Not as glamorous as last week

I'm once again hanging out with the ALDET crew, but no waterfalls or chimpanzee calls today: Tibou, Gabriel, and Hilary and I are in Labe today, working on a website.  Abe, a fellow volunteer who works with Credit Rurale, has been kind enough to offer not only his expertise but also his office space-- in this 10x10ft room, we have: 2 desks, 5 laptops, 6 chairs, 1 desktop computer and printer, about 20 cellphones charging, 1 generator running downstairs, and 1 amazing wireless network.  Thank you thank you Abe!  We also have about 14 different things going on at once: Abe and Hilary are registering the domain name and downloading software; Tibou and Gabriel are working out the text we want to put on the site (at least I think that's what they're doing; I'm facing the backs of their laptops, in the opposite corner of the room), and I'm here, updating the blog, working on the job description that will let me stay here another 8 months, emailing, working on a powerpoint presentation... meanwhile, at any given point, we have at least 2 cellphone conversations going at once, and at least 12 of Abe's colleagues have stopped by to say hello to his guests... ah, multitasking. 

Tired legs…

Today, my legs are sore and my feet are clean.  What have I been up to? 

Hiking to Sinden! 

Yesterday, Hilary, Tibou, Gabriel, Diouma Fleur, Amadou Ouri, and I took the same road that Mariama and I take when we go to her fonio fields.  We kept going, though: past the new school that’s being built for the kids in Sinden (right now, it’s at least an hour’s walk for them to go to Sebhory), past the water pump, past the 20ft tall rock that’s been split in two by a tree that took root in a crack near its base; past several mango trees loaded with ripe fruit (thank you to the generous owners of those trees—and thanks to the next household, too, that gave us water to wash all the stickiness off our hands and faces), and finally, to the edge of the world.  Luckily, we’d acquired another member of our entourage by this point: a local kid from Sinden.  He scrambled nimbly over the edge of the world, and we followed more slowly. 

I was the first one to lose my footing on the descent; in some places, we had usefully square stones underfoot, at times as regular as a staircase, but in between the rocks, the loose soil and dried leaves proved treacherous.  Finally we reached the valley floor, bracketed by abrupt rock faces on both sides;  with Diouma in the lead, we followed cow trails towards the sound of water. 

At the first stream we crossed, I lost my footing and stepped right in— luckily it was only a few inches deep, so I just waded across.  Onwards through the thick trees and lush elephant grass, then another turn of the stream to cross: this time I made it across without giving my sneakers another dunking.  Ahead we heard the rush of the waterfall, then another sound bouncing off the rock walls: baboons!  Diouma called back to them, but they didn’t come over to say hello.  The path up to the waterfall was completely grown over; luckily Diouma had brought his clippers, and he cut us a path through the overhanging vines and new branches.  One more wet scramble over the stream, and we reached the base of the falls:  twin curtains of water streaming from the rock face high above, falling in a blur of mist and spray into a pool surrounded by rocks smoothed by years of rains and river.  Have I mentioned how amazingly beautiful Guinea is?  This is just one of the many waterfalls Diouma knows: the kids around here know it, and the old people remember being kids themselves and scrambling over the rocks to play in this pool.  But no one on the paved road knows how to get here, and it’s been a year since Diouma brought any other visitors here.  So the waterfalls, the pool, the baboons, and the sun-warmed, water-smoothed rocks keep their own company.  We visited for an afternoon, ate our picnic on the rocks, and returned to the cow trails, cutting a path back up out of the valley. 

A few more tight passages through overgrown bush, a few more scrambles up steep valley sides, and we found ourselves at the next series of waterfalls.  Here, a bridge built of bundles of logs and branches arched across the stream, well out of reach of the quiet waters of dry season, but ready to withstand the torrents of rainy season.  After Tibou lost his footing on the bridge and nearly went in, I decided to go across on all fours—not particularly glamorous, but I’ll sacrifice glamor if I can avoid falling six feet into a shallow rocky channel.  As we perched at the top of a series of falls, we spotted another pedestrian—a man walking towards Sebhory with three newly carved stools balanced just so on his head.  He was the first person we’d seen since we’d descended into the valley, though quite a few cows gave us questioning looks as we tramped past.  We left the water behind, stepped a few meters through the trees, and suddenly we were back in the fonio fields—steep slopes cleared and burned in anticipation of the season’s plantings.  A long march uphill—Diouma and Hilary raced up one section like mountain goats while Tibou and I slogged along behind—and then we were back on the roads I know well from last fall’s fonio harvest: there’s Mariama’s field; there’s the tailor’s mother’s field.  Back past the pump, and past the well; past the field dotted with jasmine bushes and past the leafless trees adorned only with tiny purple orchids.  Past the men carrying bundles of manioc cuttings, past the goats returning home with the setting sun, and back to the back roads and alleys of Sebhory, where everyone asks me, “Where have you been?”  and “You’re tired, aren’t you?”  Yes, I am.  My legs are worn out, my feet have been scrubbed to an unimaginable level of cleanliness by miles in wet sneakers, my T-shirt is drenched in sweat and stained by mangos, and my heart is full of good memories. 

