Hi everyone,  We have been in Mandiana for about five months now and are starting to get into some really neat projects.  We spent the first three months meeting people and integrating and spending a lot of time, energy and money (relatively) on painting, commissioning furniture and learning french.   We have an amazing family.  Our dad works for the department of education, our mom #1 is a tailor and our mom #2 is a housewife.  We have three brothers, a sister/aunt and a cousin also living in the house next to ours.  We have become really close with our middle brother, Abdoulaye, and our sister (really our mom #1’s younger sister), Hawa.  They have helped us out a lot and we give them a half hour of private English lessons on most nights.   I just wanted to update everyone one the projects that we are currently working on.   Marisa:  1)      I made a Moringa tree nursery with a bunch of kids from my neighborhood (see video).  We talked about the importance of planting trees and the benefits of Moringa while we did it.  Moringa is a tree with a very high nutritional value. It’s packed with tons of vitamins and minerals. 2)      I am giving handwashing sensibilizations to kids in the village and at primary schools.  For this project I worked with another education volunteer and our friend and translator (french to malinke), Adama.  We start with a skit where we show someone getting sick from not washing their hands before they eat, then I give some information, including a very thorough handwashing demonstration and use visual aids.  Afterwards we test their comprehension by asking some questions and sing a song, in French and Malinke, about handwashing.  The kids have all been very enthusiastic and it has been a really encouraging project.  I think some of the teachers have also been getting some good ideas about different ways to teach.  Now when I walk down the street a lot of kids start singing the song to me, both in French or Malinke.  In case you were wondering, here it is.                               English                                              French                                                 Malinke     Wash your hands, Wash your hands           Laves tes mains, Laves tes mains               A ye bolo la ko, A ye bolo la ko                With soap, with soap                          Avec du savon, Avec du savon                       A ni safina, A ni safina       If you don’t do it, If you don’t do it           Si tu ne fais pas ca, si tu ne fais pas ca                Ni i mo ke, Ni i mo ke       You will get sick, you will get sick          Tu tomberas malade, tu tomberas malade            I di jankaro, I di jankaro   3)      I have been working with the health center, the Croix Rouge and a well respected women in the village (with eight kids) to give women breastfeeding sensibilizations. The four main points of the sensibilization are 1) Begin breastfeeding immediately after giving birth since the first milk the mother produces has anti-bodies and vitamins to protect the baby; 2) Only give breast milk to the baby for the first six months (not even water) to prevent diahrea and other infections; 3) After six months continue breastfeeding but introduce other foods, little by little into the babies diet; 4) While the mother is breastfeeding her nutritional needs are augmented. She should try to eat more than usual and drink lots of pump water.At the health center we are incorporating the sensibilization into the prenatal and post par tum consultations and it has been going very well.  Most of my work on this sensibilization has been with the Croix Rouge (Red Cross).  We have been meeting with women from different neighborhoods every Monday and Friday to give the sensibilization and ask and answer questions.  The women have been very engaged and have asked a lot of good questions and showed a lot of interest in working with me further to try and improve the nutrition of their community.  We are even talking about starting a Moringa Pepiniere for their neighborhoods to use. 4)      As you can see in the photos, Mike and I have participated in the five day, nationwide vaccination campaign against polio.  We went from door to door giving the polio vaccination to kids under five.  It was a great way to meet a lot of people and some very motivated community volunteers as well.   Mike: I will try and do it justice since he is not here right now and I do not know all the ins and outs   1)      He has been going to the office of ASF regularly, a organization of volunteers that give out loans to groupments who need funds. He is learning their procedures and any problems or successes they are having so that he can help them improve where they need to.  One problem they are having is that people are not paying back their loans and so they don’t have funds to give out new ones. 2)      He has met with a shea butter producing groupment.  They pick the fruits, let them decompose, clean the seeds, boil them and put them out to dry.  That is all of the process that he has seen so far but is going back to see the next part of the process soon. He is working with them to see if he can’t help them make there operations more efficient.  One idea he has it to start a small savings and loans with them. They are interested in purchasing a machine that will make them more efficient and they could use the funds to buy it possibly. 3)      He has also been working with a cashew tree plantation/groupment.  He is learning their processes and visiting other plantations for comparisons and ideas to help.  Right now they are harvesting and selling the seeds unprocessed and Mike is trying to find out if it is cost effective for them to process and transport the nuts themselves.  There might even be an opportunity for export.  I will leave it at that since I don’t really know that much about this project. 4)      Right now Mike is at a meeting in the Capital with Kafodec, the organization that he was set up to work with and the organization that provides our house.  He has not really had much of an opportunity to work with them so far but hopefully some good opportunities will come out of this meeting.   That’s about all for now, other than we have two lovely additions to our family, Kelen and Fila (see photos). Love you all,   Marisa and Mike

