No Camera Please

I think it’s time to admit that I’m not going to be posting photos on a regular basis.  I just don’t love cameras.  But there are plenty of images I want to hold onto: instead of promising pictures that will never appear, I think I’ll try just describing some of them to you instead.  For example, last week, Tibou and I were gathering plastic bags for the tree nursery.  You can buy 1/3 of a liter of clean drinking water for 500 francs here—that’s about 7 cents—neatly packaged in a plastic sachet.  Since a lot of people distrust the safety of the water from the public taps, the town is littered with empty water bags.  However, these sturdy bags are just the right size for planting trees, so we pick them up, cut off one end, poke drainage holes in them, and fill them with a mix of soil, sand, and cow manure, then plant trees.  This lunar month is Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast from sunup to sundown, so everyone is moving a little more slowly, conserving their energy and hydration.  It’s a time when you don’t usually start new projects, plan big meetings, or expect a lot of enthusiasm—everyone’s a little quiet, a little contemplative.  Everyone but Tibou.  He’s the de facto manager for Hotel Sib, the fanciest hotel in town, and so while he’s always an active member of ALDET, our tourism group, he’s usually constantly distracted by his continuously ringing phone.  This morning, though, last week, as we walked to the stadium to search for water bags, carrying big empty rice sacks, he said to me, “I think since it’s Ramadan… we can get a lot done this month.”  He’s right: his phone only rings maybe once an hour; the hotel is hosting no conferences, no tour groups, and no weddings.  He still has a few guests passing through, but for weeks now, we’ve been passing our own quiet, contemplative mornings working in the tree nursery.  The stadium is the best place to look for water bags: whenever Dalaba has a soccer tournament, the grounds are packed with thirsty crowds, and so water vendors do a brisk business.  There’s no trash cans, though, so the weeds and grass slowly swallow the constant deposition of empty plastic bags.  The empty stadium is immense.  At the center is a full-size soccer court and nets—no grass, mind you, but it’s flat, no rocks, and only a few patches of really slippery clay.  There’s a tiny shaded grandstand, and a block of six toilets, and the rest is huge empty space.  When we came in, the sky was overcast and grey, a cold wind blowing, scattering the plastic bags into the deeper weeds at the edge of the stadium.  The concrete walls reach above my head—perhaps ten feet?—and there’s only two gates into this oddly quiet zone.  At the middle there’s often a few kids practicing goal shots, and on this day there was a young woman learning to ride a motorcycle as well.  Tibou and I got to work, gathering up empty water bags and stuffing them into our rice sacks, keeping an eye on the clouds to see if they would turn to rain.  The young woman rode from one side of the soccer field to the other, then back, occasionally stalling, occasionally practicing a turn.  The kids kicked goals and watched the motorcycle enviously.  And all of us, under the grey skies, closed in by the towering walls, barely made a dent in the emptiness.  I waved to the girl on the bike.  The kids waved at Tibou and I.  None of the background noise of the city filtered in.  After half an hour or so, we made our way to the grandstand, where the bag-picking was even easier.  Another group of little boys was using the concrete floor to try out their homemade skateboard— but since the board to kid ratio was about 1:8, the littlest ones figured out that they were never going to get a turn and came over to see what we were up to.  After about twenty rounds of “On jaraama” and “Bonjour,” they joined in.  No questions, no “why are you picking up trash?”  Just five tiny kids scouting around in the weeds with us, bringing handfuls of water bags to stuff into our sacks.  Ten minutes later, their older siblings decided to head home, so we had another twenty rounds of “O’o” and “Bon journee,” and then they were gone.  And this is why I love Guinea:  I love cloudy grey days.  I love Tibou’s earnest enthusiasm.  I love kids who just want to do what the adults are doing.  I love quiet moments in a quiet month, and I love returning to our tree nursery, and adding one more line of planted water bags.  And one more line.  And one more line.