Conte's Passing

From Matt On Behalf of Sarah -

Sarah is safe and relaxing in Freetown, Sierra Leone, with several other PCV's on their Holiday Break. She wishes everyone back home a Happy Holiday season and wants you to know she is doing ok.

my garden!...one of the things that makes me happy here:)

some of the people who help me in my village get stuff done

yay! finally done- this is a picture of my audience around the new "forno ameliore"

making an air hole using a stick...

smoothing out the platform where the wood will rest...

and the walls go up up up...

then, when the walls are a little built up, you put the pot on the rocks like usual, to build the walls up around the pot to really insulate the fire/heat well...

after the rocks themselves are insulated, we begin to add mud "bricks" (balls of mud) to form the walls...

that yellow can there is to hold up the hole which will be where the wood is inserted...

First i put down the three stones and began to insulate them with my "mud" mixture: cow poop, powdered termite nest, straw and water...

mud stove demonstration

i recently gave a demonstration to the presidents of four women's groups in my area on how to build a fuel efficient mud stove. here are some pix from it...

this one is the traditional way women cook here. see the three stones? they balance the pot on there and put the fire underneath. a lot of heat and smoke escapes.

the office, where we did our work in the training village

at the local cafe in the training village where you can get egg sandwiches and nescafe...btw, it is about 110 degrees in the shade and there is about a 98 percent humidity level there.

celebrating my friend caleb's bday in conakry

Happy Turkey Day!

hey yall. so happy THANKSGIVING!!! more than every before in my life i realize how much i have to be thankful for. i love my family, and my friends all over the world. i love america. i love airconditioning. i love cheese. i love pie and turkey. yesteraday, i had more than lately of those things on that list. a really interesting thought i had yesterday as i sat around eating and laughing with my fellow pc volunteers and some of my best friends, is that although my family and friends from home are far away, and i have had very little contact for the past year, i still really felt a sense of home and comfort. what a far way i have come from a year ago, when i was absolutely scared to death if what awaited me here and how i would deal with a life away from america for 27 months. hmmm, well enough self reflection. one year down, one year to go:)

in other news, i just got back from the training village because G-17, a new group of trainees (my class was G-15, and G-16 arrived in july) will be arriving on December 4th and i am one of the volunteer trainers who will be helping with their "stage" (training). most volunteers who wanted to were able to sign up for a two week block during G-17's 9 week training, and we will be helping with technical training as well as emotional support and cultural integration. it was exciting to be back in the village where i spent my first few weeks in guinea. during our 3 days there, we met the new technical, language and cross cultural trainers who would be helping with the stage, and participated in sessions to design and schedule the training program. we did this by sector, so i was with all the other agroforestry volunteers, which was also awesome because we had a chance to share all our first year experiences and hear what did and did not work for who, and what we think was really important for the training and what no one has used and we think should maybe be eliminated or at least have less emphasis.

Now that im back in conakry im going to look up some information on some projects im doing, most notably bush rat breeding- like what they eat and how to take care of them etc. i also have to type up proposals for two projects im trying to get funding for. ill update you on those depending on their sucess.

anyway, i love yall and hope everyone has a happy holiday season!!! here is a little article i thought you might find interesting, i did.

sarah!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7647962.stm

Jess and I pointing to our hometowns on our completed World Map project

me in front of our un finished world map project (my friend jess and i painted it on the side of an elementary school)

more "wildlife of Africa"

my friends and i ready to go visit some bee hives

me getting in my gear to visit the bee hives

Halloween 2008 in Labe (regional capital of the Fouta region)...

