Sustainability

There is no hunger during the mango season. But a month of abundance is trumped by eleven of paucity.
In a land where death comes as frequent as the market van, people turn to Allah and his predecessor, nature, for answers. A cup of boiled teak leaves is swallowed. What remains in the kettle produces a hot bath, for aspirin is scarce and expensive. My back hurts. We have labored hard this year; we shall have plenty to eat.
The sacred forest plays its role. The sky scraping fromagers have witnessed two thousand years of mask dances and sacrifices. Purity brings good health and chance.
The devil is guilty for strong winds that blew grass roofs off mud huts. Sou ba and Basi ti (sorcerer and medicine man) are commissioned to curse thieves and heal the ill.
The pulsation of the djembe resonates through the village storming up thoughts of ancient battles. Diligent farmer is persuaded by her pentameter measure, passing endless hours breaking the soft earth with the blacksmith’s daba. The rains have arrived. Allah ka bo.
Blisters become calluses. Work is simplified, yet testing.
The land is life and Allah is one, so both are turned to for survival. And as the rains come each year, we loose countless parents along the way and we stay humble and thank God for the food we have and family that supports us.
Time is not an enemy. Neighbors are our friends and we take time to sip tea and argue over who’s the best football club. “Puyol est un fou,” Moussa yells to me as he worships the Spanish gladiator that entertains the masses.
I take a sip of pump water attempting to dilute the caffeine and sugar that the attaya injected into my system.
Meandering paths wind in between mud dwellings like a serpent. No one in sight, for the sun is at its highest and morning prayer calls have exhausted both the village elder and farmer. The few souls that have not found refuge under shielding mango trees are returning from the bush with bundles of wood and segments of broken termite nests, which anxious chickens wait to snack on.
Mother and daughter, pestle in hand, produce music with each blow as they pound manioc to powder. Fatim’s plastic beaded gris-gris sits above her hips as the passing imam gives her daily benedictions. She will be protected from sickness and evil, her mother’s worries are eased.
The mo ba (village elders) gather under the baobab tree reminiscing on ages before cigarettes and motorcycles, which have come to consume today’s youth.
The rains arrived early this year sending women to the gold mines. Madame Camara finds two grams, exchanging it for fifty mil. The rest find nothing, but hopes are brewing as the evening sky turns gray and wind knock the last mango into the hands of anxiously waiting children. Wrestling matches develop as larger boys noticed the fallen fruit.
The twelve moons pass and another rain comes. The young boys are old enough to herd cattle and the young men take on responsibility au champ. Another baby passes away as three more are born, but one of those won’t see their third moon. Tears are shed, but it is God’s will. An answer is given, life and death are simple.

How Sidiki got his groove back

“The soul is healed by being with children.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky

