Two weeks into Forecariah

Merry Christmas!!!

The last two weeks have been some of the hardest of my life. Lots of changes have taken place and I’ve already found myself needing to dig deeper within myself for more strength and patience. I’ll try to give you as detailed an account as possible, but there’s just so much that has happened that I’m going to have to leave a lot out.

For starters, I am now known as Dalanda Diallo (pronounced Dah-lawn-dah Dee-ah-low) and I was adopted by a Pulaar speaking Guinean family (thank you Peace Corps for the crash course in Susu).

At the adoption ceremony, my name was called and my new Dad met me onstage, took my hand and walked me back to his wife in the audience, who did not smile when I greeted her, and promptly pulled out her entire breast to feed her baby. She doesn’t speak any French. She doesn’t smile much either. Then again, had I had my first child at age 13, I wouldn’t be very happy.

As soon as we got into the Peace Corps car, my new Pops told me that “Katie” wouldn’t work and that “Dalanda” was a much prettier name. Peace Corps drove us to my future home which was quite the adventure because there is only one paved road in Forecariah, and my house certainly isn’t on it. The road to my house isn’t even a road. I’d call it a trail.

OK, so before I left for Guinea/Mars, my parents were joking around, saying “Oh, with your luck you’ll be placed with the richest family in town!” Ha freakin’ ha. Thanks for jinxing my luck, guys! I’m definitely with the poorest family out of everyone in my stage (training group).

My family owns one candle and one flashlight, but the flashlight is strictly for the Dad’s use. After the sun goes down the Mom lights the candle and keeps it in the center of the house. If anyone needs anything else from other rooms in the house, they have to make their way in the dark. I make my way around the house with an LED headlamp, which the kids ooohed and aaahed over at first, but now I just feel awkward. They can move in the dark, so why the hell can’t I?

Well, I’ll tell you why. The spiders here are HUGE--they are the size of my HAND. I mean, they’re so big that you can see their damn pincers from across the room. And my how their eyes glitter as I pass them with my lamplight. So, my dear broJoe, I don’t know if you’ll be paying me any visits while I’m here in Guinea.

There are also massive flying cockroaches. So, that is why I don’t want to move around in the dark.

Apparently, I have it really easy. In their rooms, friends have had centipedes so large that they look like snakes, blister beetles, and rats that resemble the Taco Bell dog.

I now have four Guinean siblings. Binta (female), age ten, Saidou (male), age 13, Dalanda (female…yes…they gave me the same name as their actual daughter which gets really confusing when they’re yelling at her) age three and Mamadou (male), three months. Binta takes care of me the most. She calls me to dinner, prepares my food, and fetches me water from the well whenever I need it. Either she doesn’t speak much French or doesn’t like me. I haven’t figured this out yet, but I’ll get back to you when I do.

Saidou is 13 and looks like he’s eight, poor guy. He’s very nice but he’s rarely home. Saidou can’t read, so that’s one thing I’ve been trying to help him with when he is at home. All the kids go to the local school in town, but the quality of education there is dismal. Poor Saidou tries to memorize the paragraphs he’s supposed to read for class instead of actually reading them. I don’t know how he can memorize them without reading them, but that appears to be what he’s done for the past few years.

Then there’s Dalanda Un. She is three and totally cute when she wants to be and TOTALLY annoying most other times. She’ll just stand outside my door and call “Dalanda?” until I answer. It doesn’t matter if I’m sleeping or need time to just cry and be alone. She keeps going and going and she never has anything to say! All she says is “Ca va?” And then she waddles away.

My Dad is really the only one who wants to talk to me in French, or in any language for that matter. My Mom rarely smiles and that’s been kind of difficult for me because it doesn’t make me feel very welcome. I’ve learned some basic Pulaar phrases, such as “Thanks for the meal,” etc, but she’s not very impressed. I mean, it isn’t exactly a complement to her cooking that I puke up almost every meal she gives me (speaking of food, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SEND ME FOOD!!!!!!!!!) but I always say thank you.