Agricultura

Alas, this picture isn’t from Guinea (150 points to anyone who can tell me where I did take this picture!), but it’s a good emblem for me these days: I am plotting a move out of ecotourism and forestry, back to the world of vegetables.  I’m hoping to extend my Peace Corps service for another 8 months and work with some local vegetable growers’ cooperatives on post-harvest handling (yes, I hope to make my profs back at UC Davis proud).  Food security is a big topic in West Africa; in a lot of places, the push is to produce enough to be self-sufficient.  In the Fouta region of Guinea, though, we’re producing way more vegetables (and fruits… and coffee...) than we can consume.  It’s a great climate for veggies: the cold winters here mean we can grow crops like broccoli and strawberries that can’t survive anywhere else in Guinea.  So, for us, contributing to food security means getting our surplus to other regions, so that more people in Guinea have access to affordable, nutritious vegetables year-round.  The problem is… fruits and veggies are the hardest crops to transport.  They wilt, they rot, they get smushed.  Since most of our beautiful avocados, shiny eggplants, and plump tomatoes need to travel at least nine hours, in giant trucks, over some harsh roads, before they get to the big markets… well, a lot can go wrong. 

I want to work on helping more veggies get safely to their final destination, by improving post-harvest cooling, sun protection, and packaging; I also want to help farmers use even those veggies that aren’t safe to travel: some of the dead-ripe bananas, bruised tomatoes, or nicked eggplants can be dehydrated for snacks (banana chips = good) or convenience foods (no fresh tomatoes in the market?  Throw a handful of dried ones into your sauce pot). 

The first step is finding out more about how the post-harvest value chain works right now… so I’ve started interviewing veggie farmers, the ladies who buy and sell produce here and in Conakry, and the guys who rent the big trucks; tomorrow I’m hoping to talk to some more people at market, and learn more about the growers’ cooperatives.  I love market day. 

Happy Malaria Month, Everyone!

Every April, it’s time once again to celebrate this parasitic disease that saps the strength of farmers, sickens students and teachers alike, kills babies, and combines with HIV to make people’s lives even more difficult.  Yes, it’s everyone’s favorite mosquito-borne affliction: Malaria! 

So, how many people reading this blog have been sick with malaria?  (April, raise your hand.)  Not very many, I’m guessing, and I’m happy to count myself among those who’ve never gotten ill from it.  But then, I can afford malaria prophylaxis (I would like to thank the hundreds and hundreds of doxycycline pills that have kept me malaria-free), and I come and go often enough from malaria zones that my body has a chance to rest from the prophylaxis—none of the drugs are meant to be taken for a lifetime. 

But when I ask my neighbors about malaria (Nawna jante, in Pulaar), they’ve all gotten it at least once.  Mariama, the head of my host family, gave me the most accurate and understandable description (she’s learned how to adapt her explanations to my very limited language skills):  You get sick, with a fever, chills, headache—so you go to bed—and the next day you feel better.  Maybe even for a few days, you’re OK.  Then the fever comes back.  Then you’re better again… then the fever comes back.  My friend Leah, who’s been trained at Malaria Boot Camp in Senegal, tells me that the cyclical fever happens as rounds of malaria parasites infect your red blood cells, grow, reproduce, and burst open the cells that harbored them; each time a new generation bursts out into your bloodstream, it wreaks havoc with your health; then you’ve got a bit of time to recover while the new parasites settle into another round of blood cells and begin breeding again. 

It’s a miserable disease.  Do some reading on it—it’s amazing how long we’ve been suffering from malaria, how it’s shaped human history, what we’ve learned about how malaria works, and all the different approaches people are taking to combat malaria.  Here in Sebhory, I’m certainly not working on vaccines or genetically modified mosquitoes… I’m not even on the front lines with the health center workers who are using the new rapid diagnostic tests and prescribing treatments… but I’m trying to do what I can.  Part of dealing with malaria is knowing what you’re up against, and kids are among those most vulnerable to malaria, so I’ve been visiting the primary school classes in Sebhory, asking students what they already know about malaria, giving them the information they’re missing and correcting some misconceptions, and asking them how they plan to protect themselves and their families against malaria.  The best things they can do are sleep under mosquito nets at night and get prompt treatment from the health centers when they do get sick.  I started by talking to the sixth-grade class, and I was pretty disheartened to find out that while most households had at least one mosquito net, the kids I was talking to didn’t sleep under a net.  But as I worked my way down to the youngest students, the story changed: the majority of the first-graders say they sleep under nets.  It started to make sense: the health center had given out nets a few years ago, and each household got one, but one net per household isn’t enough.  Families seem to have gotten the message that pregnant women and young children are the most vulnerable, and so the little kids are sleeping under nets with their moms; the teenagers in the sixth grade, though, are on their own.  Luckily, there’s another net distribution planned for this summer: this time, they’re hoping to cover not just each household but each bed.  I’m hoping that when these kids come back to school in October, I’ll be able to hear that all of them can sleep mosquito- and malaria-free. 

