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:)