posts!

An be kofE ("see you later" in Maninka)

Pic One: Peace Corps Guinea G35’s (my cohort) family photo featuring our matching fabric.

[nateinguinea]

PST: Paddies, Sweat, and Tea (or Pre-Service Training)

Happy New Year! Happy Holidays!! I’ve now been in Guinea for four weeks! These past weeks have both flown by and felt like many months. Six days a week I have language, technical, and administrative sessions from 8:00am to 5:00pm. I’ll spend this blog sketching three scenes of a “typical” day of my PST (Pre-Service Training). 

SCENE ONE: Bread Rising

I wake up around 7am and crawl out from under my mosquito net. After going to the bathroom and getting dressed, I grab my backpack and leave my room. My bedroom is a part of a separate building behind my host family’s house (I’ll introduce my host family in a future post). I head into my family’s kitchen and make myself a cup of instant Nescafe coffee, then I grab a petit baguette, cut it, and spread butter on it. I quickly down my Nescafe and head out with my buttered baguette in hand. Making my way down my hill, to the center of the town where my 8am language is held. From 8am, I have 3.5 hours of my regional language, Maninka, taught in a class of three by my language facilitator, Karifalla. Maninka is spoken by the Malinke people primarily in Upper and Forest Guinee and is mutually intelligible with Mandingo (in Gambia and Senegal), Bambara (Mali), and Jula (Cote d’Ivoire). Learning Maninka (or any regional language) is the most important aspect of PST. I’ve been learning it for about two weeks now. It’s so nice to be learning a language in such an intimate setting and I cannot wait to visit my site and begin further developing my Maninka.

SCENE TWO: Garden Growth

In the afternoon, I begin my Agroforestry (AgFo) technical sessions which cover topics such as Guinean all-natural pesticides, natural fertilizers, transplanting, seed processing, double-digging, nutrition, and natural-material fence building. After a brief lecture, we do a hands-on activity. In the “swamp,” or rice paddies, the entire AgFo cohort has a “community garden” where we first learned and practiced various techniques such as natural-material fences, double digging, and transplanting. We also have group nutritional gardens throughout the village. Both gardens’ fences are made of palm oil tree leaves with the steams being the posts, full leaves being the screen, and leaves being the fence ties. Double digging involves creating a raised garden bed by digging twice and adding “food” or fertilizer (including dried leaves, banana tree trunk pieces, and charcoal - other plants and materials can work too!) at the bottom-most layer to help aerate and add nutrients to the soil. Transplanting involves moving seedlings into a raised bed. 

My group nutritional garden is a smaller version of the Community Garden where my group and I develop strong farmer tans, beautiful blisters, and a plethora of sweat constructing our fence and double digging our raised beds. After we finished our three raised beds, we planted seeds and seedlings into them. Before we head back to our host family’s house, we thoroughly water our raised beds, compost, and Moringa tree seedlings. In these practice gardens, all the techniques are already practices by some local farmers throughout the country. Once at site we’re expected to build our own household nutritional gardens for demonstration and dietary purposes. Below is a picture of my group’s nutritional garden. 

My group’s nutritional garden that we’ve named, ���The Jeffrey” with a fishnet and palm leaf fence.

SCENE THREE: Evening Tea

As the sun sets, after my dinner (delicious rice and sauce) and bucket bath (a pour time), my older brother, Sefaiou, and I go out in front of the house for an evening tea. Water and tea leaves boiled and steeped over a charcoal fire resulting in a foamy tea served in a shot glass-like cup known as "Ataya." Below is a recipe guide for this scrumptious tea. Hopefully, you have a slightly clearer portrait of what a “typical” day here is like. In the next post, I will continue to muse about my PST experience and living in Guinea.

Type of Drink: "Ataya"

Required Items:

Charcoals and stove

Clay tea kettle

Gunpowder Green Tea Leaves with Mint Leaves

glass shot cup 

two cups for pouring

sugar /or/ sweetened condensed milk

optional: edible nuts

Steps:

1. Make a charcoal fire

2. Fun the tea kettle with water

3. Bring the kettle to a boil

4. Add tea leaves

5. let the tea steep

6. pour the steeped tea into a cup

7. Pour back and forth between two cups until foamy

8. Pour the foamy tea into a glass shot cup

9. Add sugar or condensed milk

10. serve

11. eat the nuts while drinking (optional)

[nateinguinea]

Non!: La République de Guinée

On our journey from the national Peace Corps office in central Conakry to the training center in Dubreka (an exurb about 50km away), the mountains rose in the horizon as we exited Conakry. Reminiscent of a tropical Yosemite, the mountains overlooking Dubreka and the surrounding area are simply amazing. Even though I have not traveled elsewhere in the country yet, just this small slice of the country is gorgeous.

Image One: View from outside of my host family’s house.

Guinea is in west Africa bordering Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Mali, Côté d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Most of the country is inland which is home to the headwaters of the Niger River (largest in west Africa, cradle of many kingdoms, and pivotal for agriculture), Gambia River, and Senegal River. The capital and largest city is the coastal city of Conakry (the country is sometimes referred to as Guinea-Conakry to differentiate it from the numerous other Guineas). It is home to 13+ million people a majority of whom are subsistence farmers and predominantly Muslim. On a GDP per capita and HDI basis, Guinea is in the bottom fifth poorest and least developed countries in the world. During our brief meeting with the US Ambassador to Guinea the day after we arrived, the Ambassador emphasized the poor quality of the country’s roads, especially compared to its wealthier neighbors of Côté d’Ivoire and Senegal, and how the country’s overall infrastructure is still very underdeveloped.