Unfortunately, the food often tastes better coming up than it did when it went down.

The house I live in resembles a cement trailer, both in size and general appearance. I have my own room with a bed, desk and plastic lawn chair (all their chairs are plastic lawn chairs). There are squat toilets and a shower area outside the house, which are fine during the day, but I don’t like going out there late at night because of all the people that walk through the neighborhood at all hours. So, I’ve mastered the art of peeing into a bottle. (The picture to the right is the corner of my room, sans bottles)

I’ve displaced the family a bit so that now all six of them sleep in the same room. But apparently it’s a huge honor to house an American, which makes me feel a bit better about how much I’m inconveniencing them. Oh man, this family has so little but they’re so generous with what they do have. The Diallos are so poor that they eat my leftovers for their meals. I think it also has to do with respect, offering me the first and best food. I don’t ever take very much.

Everyone in a square mile of the house knows my name. When I walk to the Peace Corps building each morning, neighbors always call out “Dalanda! Ca va?!” from their windows and yards as I pass by. When I was sick with food poisoning a few days ago, the entire neighborhood knew, and everyone asked me if I was feeling better the next day. People are so friendly here. Literally everyone wants to shake my hand and ask me how I am. At first it was fun, but now it’s just annoying. It takes forever to get anywhere! Also, people wipe their butts with their hands here and they certainly do NOT wash with soap afterwards. Guineans always use their left hand to do this, and shake other people’s hands/eat with their right, but I still don’t like touching so many people’s hands that probably haven’t seen soap in a long time.

When I’m out of my neighborhood, people are just as friendly, but because they don’t know my name, they yell out “Fote!” Fote (pronounced Foe-tay) means white person/foreigner. Little kids chant “Fote” in groups. They’ll start off quiet “fote…fote…fote…” and then they all end up screaming “FOTE!!!! FOTE!!! FOTE!!!” At first I thought it was cute, but now I don’t even respond to it.

I haven’t bonded yet with my mother or the rest of the family. The language barrier is really difficult, seeing that I don’t speak Pulaar. I have bonded with my Aunt who lives in the house right next door, so that’s been really nice for me. She speaks French AND she smiles.

Unfortunately, two volunteers have left. One of them was one of my best friends here, so that was pretty hard.

Last week, we had site announcement! Because Peace Corps Guinea will probably jump down my throat if I publish the name of the city I’ll be in (yes you read that right…I’ll be living in a CITY!), I can’t write it here. But my site is in Haute Guinea which is the farthest east you can get, a bit outside of the city Kankan, which you can definitely find easily on any map of Guinea. I’m sharing the city with another volunteer, who’s been living there for the past six months, so it will be great to have someone else to talk to. I’ll be working with the Department of Public Health to come up with better organizational administrative strategies for the hospitals and health posts in the areas. I also hope to implement health checks and standards for these hospitals. And yes, ladies and gentlemen, I will be living in a mud hut come February.

The public health volunteers visited the local Forecariah hospital last week and let me just say that I really hope I never need medical attention in Guinea. Hospitals in this country are so under equipped that they actually reuse surgical gloves! They wash them out and them leave them in the sun to dry. We were given a grand tour of the hospital by one of the local doctors, who was wearing a doctor’s coat that had “Keith Jackson, M.D.” embroidered on it. I actually laughed out loud when I read this because the coat had obviously been a hand me down from an American doctor. I think the jacket represents Guinea’s hospital status pretty well. The doctor even walked us through the O.R. which was not open air (unlike the rest of the hospital) but was still FAR from sterile.

We had a rape and sexual harassment info session a few days ago where we were taught that in Guinea, rape isn’t considered a horrible thing and that “no” just means that you have to work harder for the girl. It was also added that it’s always the woman’s fault for turning the guy on—the man holds no responsibility. This news evoked so much rage in me that I almost cried. One of my secondary projects in Haute Guinea will have to be educating about rape.