I showed up at the village’s primary school a couple of weeks ago hoping to give a talk on hygiene to the small group of sixth graders. I was excited for the opportunity because the school is almost never in session since the children are needed out in the fields with their families to find new arable land, clear the trees, till the land, plant the crops, and finally harvest months later once the rains have stopped. The kids, along with the men, women and adolescents are occupied for nearly every month of the year, with a short break during the 30 day month of Ramadan. It is difficult to get the kids in school because they are farmers and have been that way for thousands of years; the concept of a western style school system came with the arrival of the French in the mid 1800s. More difficulties arise when there are only two teachers at the school for six grades, and they are barely even present because they are appointed by the government to teach here and have families of their own in distant places.
So when I ran into Madame Diane, one of the two teachers, at the pump a couple of weekends ago I eagerly asked if I could show up the following Monday to do a health talk with the sixth graders. She quickly responded with her normal, “n’est pas de probleme” and a smile, and I rushed back to my hut to prepare my lecture. I had it all figured out: we would talk about the importance of washing our hands, using pit latrines, and covering wells for the health of our community, and than sing songs and act out skits on what would be the right and wrong thing to do in certain situations. I had done the talk before in neighboring villages and the kids loved it when I acted out having diarrhea as a result from not washing my hands; this would be my sure fire way of gaining the attention of my spectators.
So I was ready to go. I woke up at six o’clock and got right to doing my morning routine: let the cat out, put the tea kettle on my gas stove, tuck in my mosquito net, pick up the leaves behind my hut, water the moringa trees, and take a warm bucket bath. All of this while catching up on current events par the BBC on my shortwave radio. I got extra clean this particular morning and put my nicest collared shirt and creased khaki pants, and was out the door by seven thirty making sure to be at the school at least 10 minutes before class started.
I waited at one of the six empty classrooms looking out at the seemingly endless row of mango trees that lead to the fields where the diligent people make their voyage to each morning. As Madame Diane approached and greeted me with a loving, “bonjour!” she handed me a stack of books and told me I’d be taking the third and fourth graders for the day. It was a Monday and since Mondays are extremely quiet at the health center (my normal work place) I agreed to the unexpected command (I was told to take the students, not asked if I wanted the job). I had nothing planned for the day and poor Madame Diane had all six grades on her hands because Madame Kaba had not arrived yet from Kankan, which is 35 km away.
I entered the classroom to see 36 anxious pairs of eyes staring at me…there I was, my heart beating, feeling like I was back in the school in Tierra Prometida, the barrio I worked and lived in for 2 years in Costa Rica. The feeling was alive again! I had almost forgotten it: The warm amazing feeling of bringing out smiles, laughter, and confidence in children. And although the kids speak very little French and the majority of them can’t spell their names we proceeded to sing, draw, dance, and communicate with joy. “This is who I am!” I thought to myself as I stood in front of my interactive audience, “how did I ever get away from this?”
I came to Guinea under some criticism and questioning by people around me, “Why are you doing Peace Corps again, are you crazy? What are you trying to prove?” So I formulated a plan and even convinced myself that it was a career move. I would learn about West Africa, a region where I wanted to work, learn another language, be emerged in another culture, and start my career as a health worker by being a public health PCV, slowly working my way into the health service field by learning petit a petit. This is not me, I am not a doctor (even though the rest of the village thinks I am). I cannot lie to myself. So being there at the school that day was a blessing, as well as bumping into Madame Diane at the pump. I came to Guinea to help, and a school with only 2 teachers needs help. And I want to help 36 students with all of my heart, but I know it’s me who will be helped by them.
I rushed home from school that day to hopefully find cell phone service (it comes at weird times and at weird places. Sometimes I have to climb a tree or wait for a calm breeze) so that I could call a very special person. She had done the same thing a month earlier by volunteering to teach the 83 teacherless 2nd graders in her village. I was so eager to tell her the exciting news and how much she had motivated me. I felt so alive! My motivation carried onto the next day when I showed up with the stack of books that Madame Diane had given me (math, science, French, and history). She was even more excited to see my return that day. I’ve been back everyday since, and to put it simply, I feel like a kid again.

thoughts from a toubob

"Over the side of the big canoe, down on the dock, Kunta could see dozens of toubob stamping, laughing, pointing in their excitement, with dozens more running from all directions to join them. Under the whips, they were driven in a stumbling single file up over the side and down the sloping plank toward the waiting mob. Kunta's knees almost buckled under himas his feet touched the toubob earth, but other toubob with cocked whips kept them moving closely alongside the jeering crowd, their massed smell like the blow of a giant fist in Kunta's face. When one black man fell, crying out to Allah, his chains pulled down the men ahead of and behind him. Whips lashed them all back up again as the toubob crowd screamed in excitement."

As I read " Roots", by Alex Haley, the words send shivers throughout my body, but also want me to read more, because of the parallels that I draw. The word "Toubob," which is the word used for white person, appears hundreds of times in the book and it startles me because that is what I am called here. This is what Kunta Kinte, the novel's protagonist, and his Mandinka tribe, call the evil, strange looking and smelling, white skinned people that are stealing their people and bringing them across a big water on a big canoe. I am shaken now everytime a child yells "Toubabou" at me, and shaken everytime my eyes come across the word, and it's negative connotation, in the 800 page novel but slavery has played a huge role in the U.S. and West Africa, and although it hurts me to learn about its distruction and cruelty, being here has encouraged me to stare it in the face. I have had to put the novel down on numerous occasions because my eyes fill with tears learning from the horrorrs that happened.