Image Two: “The True Size Of…” Guinea (in blue) compared to the US Midwest (base map).

The northwest region of the country was a part of the Mali Empire which existed between c. 1235 to 1670. The modern-day borders of Guinea were formed by French colonization in the 1800s. Once a part of French West Africa, Guinea was the first Francophone country to declare independence with its famous “Non!” to General de Gaulle’s constitutional referendum in the 1960s. Compared to its neighbors, Guinea has been stable politically. Various scholars of Guinea argue that despite civil wars and instability in neighboring states, it’s stability is due to the strong leadership that began in the run-up to its independence and has continued into the present.

There are three main ethnic groups in Guinea among many smaller ones: the Sousou, Futa, and Malinke - they speak Sousou, Pular, and Malinke respectively. Guinea’s national language is French, but it seems that most Guineans speak the language of their ethnic group at home, even in the suburban melting pot of Dubreka. Currently, my training center in Dubreka is in the Sousou region of the country, but due to its proximity to Conakry, there are many people from around the country. My host family, for instance, speaks Pular and French. Roughly following the ethnic groups, there are four regions of Guinea: Coast, Mountain (or Fouta), High, and Forest. Sousou tend to live in the Coast region, Futa in the Mountain region, and Malinke in the High region. The Forest region is interspersed with many smaller groups such as the Kissi (some of whom are Christian).

Hopefully, my brief introduction to Guinea has given you a glimpse of what is it like. As I live and learn more about the country, I will begin to put together an informational resource guide with reading and multimedia materials for learning more about the country. Next time, I will talk about my first weeks of Pre-Service Training (PST). Feel free to contact me at my email, Instagram, or Facebook (see my About page)!

[nateinguinea]

Continental Drift: From the Midwest to Staging and Beyond

The crust of the Earth is broken - splintered into many continental plates that are incessantly moving into and apart from one another. Over time these plates “drift” across the Earth’s mantle (the layer below the crust). Much like the continents we live on, we are also ‘drifting’ across the Earth. Whether growing up, traveling across oceans, learning new information, or meeting new people, we are all drifting. Nonetheless, like continents, our drift is not consistent - we sporadically make large leaps of change. We are constantly moving.

After about six months of living at my parents’ home in northern Illinois, I made such a leap. This past Sunday, I departed Illinois for Washington, DC to attend Staging where my cohort all came together for the first time as we begin our Peace Corps service in Guinea. My cohort is 40+ people with about half in agroforestry and half in public health. Together we are “Extension” volunteers where our core mission is to help improve Guinea’s agriculture and public health systems. I will be in the agroforestry sector where my core projects will involve agricultural extension work and environmental education. 

Group Picture of Peace Corps Guinea G35

Since leaving home, the past 48 hours have been a whirlwind of information, logistics, and thousands of miles of flying. Early on Monday morning, my cohort and I departed via two Ethiopian Airlines flights. We first took a ~14 hour flight from DC to Addis Ababa, then an ~8 hour flight from Addis to Conakry via a stop in Abidjan, Côté d’Ivoire (where I wrote most of this post). [Fun tidbit: If there was a direct DC-Conakry flight, it would only take 8-9 hours, but since sub-Saharan African aviation is not as busy as other places in the world, there is not a direct flight.]  In approximately six hours, we will land in Conakry, Guinea - the country’s capital. From there we begin about three months of Pre-Service Training (PST) before our swearing-in date in mid-February. During PST, we will intensively learn the regional language of our site (still TBD) and the relevant technical skills. 

Before I left the States, when I talked to friends and strangers, I consistently received the ‘why’ questions. Why did I choose to do the Peace Corps? Why a ‘large leap of change’? Why agroforestry in Guinea? First, the Peace Corps has always been on my radar since childhood because of my parents’ service-oriented careers (professor and pastor) and my Filipino-American heritage broadening my perspectives of the world. Second, I have always wanted to give back the knowledge and privilege I have had being raised in the United States. Peace Corps allows me to have institutional support while helping to elevate humankind. Third, my undergraduate semester with School for Field Studies Cambodia focusing on the tension between conservation and development inspired me to take an active root in the Global South who contributed the least to climate change but are suffering the worst of its impacts. Finally, I did not initially choose either the agroforestry sector or Guinea, but during the application process, I was given the opportunity for agroforestry in Guinea. Life takes us unexpected places doing unexpected activities, but sometimes we must free flow - let the drift carry us to new homes, languages, knowledge, and relationships.

Throughout my 27+ month journey, I’m hoping to post about my Peace Corps training and service at least once a month (likely more often during PST). In the next post, I will introduce the Republic of Guinea providing an informational resource guide with reading and multimedia materials for learning more about the country.

 Stay tuned! Salut États-Unis! Bonjour Guinée!

[nateinguinea]

Disclaimer

All content posted in this blog are my own individual experiences and opinions - it does not reflect the views of the US government, Peace Corps, or the Guinean government