This has all been so good for me. I’ve gained so much perspective on life in America and life in general. Never have I been so acutely aware of how fucking lucky Americans are. Guineans have so little and life is so difficult. In America, for example, there are health standards and if you buy a bad piece of meat at Safeway, Safeway is held accountable. Here, there’s nothing you can do—you are held accountable for the meat you buy. In America, there are also wonderful things such as expiration dates. I really had no clue as to how lucky we Americans are. I mean, you can just go to the grocery store and buy all sorts of fresh fruits and vegetables. Here, only a few are available.

I compare myself to who I was and how I felt when I visited a friend in SF this summer. I felt bad for him for having to take a bus to work and to the grocery store and that he had to use a public Laundromat to do his laundry.

What the hell was I thinking?! At least there’s a safe bus to take in the first place! At least there are grocery stores! At least washing machines exist in the US! Man has my perspective on luxury changed.

The 20th of December was Tabaski, a huge holiday in Guinea and West Africa. Apparently, family with the means by a sheep and sacrifice it as a gesture to Mohammed who sacrificed his son for Allah. My family wore their best clothes and the girls all had their hair done especially pretty for that day. The fam didn't have any money for a sheep, but some richer neighbors gave them a few pieces to eat for lunch.

All these men I’d never seen before came in for the weekend. Apparently, the women I had thought were single are married! And, apparently, these men have other wives in other cities.

I was amazed to see all the kids in such clean clothes and shoes. I went out dancing with Saidou and Binta on the night of Tabaski and I felt so awkward. Binta is ten years old and she was dancing like a drunk slutty college girl. All the girls, no matter their age, were dancing like that. Binta kept trying to grind against my leg, but I kept moving away from her because I felt like a child molester! I hope she didn’t feel offended. Binta is in this picture on the left, all clean and in her best clothes for Tabaski.

Boobs are all over the place in this town. Even when the women aren’t feeding their babies, they walk around their yards with it all hanging out.


I lent out a pack of playing cards to the kids in my family and they are filthy now (but I’ve taught the neighborhood kids how to play a mean game of Allez Poisson [Go Fish]). There’s just so much dirt around here. I always have dirt under my fingernails and at least a few centimeters of dirt on my feet. My feet look slightly hobbit-ish, minus the hair.

We Guinea volunteers have a saying “T. I. G.” which stands for This is Guinea. People started saying “T.I.A.” (This is Africa) but we’ve all realized how different Guinea is from other Peace Corps programs. PC Guinea takes pride in the fact that it is one of the last true Peace Corps experiences left in the world. While we do have bragging rights, it would be great to have electricity and/or running water.

The moon is a great reminder that I am indeed on earth and not on an entirely different planet.

Okay guys, it’s really time to step up. I NEED FOOD. Some great ideas:

Canned/packaged meats or soups
Instant foods/soups
CHEESE (fake cheese...the real stuff will melt)
Dove soap (the soap here is so strong and takes a really long time to scrub off)
Fruit roll up
Tortellini
Easy Mac Cheese packets
McDonalds/Taco Bell sauces

I’ve dropped like 15 pounds here because the food is disgusting. No diffusion of responsibility, people! I NEED FOOD! No joke, I think about American food as much as pubescent boys think about sex. Send to:

Katie Ryan, PCT
Corps de la Paix
BP 1927
Conakry, Republic of Guinea
West Africa

I will love you forever. Be sure to write “Dieu regardez-vous” in red on it. And try typing my address out instead of hand writing it. This will make it more likely that I get the package.

I probably won’t have access to the internet for another 3 weeks. At least. I miss you all and I’m going to buy a cell phone today. I didn’t bring anybody’s numbers, so if you want my number, you can find it on Facebook, or you can e-mail a member of my family. I’d love to hear from you. Guinea is 8 hours ahead of PST.

My friend Liz has uploaded more pix than I have. You can find at least 5 pictures with me in them on her blog: http://lizzieinguinea.blogspot.com/

I miss you all so much. I wouldn’t say that I’m happy, but I’m definitely Alice in Wonderland.