So here’s a few malaria myths that we stomped at school last week:

1.      1.  Malaria is caused by mangoes—an understandable theory, since mangoes get ripe around the time the rains start and the mosquitoes breed like crazy, transmitting malaria left and right.  Every kid (OK, a few adult Peace Corps volunteers, too) has gotten an upset stomach at least once from eating too many mangoes in one sitting; most kids have gotten malaria right around the same time.  So, it makes sense that people assume they’re connected, and tell the kids to go easy on the mangoes. 

BUT!  Malaria is not transmitted by mangoes.  Nor by rainstorms, dirty dishes, unclean drinking water, or shaking hands with sick people.  It’s mosquitoes and only mosquitoes, so if you aren’t getting bit (because you’re safe inside your bednet at night), then you aren’t getting sick. 

2.     2  We don’t have malaria in the Fouta region of Guinea—wouldn’t it be nice if this was true?   Talk to the old people, and they’ll tell you about how much the climate has changed—they remember the good old cold days, when mosquitoes were few and far between, even in rainy season.  Today, that’s not the case: the mosquitoes are here to stay, and malaria has moved in with them.  

3.   3    Bednets are hot and stuffy.  This isn’t so much a myth as a matter of opinion; my personal argument against this barrier to bednet use is: It’s worth it, to be just a little hotter at night, to keep the killer mosquitoes away; and frankly, it’s worth it just to keep EVERYTHING ELSE out of my bed: the mouse that haunts my kitchen, the beetles that love the light of my headlamp, the crickets that want to snuggle up with me in the middle of the night, the occasional gecko or lizard that wanders into my room and gets tempted by the sight of all that soft, comfy bedding. They’re nice lizards; I just don’t want to go to bed with them.  I am perhaps too attached to my mosquito net: it’s my security blanket that keeps out all the things that go bump in the night.  And, you know, it also helps prevent a disease that can kill you.  So, I’d say that’s a fair tradeoff for a slightly warmer sleeping situation. 

This week’s news roundup

Here’s a bee swarm that Leah and I found on our walk up to Shaikou Oumar’s house :  

Alas, I didn’t get any pictures of the monkey that I found hiding out in my avocado tree—I suppose I should be upset that he’s up there stealing avos and mangoes, but he got so scared he dropped an avocado for me (I’m sure he meant it for me), so I’m doubly tickled pink.

Meanwhile, the pine trees in the tree nursery are growing taller, while the water level in the wells keeps dropping.  Most mornings, I walk through the pine plantation to work with the pepiniere (tree nursery) group for a few hours—we water and weed, and I get a little bit of the morning’s gossip in Pulaar: who died, who’s getting married, and who is off harvesting her tomatoes instead of helping us water.  Alas, my Pulaar still isn’t good enough to get any juicy details.  On Tuesday we dug down a few feet further in hopes that our closest well would produce enough water to cover all 10 beds of tree seedlings; alas, it’s still not quite enough, so we end up making a few trips to the further well.  Where I dropped a watering can yesterday.  And unfortunately, not one of the lightweight plastic ones that floats; no, I dropped a metal one, and it sank like a stone.  I’m quite grateful to Barbe, who managed to fish it back out. 

I’ve built one more mud cookstove, and I’ve got another new request for help building one, but they’re not sure when they want to build it… my life moves very slowly.  

And it was my birthday last week!  Kim brought me chocolate chip brownie mix when she visited, so on my birthday I brought it into Dalaba and Christina and I made brownie pancakes: follow the instructions on the box but add one extra egg, drop the batter into a good nonstick pan to make coaster-sized pancakes, and voila, instant brownies without an oven.  Chocolate is SO GOOD! 

Also, this week is Malaria Month—I’ll be writing a separate blog post all about that.  But here’s one helpful hint: eating mangoes will not make you ill with malaria.  Which is a good thing, because with my current 4-mango-a-day habit, if there were any truth to that myth, no amount of malaria prophylaxis could keep me safe through rainy season.