from left: Brittany Spears, Sarah Palin (me), Cher, 80's Mafia Guy, Bush Fire, Black Eyed Pea, Magi Cube (like a bullion cube everyone eats here in their sauce), MSG (everyone eats packages of that too in their sauce here), Guinean School girl (that is what their uniforms look like here), another 80's Mafia man

again, another from my "wildlife of Africa" series

the taxi "gare" where i wait patiently (from 8am-2:30 pm two days ago) to get a bush taxi to fill up with enough passengers to leave (at least 3x the amt of seatbelts in the car)

more from my "wildlife of Africa" series...btw, this is a fly hanging off a piece of straw from my thatch roof

me with my friend Madame Sow's new baby Hashiatu

*i know im so sweaty it looks like i just gave birth haha but it was about 900 degrees in that room and people kept walking in and out making it hotter!*

at my friend Madame Sow's new baby's babtism

gone baby gone

Brittany, thank you sooo much for the cd's and letters! i feel like i actually know what is going on in your life now haha! you'll have to keep me updated after the move. ohhh, btw i LOVED the postcard too! im actually listening to the "thinking" cd right now. very chill. you know how much i miss jax! (and all my friends too! :) i hope you are there when i get back in 16 months!~i love you dude!

Pops: Thank you for begining to write me letters again! i got the one today you sent on sept 22. i love the article on the farriers. i know how hard on your back it is just picking the hooves of multiple horses in one day, let alone be doing all that shaving and hammering! i cant imagine the wear and tear over a lifetime! i love you and miss you! sorry my phone cut you off the other day. i havent made it into town to buy a phone card yet.

Everyone: i leave tomorrow to go back to my hut, so no super fast communication for a while. becky, i read your message that you're sending me snail mail so thanks thanks thanks in advance. i will prob get back to internet around thanksgiving when ill be in my regional capital. pops, sorry i forgot to say thanks sooo much for all the pecans you sent in your last package. im going to make a pecan pie for thanksgiving yay! even though it will be about 95 degrees practically in the sahara desert (literally), with pecan pie, how will it not be just like home:) haha. i love you all and miss you bunches.

banana tree behind raven's hut

the one thing in guinea that matt was really afraid of... it was in raven's hut

matt and i swimming in some waterfalls north of conakry

cooking popcorn in raven's village. we were entertainment for all the women in the cooking hut that day! it is hard to shake the pot to keep the kernals from burning, so matt was trying to do it with his foot, but then the rock slipped and we almost lost the whole thing on the ground. luckily at the last minute one of raven's "moms"jumped in, and with her bare hands picked up the pot off the fire and placed it safely on the ground

hammock time (raven's hut)

matt at the soccer field in my friend Raven's village for the end of Ramadan fete (party)

matt getting water from the well in my friend julie's village in the basse-cote region

an outrageous sunset up on the top of a hill in Boke

*that is a papaya tree in the middle*

the market in my village

me with my best friend in my village

matt with my favorite family in my village

sunrise over the countryside on the way from kankan to conakry

matt and my friend jess taking the peace corps car back from kankan to conakry (all the way across the country). we left at 5 am and watched the sunrise over the countryside

my carrots

some lucaena in my school tree nursury. it is good to plant in a line for live fencing, especially to build pastures for cattle since the leaves are really good for them and high in protein.

me at my reforestation tree nursury. the ones on my right are oil palm trees (which do NOT help the environment, but the group needed some motivation to plant other trees sooo...) the ones on my left are the gmelina that we are using to reforest. next year im going to branch out into some nitrogen fixing trees which improve the soil.

a view from the walk from my hut to the tree nursury i use for my reforestation (the one next to my house is for elementary school education on the different kinds of trees and their uses/importance)

the fence i built to keep out all the wild things that might eat the baby trees in my tree nursury. yup folks, i built that. and it goes all the way around that house on the left (well, not around it, but it starts at the back and wraps around my hut...get matt to explain better)

walking back into town from the night in the hotel (about 4 kilometers)

matt standing in front of our hotel in Faranah. the name of the hotel is Hotel del Niger, but we called it "Africa-land" because it reminds all of us volunteers what disney might use as lodging if they created an africa themed resort. the huts are really cute, and have running water (though not heated) and electricity from 8pm to midnight. matt loved it. there is also a pool and a pair of monkeys that run around the grounds.

