This past Wednesday I set off from Bissikrima with David, another PCV, to our eventual destination of Mamou for another PCV’s wedding. We waited next to the RN1 (main highway) in Bissikrima as a storm approached and were pleased to gagner un occasion (find a ride) before the rain hit. We threw in our bags, [...]
Please login first to post comments.
Earlier this year some of my tenth graders asked me to plan a math competition for them like I did last time. I agreed on the condition that they play a large role in its organization, which they readily accepted. Together, at the beginning of April, we determined the date and which schools to invite. [...]
Throughout the last three years in Guinea and Sierra Leone, I’ve watched West African men lavish mostly unwanted attention on my foreign female counterparts and have received a fair share myself. Dating and marriage rituals here are still so foreign to me; although I now have a better understanding of how these practices work, I [...]
This is Alison’s Mom. She rarely has access to the internet so she asked me to post this message. The postal system is very slow because there are only 11 Peace Corp volunteers in Guinea (and a few other reasons). Alison thinks she will be back in the US before a package would delivered to [...]
A hot, sunny, dusty hello to all! I’m in Dabola for the night to catch up with the PCV here and take a little break from the village now that I’ve been there for a month. We left Conakry and spent all day driving to Dabola on January 10th. I convinced the driver to go [...]
In a phone call last week, Alison mentioned that if you are mailing a package or an envelope and have some extra room, check for some forgotten or no longer needed childrens books in your bookcase. She is teaching her students, and some adults, English and the students thought childrens books would be helpful. Alison [...]
Here is my contact info while I’m in the village and do not have email access. Phone: +224 65 34 23 01 +224 62 87 40 99 Postal address: Alison VonAchen, PCV Corps de la paix BP 1927 Conakry, GUINEE WEST AFRICA
Greetings from Guinea! I am writing this in Conakry but will be moving to Bissikrima Monday morning. Since arriving in-country September 15th, I have spent a total of four days in Bissikrima hence the lack of blog entries. Due to numerous delays in the election itself and the ensuing results announcement along with the minor [...]
I am hoping to soon put up a post about the recent elections, but in the meantime I’m leaving you with bits and pieces of letters that were sent to Peace Corps after our evacuation last October. I have received your letter notifying us about your decisions to temporarily suspend your activities in Guinea… Please [...]
Today I write once again from Guinea! I arrived here ten days ago to a small but enthusiastic crowd consisting of Peace Corps staff and a volunteer who came and waited with me at the airport for the approximately one hour it took for the cargo to be unloaded. The Air France flight had landed [...]
Happy Holidays to all! I am trying to take in as much cold weather as I can before I leave for the land of excessive heat again on January 5.
Over the two months that I’ve spent at home, I’ve had some change-of-plans, the biggest being that I was offered a job, am no longer a [...]
Hi everyone. On Monday, October 19th, PC gave the official word that, due to the instability and unpredictability, we would not be returning to Guinea. We completed transfer and close of service procedures last week and have gone our separate ways. I am actually writing this post in Minneapolis, MN, USA where I arrived Tuesday [...]
My number while I’m in Mali is 011 223 76 85 08 10. We’ll be here for at least two weeks.
Hi everyone. Just wanted to quickly update. Due to recent events in Guinea, all of PC Guinea has been evacuated to Mali where we’ll stay for 2-4 weeks while PC determines whether or not we can return to Guinea. We were informed last Saturday and had a few days to pack before we started getting [...]
Hi all. I know the news from Guinea has been very grim, so I just want to reassure everyone that things are very calm up-country. In fact, there has not even been a hint of a problem in Haute. I can’t detail our security, but I will say that we are in excellent hands with [...]
You may have seen Guinea in the international news yesterday or today, unfortunately not for positive reasons. This past week demonstrations against President Moussa Dadis Camara (aka Dadis) began as it has become apparent that he will likely present himself as a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections (scheduled for 1/31/10). Twenty thousand people hit [...]
Hello everyone! I hope the school year has gotten off to a good start. It’s hard to believe another season has passed and you’re headed into cooler weather back at home. We’re finishing up the rainy season here in Guinea with about a month of lighter rain left before we hit the “cold” season. They [...]