The novels setting is the late 1700s, at the height of the African slave trade, in the Gambia. And although the Gambia is two countries away from Guinea, the description of life in Kunta's village, Juffure, is so similar. Country borders don't separate ethnic groups and tribes, and the Mandinka that are described as great warriors and farmers in "Roots," are the same Malinke, or Maninka (the true name in their language), that tell me about their battles against slave captureres and rival tribes, and invite me to harvest their millet, okra, and groundnuts. The baobob tree that marks each village in the novel is the same one that greets me every morning as I leave my hut. The village elders that meet to discuss and resolve the dissappearance of a neighbor's cow in Missamana are the same one's that gather in Juffure to discuss the second marriage of a recent widow. The drumming , rights of passage ceremonies, respect for elders, and tools used for farming are also so similar and I feel like I'm living in the same village as Kunta. The book's opening is beautiful and does a wonderful job of painting a visual image of a functioning society and the interconnectedness of all aspects of Mandinka culture. I feel honored to be living amongst, and learning from, of people that have endured so much and enriched so many other cultures; the descendants of slaves throughout the Americas have given so much to the "New World."

Another aspect from the book that has opened my eyes is that Islam was a prominent pillar in Mandinka/Malinke culture well before the slave traders and colonizers arrived in West Africa. This has made me respect its intricate role in daily life here much more. Islam has shaped how people name their children, how people greet each other, conversate, eat, pray, and view life. It is also affected how many view the negative effects of poverty. It hurts me to witness, but many deaths that have resulted from malnutrition, lack of health care and medicine, and disease have been accepted by the people because it was believed to be God's will. One of my biggest obstacles is convincing people that seeing bodies being carried away on a wood board is not normal, and that we can prevent many of these hardships from occuring. I do admit that this is not easy because with each dead body that I have seen carried out of the health center I have become less shocked, and it has become more normal. But motorcylce deaths can be prevented by wearing helmets and malaria can be stopped by investing in a mosquito net. This is the message that my counterparts and I want to spread.

des amis

Hello, Bonjour, I ni sooma... My name is Adam, but everyone here in Guinea just calls me "Sidiki." I love the name because it comes from the Arabic word "Sadiq," which my friend Sam has told me means "friend." I came here to help out by volunteering at a small health center, but when it comes down to it, being a friend is the biggest impact I can make, and I have been helped way more than I could ever do for the people here. I have been adopted by a family, a village and a culture. The Malinkes that shout my name out as I walk through the flooded muddy streets are some of the kindest and happiest that I have ever met. They have very little resources and material wealth, but their spirits are rich beyond measure and they value things in life that should come above others in any culture: the family, the well-being of the community, and kindness to strangers. I am constantly being nagged to share meals and visit the homes of people that stop me on the street simply to exchange greetings. It is funny that Africa is known as a continent of mass hunger, yet I constantly need to turn down invitations to eat because I am full of rice and peanut sauce from the earlier lunches that have been shared with me. Two loving families have adopted me in the village where I live and work, Missamana, and they always find a way to find me and feed me even though they have ten children that need to eat too. Don't get me wrong, these people have very little, and the huge hike in rice costs has hurt the bellies of many, but sharing is never an issue and people will share the little that they have because that is how things have always been here. I am a big proponent of change, but there is very little that I would like to see change here; the society functions without many of the luxuries that other civilizations have (no electricity, running water, or adequate medical care), and the family unit is incredibly strong, and there is very little family disintegration, drug and alcohol abuse, crime, or murders. I do fear for my friends when they drive motorcycles carelessly without a helmet, and when the vast majority of the children have bloated bellies because they do not have clean drinking water or nutritious food to eat. I would change little things, but I do not want their roads to be paved or their huts to be connected by power lines. My eyes have adjusted to the pitch dark evenings and I love staring up at the stars from my prayer mat. I love my friends and family, both in the US and those that have opened their lives and homes to me here, and they have taught me that being a good friend is one of the greatest attributes that one can have. Friendship and family is everything.