scenery on our bush taxi ride across the country from Conakry to my village in the eastern part of the country

bush taxi breakdown

matt's first cross country bush taxi ride...and we only broke down once! (well if you dont include the short jaunt to the hotel, during which we had to stop about 5 times to suck gasoline out of the engine...well, the driver had to, with his mouth i might add)...matt, feel free to elaborate

Now that i have had a couple of days to relax and reflect on Matt's visit I am hoping that he had a good time and if nothing else learned a little about the world in which i live and work. more than a vacation, i think he would agree that it was an experience. i have written him an email trying to get him to send me a little summary of the trip so i can post it up here. in the meantime, i will put up a couple of pictures now...

matt and i at the beach bar the second night of his visit

update

matt is going to do a guest appearance soon to tell you all about his WILD trip so far. good news is we are both still healthy and have safely made it back to conakry. check for it soon, it should be good. in other news, matt has informed me that my blogs have a certain abstract quality to them, and being the engineer he is, has agreed to look into making the whole layout and list making more conducive to be read by people who have "real" jobs and "real" lives back in the first world. thanks matt. (sarcastic smile) i cant wait to see what he comes up with. oh a couple more things (matt is pacing behind me wanting to leave the computer lab), 1-i love comments on my blog, just try not to say anything that might offend the US gov b/c they moniter these. 2- matt went above and beyond any expectations i may have had about food gifts so i should be good for a couple of months (but i have to admit that by saying that im sort of afraid yall will forget about me completely hahaha). 3- to Marian and Holly, i just got a package from each of you and OMG I LOVE LOVE LOVE bacon so THANK YOU SOOO MUCH and also for the extremely useful toothbrush holder (yay no more germy counters/dirt floors haha) and stamps- as well as the goldfish which ive decided are my #1 favorite food of all time (you find these things out in africa once you've been here for a while deprived of a fully stocked grocery store...or ANY grocery store for that matter haha)... 4- i love you all and esp right now KRISTIN and DAD who have loaned me the boy they love for three weeks of excitement (and some unexpected near death experiences haha- much more funny when told in stories at a later date)...ok, really must go now but good luck everyone in surviving the economic meltdown i keep hearing about on bbc and I LOVE YOU ALL!!! peace:)

Vacation Time:)

I am really happy right now because in less than 48 hours my brother's plane will touch down in Conakry to begin a 3 week visit. I have a lot of things planned for us to do, but no real order they are going to be done in. All i know is that he definitely needs at least a full two days in my tiny village to see what life is like outside of the city. I'm also really happy because last night i recieved a message from a good friend back in jacksonville who i hadnt heard from at ALL since i left 10 months ago. i was so confused why she hadnt been talking to me, but her letter made me feel a lot better. OHHHH and i have to give a BIG thanks to my dad, from whom i recieved TWO packages on this last mail run full of pouch chicken and goldfish and reeces, basically my three foods i miss the most here! I LOVE YOU DAD!!! Work wise things have been really good in the last 2 weeks since ive written. i had 2 visitors right in a row, thanks Jess and Nick! While jess was in my village we hiked out with a friend from my village an hour out into the woods to a field that i helped an old lady clear a couple months ago and plant peanuts. It is now harvest time, so jess and i sat on the ground with the old woman, some of her grandkids and my village friend all day picking the peanuts off the stem. the old lady wouldnt let us leave until she had filled up a huge bag with peanuts for us to take in thanks for our work. it is really neat eating something that you have grown since the beginning! The next day jess and i worked with my reforestation group planting trees for a few hours, but since it is ramadaan here (guinea is a mostly muslim nation) the men were hungry and didnt have that much energy so we didnt do our usual 4 hours of planting. when nick came with the mail run (which is the car jess took to leave my village) we talked a lot about his sector, small business development, and how i could apply it to a couple of my projects here. i met with a man from Faranah (a town north of my village) who wanted to start a business with motorcycle taxis, but didnt know where to begin. i realized what a big factor budgeting is, and how little most people here are taught about basic funds management and saving. my eventual goal with that particular man is to begin a Village Savings and Loan, commonly referred to as VSL's here. im pretty excited about it but it will take a while to get off the ground (as do most things in my line of work here). I also recruited Nick to help me transplant my Moringa seedlings from my tree nursury next to my house, to a space we cleared in front of my village health center. We planted 42 seedlings in a big square, and next rainy season, when they are larger and stronger, i am going to make a live fence out of them, and make beds on the inside where i will plant more moringa to be used like a garden vegetable. I dont remember if ive talked about moringa before in my blog, but it is an amazing tree. the health benefits of eating the leaves and pods are enormous. It is full of protein, vitamin c, calcium, vitamin a etc. you can eat the leaves in an omelette, as a tea, you can dry them and make them into a powder to use as a nutritional suppliment etc. my goal is to have enough on hand to give a bag of leaves or powder to every expecting mother and any underweight and/or malnurished child that comes into the health center. it is such an easy way to really enrich the health of my village and im really excited about it. if you want to know more, google moringa. it is amazing.