At the beginning of September, Sacha and I put on the first of our two girls’ camps we’d been planning since spring. We spent the week with ten girls from her village talking about various topics such as health (malaria, diarrhea, nutrition), sex (how the body works, pregnancy, contraceptives, family planning, STIs), depigmentation (women in [...]
I was putzing around my hut Tuesday after lunch, when I hear a voice through my screen, “Mme! Mme! Come quick! The results are in!” I ran out to find M. Bah, the disciplinarian, who’d come to bring the results to the mayor. I followed him next door where I joined the other teachers to [...]
Okay, I just want to make sure I clarify that these are all generalities and definitely do not apply to every single Guinean. Just little things I notice.
- We Americans get excited to see monkies here while Guineans think they’re nothing special. Squirrels on the other hand excite Guineans like you wouldn’t believe. You don’t see [...]
I found this quote in a book I read recently (Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts), and there isn’t anything that more perfectly describes Guineans. They have so very little: the average Guinean has just over $1 a day to spend, and that’s a biased average due to the corruption at the top. Most Guineans live [...]
Hi from Kankan! Paul and I are spending the night here before we head out to Mali tomorrow. We’re looking forward to live music and good food in Bamako, hiking in Dogon Country, and seeing the mud mosque in Djenne among other things. But before I get going on how excited I am, I wanted [...]
Salut! So for the past two days, every single girl from G16 (all 12 of us) has been in Conakry for the various reasons I’ve mentioned in previous posts. On Friday evening we decided we’d have a little celebration of our being in country for a year and not having lost a single one of [...]
I uploaded some new pics to my flickr account:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37048709@N05/
And just some fun FYI… we have all been doing our medical mid-service examinations this past week, and of the very few people who’ve heard back on their stool samples, four have had amoebas or parasites. I should be finding out what fun diseases I’ve picked up [...]
Hello all! Just wanted to quickly wish you a Happy 4th! All but two of the G16ers (the group I came in with) are here in Conakry to celebrate the 4th, welcome the new group of education volunteers that comes in on Wednesday that we are SO thrilled to finally get to meet, and to [...]
Hello again! I can’t tell you how amazing it is to have 24/7 access to internet here in Conakry. It’s the little things that bring me the greatest pleasure now.
As you may know, I live in Bissikrima in Haute (Upper) Guinea. Haute Guinea is where the Malinke tribe has settled in our country. Bissikrima [...]
Hello, hello! I’m back in internet action for a week or so… Hopefully enough time to update you on all the things worth telling. I’m hoping to do a post a day (or so) until Paige & my mom get here on Tuesday.
So the math competition was a week ago Saturday (6/20). My students and [...]
Hey all — just a quick post. I’m at Tanya’s in Dabola for a little dinner party with a couple of guests she has in town (one of the guests is a Canadian who happens to be a UMich alum! Talk about making my day). Paul made a delicious chicken parmesean, I made french fries, [...]
Waahh my life has been filling up and feeling ever so busy lately. But first, I hope this finds you all well at home. It’s summer already! School is out or nearly out. Gosh, has time been flying there like it has been here?
So, as I said last weekend, one of my smartest girls is [...]
**If you’re sending me a letter, will you please send it (or at least a copy of it) to my home address (you can email my mom for it, sharonv@visi.com)? Letters don’t tend to come through as well as packages, and since my mom is wonderful enough to send me plenty of packages, it shouldn’t [...]
So this is going to be rather quick, but I just wanted to update about the math competition. It went perfectly, so smoothly it was almost unbelievable. We had an accusation of cheating from each team in the very first two rounds (which, really, we should have expected), but other than that, everything went off [...]
Hello again, everyone! I didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to be writing again so soon, but we’re in Dabola for the weekend to celebrate Sacha’s birthday, and the generator at US AID is back up and running, so we get to use the internet Ben, Levi, and I made it back to [...]
Since life here is so different from life at home, I thought I’d throw out some more little tidbits about what it’s like here.
• Guineans love rice and sauce. There are a few different sauces they make: the three main ones are peanut, leaf, and soup, which is really just palm oil. They could (and often [...]
So I’ve mentioned a few times that I’ve been struggling to deal with life as female here in West Africa. There are two aspects to this; one is the way I’m treated as a white American woman, which is without a doubt better than the way Guinean women are treated but still not like life [...]