Hi everyone,   I'm sitting in a quit enjoyable internet cafe in Kankan, the regional capital of Haute Guinea, where we will be posted for the next two years.  Our particular site is a smaller city 85 km from Kankan called Mandiana. Temperatures during March and April commonly reach 115 degrees but all the men still wear pants because their balls will actually sweat off their bodies.  Right now though it feels about a cool 88 degrees and the heat is very dry and the town very dusty so that your boogers by the end of the day are a crusty mix between blood and clay.   The 85 km ride from Kankan to Mandiana in a bush taxi was too comical to be stressful. Powered by an engine crafted from the finest 1970's lawnmower parts and leftover tractors, we set off across the dusty unpaved desert road with Marisa's health counterpart, Mory Bayo.  With us were 7 other Guinean passengers and the driver, making us 11 total in a station wagon (Think National Lampoon's vacation African style).  Before crowding into the taxi, one Guinean put on a very heavy black windbreaker.  I would only understand why at the end of the trip when Marisa and I flopped out of the taxi covered head to toe in a thick layer of clay dust.    Five minutes after departure, we would stop on the bridge leaving Kankan to change the first flat tire. About twenty minutes into the trip, our driver was dismayed to find that his car had not a radiator to cool the engine, but rather a sieve that looked remarkably like a radiator.  Every ten minutes then, the driver would stop and the 10 year old riding on top of the car would jump down and put water into the siever.  We did this about 17 times.  Of course, occasionally the boy would run out of water and he would have to set off into the bush in search of a well to replenish his supply.  All in all, the 6 hour trip was quite enjoyable because you just can't make this stuff up.      In case you haven't noticed I'm feeling quite cheeky today, energized by how much we like our site and our future home.  I'd love to ramble on a bit more but my internet time is running low and I've got to hit the market up to find materials for my alien costume (for those of you who don't know, all successful development work requires a good alien costume)   Bye for now, love you all   Mike and Marisa

Hello Everyone,   It seems like it's been a long time since we have been here in Guinea.  We spent a couple of days in Philidelphia having a basic orientation and getting some vaccinations.  After that we were off to Conakry.  We had about four days there at the compound, not really venturing out too much accept to go to the beach bar and the market.  We spent those days getting orientated with Guinea and learning about what we were going to learn.   On Dec 8th we left Conakry and went to our training site.  After a very funny ceremony with lots of very hot, sweaty and slightly uncomfortable dancing, we met our host families.  Mike and I ended up with a fabulous family.  We have 7 brothers, 4 sisters and a mom.  They are all great!   We have been here studying french (3-4 hours/day), technical skills and other relative topics like "safety and security".  About once a week we get a nice visit by our crazy Romanian doctor who usually gives us a class on our sanity, undesirable diseases, or fun parasites and then stabs us in the shoulders with a vaccine.  I think we might be getting our rabies shot tomorrow, yeah!    Next week we will all be finding out our sites.  These will be the locations that we will be living in and working in for the next two years.  It's pretty exciting and we are all really anxious to know.  The week after next we will actually be going to visit our sites!    I'll give you all a little feel for our situation here in Pre Service Training.  Everyday we wake up at about 7am and climb out from under our mosquito net that hangs from the ceiling and tucks under all the sides of our beds.  Because there is no AC and our training is in one of the hottest places in Guinea we usually need to rinse off by pouring a few cups of water (gotten from the well and treated with germicide) over our heads.  We brush our teeth outside and rinse by waterbottle.  Our Mamma, has gotten used to our eating habits by now and usually has a baquet with peanut butter, honey and bananas waiting for us.  We make a sandwich with it and head off to language class.  After four hours of language class we go out for lunch with the other trainees.  Lunch is either egg sandwiches with cheese spread, canned beef sandwiches or bean sandwiches (rice and sauce is another option but most of us eat that for dinner and try to avoid it for lunch).  There are also a lot of great peanutbutter cookies and other peanut products available here.   At 5pm we finish sessions and return home either after biking, running or playing sports with the other trainees.  It's great, we get a lot of excercise here.  Mamma usually has our dinner ready for us and we eat whenever we are both sitting there outside in front of the kitchen (see pictures).  Dinner is usually rice and sauce made from peanuts, palm oil, and sometimes sweet potato leaves.  It usually has fish or meat and some potato or cassava product in it too. The electricity is only on every other night so we sit around and talk with our family in the dark or go to the Peace Corps office to study.  The kids in my family love our flashlights.  At about 8pm we go to our room, bathe by bucket bath and hop under the safety of our mosquito net.    Weekends are free to enjoy as we please. We usually have to reserve a whole day for laundry and one day for biking or going to the river to swim.      I hope you all enjoyed the update.    We love you and miss you and hope to hear from you all soon.   Unfortunately the only place we have internet is here in the Capital and we are only here for the New Year.  Don't worry if you don't hear from us by email in a while.  But we have phones, so if you are skype savvy, call us on the cheap.  I will email or call with our number later.  Or you can call our parents for the phone numbers.      Love you,   Marisa.................See Mike's email on the Coup below  (it was crazy)

Hi all,   I was saying to Marisa today that this seemed like it had been the longest month of my life (meaning that since the beginning of the month, it seemed like so much time had passed).  Marisa and I have had the rare circumstance to be in the country when the 24-year dictator, Lansana Conte, died.  This left a huge void of power and after only a short day the military reclaimed power and installed a miliitary government that has claimed power of the entire country.  While there at first may have been disgruntled objections to this coup, the longer that it remains in effect and a stabilizing force for the country, the longer it seems that the coups will be successful in ensuring a stable transition of power.  Hard to say at this point but I would mention that no one seems all that worried of the power vacuum that exist after a leader of 24 years passes away.  Ýou'll surely hear more to come, but the inititial coverage is pretty positive..  There's a lot more to share, but no enough time, so I'll turn it over to Marisa to post some pictures and let you know what we have been doing on a daily basis.

Hi all,   We have arrived safely in Conakry and will remain here until Tuesday, December 9th.  We will then go to Forecariah to begin our in service training.  We are in a group of 29 volunteers and everyone has been very friendly in the very short time we've spent together.   Also, we are trying to get the website to allow anyone to add comments to this section, and will hopefully have it working properly.  In the meantime, feel free to email us at conwaysinafrica@gmail.com  

Hey Everyone!  We sure look forward to seeing the comments that you post on our site.  Keep checking back because we are going to be updating pics and videos as often as we can and answering anyone's posts that they leave us.    Remember you always are welcome to come visit!