soooo, it is really exciting that soon, because my brother is bringing me a new camera and you will finally get more pictures on this blog, so stay tuned haha:)

OHHH i forgot to say THANK YOU soooo much to kristin and matt for the awesome pictures yall sent me in your package. that was great!!! pictures mean so much to me here, so those along with the ones Aunt Marian sent me (THANKS!!!) from the wedding make the walls of my hut a lot more homey. i love yall!!! pics coming soon!!!

correction

i just talked to my one of my family members last night, who, frankly, i think is a little embarrassed about my last post. soooo i will clarify. i was NOT asking for money for Rio, b/c by the time i go there i will be finished with peace corps and have gotten my "reajustment allowence" which is basically a lump sum of money to help me restart my life in the states. what i was saying is that my bday and xmas are coming up, so anyone who was in the gift giving spirit, and/or planned on sending me a package (which i LOVE btw) i was just saying it would be better if i had some cash right now for my visa to mali.

ok, that is enough of that mess, sorry i ever got into it...

right now i am in a nearby friend's town hanging out with a few other volunteers for the weekend. i really like coming here not only to see my friends, but because the UNICEF office here lets us use their internet yay! since i have no cell phone service or land lines in my tiny village it is so exciting to talk to people from home and find out the new vp candidates etc.

last week my friend Ciara came to visit me. i was was so surprised but in a good way. i showed her around my village, and we cooked together and spent a lot of time sitting out in front of my neighbor's house watching the world go by. good stuff. i never realize how integrated i am in my village until someone comes to visit and i can show them around. the highlight of her trip for me was when 2 important men from my reforestation group came by and made a big production of giving me 10 cola nuts wrapped in a big leaf (the biggest sign of respect you can make). they went on to tell Ciara how happy they are to work with me and how i was such a good worker (which made me feel guilty bc i really dont feel like i work that much, certainly not the 40 or so hours id be working in the states) but it is good bc it motivates me to know that whatever work i do do is appreciated. anyway, i was again surprised when on monday night a car full of people (admin and a volunteer) showed up at my hut. it is so rare that the actual director of pc guinea would come all the way over to my region (the one farthest away from the capital) so i was very impressed he and his wife made the uncomfortable journey all the way out to see some Haute Guinea region volunteers' sites. anyway, i should prob go now b/c there are some people waiting, but matt, i cant WAIT till you come and i can show you around. i love yall as always!!!