Yesterday we arrived in Conakry after a lovely eight days in Sierra Leone. We left Conakry April 5th around 5:30AM and arrived in Freetown around 6:30PM after the taxi ride from hell, by far the worst I’ve experienced so far, but hey, it was with good company, so I really shouldn’t complain. The countryside in [...]
So my pictures were not posting to my blog for some reason, so I created a flickr account to show you my hut and the rest of the photos from cooking with Salematou. They are in a random order, but I just couldn’t deal with the slow internet and power outtages forcing me to start [...]
In previous posts I’ve mentioned my neighbor Salematou who’s about 14 years old and in 7th grade. I absolutely adore her and her younger brother Alhissaine whose in 5th grade. Recently their “mother” left to go visit family in the Basse Cote, so Salematou has been doing absolutely all of the family chores. This means immediately [...]
Hello to all! I am in CONAKRY on VACATION! I will be sleeping in AC tonight, I have been drinking cold drinks, I’m using relatively decent internet, and tomorrow I’m going to eat both ice cream and pizza. It’s almost too much to take in. All of this is following a rough last week.
It began [...]
Hello everyone! I hope all is well at home. The news we hear most often here is how awful the economy is, so hopefully you are making it through the hard times okay. I’m still in Kankan and thought I’d put up a quick post while I have time.
As a female, it’s really hard to find [...]
Hi everyone! I’m in Kankan for the weekend to celebrate St Paddy’s day and hang out with other PCVs. In less than two weeks I will be in Conakry in AC! I will do a few posts in Conakry including plenty of pictures. For now I’ll give you a few quick facts about life in [...]
Hi guys! I’m writing to you from Dabola, the town 23K from me. Hunter and Ben came to Bissikrima yesterday afternoon, and we spent the evening drinking cold drinks, eating delicious care package food, and catching up on the past couple weeks. This morning Hunter and I left for Dabola around 7:30 (Ben didn’t come [...]
As PCVs in Guinea, you have few options for transportation. If you’re lucky, you manage to snag a ride in an air-conditioned PC car usually with your own seat belt and everything. A little less lucky and you find a “patron-ride” which can be anything from a ride with an NGO or just a nice, [...]
Once a month volunteers are allowed to make a visit to their regional capital to do things like stock up on food you can’t get at site and, more importantly, take a little break. In Haute (like in the other regions) we try to plan to be here on the same weekend so we can [...]
Welcome to 2009, everyone! I am writing to you from Kankan, my regional capital and the second largest city in Guinea. We are here to welcome the new group of extension volunteers (G17) to the Haute Guinea family. They are in the midst of training and have all just seen their sites for the first [...]
So on December 8th and 9th (and 10th and 11th and 12th…) we celebrated the Muslim holiday Tabaski. I’m not sure of the religious significance, but the main objective of the holiday is to sacrafice sheep and eat good food with family/friends. I’m also still not exactly sure when the holiday officially took place. Originally I [...]
Hi all! I’m now in Conakry for the holidays… What a trip we had getting here yesterday. The ride itself wasn’t bad (aside from a fellow passenger who was throwing up in a bag nearly the whole way), but it was just surreal to go from my village in the boonies to Conakry with all [...]
I’ve gotten the question of what life is like here in Guinea quite a bit. How’s it different from home? I don’t even know where to begin…
First of all, Guineans are incredibly friendly. When I walk down the street (more like the dirt path), everyone I come across greets me and vice versa. “Hello, how [...]
Hello from Kankan! I’m here in the regional capital through Sunday morning (my time) to celebrate our big American holiday. YOU CAN CALL ME! My number for this week is 66711076, countrycode 224. I’m sorry to keep changing my number (it goes back to the old 65655605 starting Monday), but these are measures you have [...]
So here I am after two and a half weeks at site, still alive, still doing well. To start at the beginning… On Tuesday, September 30th, we rolled into Bissikrima and received a very warm welcome from the town higher-ups (mayor, community organizer). The following two days were huge holidays in Guinea, the first being the [...]
How many entries are we showing above?
For now, we are showing up to 50 entries on each page. Entries that
are too short are filtered out. For more entries, please use
archives.
|
Connect to Peace Corps Journals
About the Journal
Contact Us
Disclaimer:
| |
| Copyright (c) 2010 |