Malaria/AIDS workshops

I am currently doing a malaria/aids workshop in a city in the middle of the country. it is great to see my friends but the days are long. i dont have much time to update this, but i wanted to inform everyone a little about my schedule. Tomorrow im leaving here and going to my regional capital with all the people from my training group, G-15, who are also in my region. there we will greet and have a party for the new training group who got here in July, G-16, whose sites will be located in the haute region. then, i will accompany a new volunteer to their site and sort of do an orientation sort of thing since they dont have Guinean counterpart (it is an education group so they are all teachers). anyway i should be back to my site within the week. i want to say a couple of thank yous, first to my friend ashley from whom i recieved a snail mail letter today. i love you ashley and cant wait to come see you in orlando when i get back and meet your baby girl!!! also i want to say thank you to my cousin Holly who wrote me a really nice email and gave me lots of great encouragement. these workshops have convinced me to foray into the public health sector a little bit, and one of my friends, nick (a small business volunteer) has made plans with me to come to my village soon and help me start a village savings and loan. i want to tie that in with community developement, so i am going to form it as a way to not only help people get small loans to start a business, but i want the village to use some of the revenue to fund free condom distribution. i will be giving malaria and aids lectures in the schools, hotel and bars around the village but a lot of people always give me the excuse when we talk about aids that they cant afford the condoms. instead of looking for outside funding i think it is a lot more sustainable to have the village do it themselves and end the cycle of dependence. anyway, that is what im looking forward to right now.

BTW, my brother Matt is coming to visit in september (the 17th through the 7th of Oct) and i CANT WAIT!!!! I want to give a big THANK YOU to the whole West family (who is now part of my extended family!) for facilitating it. i know how much you helped and i want you to know it means the world to me!!! matt, prepare to have the craziest adventure of your life!!! :)

Melissa and Katie, we all miss you so much and this whole conference has been sprinkled with story after story of things we remember about yall. i love you both so much and am really wishing that your lives in america are adjusting well. i cant wait to see you again, but until then eat as much cheese as possible for me:)

As of tomorrow i will have been living in a hut in Africa for 6 months. to all of you who thought i would have quit by now, HAHA! i havent and dont plan on doing it until 2010, when i plan on going to Carnivale in Rio de Janeiro. anyone else who wants to experience the craziest party on earth with me, you have 2 yrs to save for a plane ticket. drop me a line:)

speaking of saving, i am living the life of a volunteer right now, so i dont really have any money to travel to surrounding countries. unfortunately, almost all my friends are heading to Mali in February then taking a train to the west african soft ball tournament in Senegal. senegal is free to enter, but the Malians just raised the price of their visa to 240 dollars. yes, U.S. dollars. which, is realllly crappy for me because i just dont have that kind of money. the visa lasts 5 yrs but still, isnt that a little crazy? anyway, my bday is in december along with xmas, so if anyone is interested in donating to my cause (i feel sort of bad about begging, but not as bad as if i miss out on sharing this tradition with all my friends here), please just give me your email under the comment section and ill hook you up with my dad who has a joint bank acct with me. my friend put a paypal thing on her blog but im sorry i m just not that technically savy. i love all yall soooo much!!! ill keep you posted on any incoming donations until i reach my goal, or the event passes. ill type more when i get to conakry to pick up my brave brave brother:) until then, im thinking about you all every day!!!

ps...

btw, if you want to read katie's story in her own words check out her blog: tckinguinea.blogspot.com

much more eloquently put then i could have (plus i dont know the whole story and she does)...

back to the hut

tomorrow im taking the little plane back to the hut. im nervous about what live in the village is going to be like knowing that i dont have a neighbor for 75kms with no cell phone coverage...completely disconnected from EVERYTHING going on in guinea and the world. scary. anyway, i miss all yall and esp Katie and Melissa. Becky, i havent read the magz you sent me yet, saving them for the hut but i cant wait to tear into your package when i get back!!! thank you sooooooo much! i love all yall! ill try to update again in august when ill be in mamou for lifeskills (where we will have an AIDS training). until then, if you're the praying type, i need it right now:)

the conakry coastline as once again seen from Rob's balcony

we are in the shadows but that is because the sun is setting behind us. in this picture are my friends Jess, Raven and I. oh btw- this is Rob's appt balcony where we go to watch the sunset a lot (b/c the view is amazing) when we are in conakry