Camera Phone

OK, so remember how I said I hated taking photos ?

It’s still true.  

Every time the camera comes out, everyone around me focuses on it.  Take pictures of that!  Take pictures of me!  Hey, why haven’t you given me copies of the other pictures you took!  Hey, look at me!  Let me see!  Give it to me!  

And that’s just with people I know and like.  

With strangers, I seem to get an equal mix of: Take my photo NOW! and  Don’t you DARE take my picture.  That, mixed with a good sprinkling of “Give me your camera, whitey,” and general staring, pointing, and kung fu poses.   It’s a great way to draw a crowd.  But I’m not exactly short on ideas for drawing  a crowd of curious spectators.  I prefer a little more originality.  For example, last week, I pretended to steal a goat.  That was 100 times more fun that getting out a camera.  

Guineans, on the other hand, have not generally been shy about taking my picture, and I often get requests to pose with complete strangers while their friends take pictures of me with their cellphones.  I would like to point out that I have not once demanded copies of these pictures, or asked these people to give me their cellphones.  

But no one prints out the grainy photos from their cellphone cameras.  Sure, you might ask someone to send you copy via Bluetooth, but that’s free.  You can do it hundreds of times.  And eventually someone’s little brother will accidentally erase your memory card, and you’ll lose all your photos of friends and family, but that’s life.  Time to take more pictures. 

You see where I’m going with this, right?

Yup.  I’ve finally started using the camera on my cellphone.  It’s great.  No instant mobs, no requests for hundreds of copies, and no demands that I give my camera to strangers—the truth is, my phone is not that exciting.  It is a lovely 2-SIM Hitel with memory card slot, many steps above the bottom-rung 1-SIM phones that only make phone calls and let you play Snake until your battery runs out (Manimba, the bigger one in this photo, showed me her skill with the Snake game (she calls it mboodi, the puular word for snake), on her mom’s secondary phone).

 However, the youth of Guinea are miles ahead of me in technology.  One afternoon at Mariama’s restaurant in Sebhory, a 19-year-old thought I looked homesick and pulled up the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks movie on his cellphone, in English with Chinese subtitles.  During Ramadan, I was spending an evening at Mr. Sacko’s house, chatting with his two sons and watching Lord of the Rings when the power went out.  In the dark, one of his sons struck up a rather one-sided conversation about the causes and outcomes of the American civil war.  I was impressed.  Then he showed me he was reading off a website, accessed via his cellphone.  Meanwhile the other brother was messing around with his gigantic 3-SIM phone.  Clearly I’m outclassed.  My little Hitel, a very popular model, is known more for its battery life than for its social cachet.

 

It’s also sturdy.  That means I can hand it over to this munchkin without worrying that she’ll drop it, hit her sister with it, or pry the buttons off.  I drop my phone all the time—it’s fine.  So while I was hanging out on Mariama’s terrace, roasting corn on the cob, we had quality time with the camera.  

You might have guessed that the first photo in this post was taken by Hassanatou; she’s not so good at holding still while she shoots.  Manimba, though, has it down—she took the motorcycle photo, among others.  The pictures are tiny and the focus length is short, but I kind of like the dreamy watercolor look this camera gives to everything in the distance.  It fits, particularly in rainy season, when the edges of everything really are softened by wind and rain.  Roads reshape themselves, mudbrick walls crumble and melt, trash sinks into muddy roadside culverts, and green weeds hide the sharp edges of rusting cans and broken bottles. 

The other thing I love about my phone?  It has Bluetooth—so that means I can copy Guinean music from my friends’ phones, and pass them American and Nigerien and Malian music in exchange.  It’s also how I got this nice picture:

Every time I’m browsing someone’s cellphone photo file and I come across another Obama picture, my heart warms.  I’m so proud of our country—we’ve changed so much in the last century, in so many ways, but I’m particularly proud that our ideas about race have changed so fundamentally.  Dalaba specifically, but all of West Africa, bears the heavy imprint of colonialism—we walk every day on roads cut by forced labor, not the labor of strangers, but the parents and grandparents of the people I work with today.  We walk past the ruins of colonial hospitals that served the French soldiers but not the locals, the ruins of a school for the illegitimate children those soldiers left behind.  We work in offices set up in the French system; we work in their language, and so, whether we want to or not, we work with the shadow of their culture.  But which culture?  Like the US, France’s attitudes towards race, colonialism, globalism, and economic development have changed radically since those roads were cut and that school was built.  My neighbors here in Dalaba live in a global world, chat with relatives in Turkey and Paris, complain about the harsh winters of Montreal and the difficulties of doing business with the Chinese. They build new homes with plush sitting rooms and large televisions, shiny tile floors and solar power systems.   At the western edge of Dalaba, Villa Jeanine, the vacation home of the colonial governor, faces the setting sun.  The windows are broken, the paint peeling, the ceilings are slowly decaying and falling in.  Swallows swoop through the gallery, where the governor’s pool used to be.  Seykou Touré, Guinea’s first president, had it filled in and redecorated the room with vinyl sectional sofas.  Now their seams are ripped, the upholstery spilling out.  Does time move too slowly or too quickly here?  Where is Guinea headed?  Where are we all headed?  It’s got to be somewhere better than the days when Jeanine, the governor’s daughter, swam alone in this pool overlooking the hills of Dalaba, while American kids swam in segregated public pools, and the Dalaban kids played in the muddy rivers of the valley below.  Now, as often as not, they’re inside instead, watching Alvin and the Chipmunks on someone’s cellphone: the kids of Dalaba, the kids of my hometown, kids in China, too, I’m assuming from those subtitles.  Is this what we meant by global brotherhood?   

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. 

New House, New Work

I’m officially moved into my new digs in Dalaba—it’s a beautiful house, round like the traditional village houses, but quite a bit bigger : this one has a central round living room, surrounded by three curved bedrooms, a kitchen, and a little porch.  Much bigger than I need, so my belongings and I are a bit adrift in it, but I’m not complaining: it’s beautiful. 

I’m living in the family compound of Colonel Hamzata, retired: it’s a huge compound.  At the western end is his big house, then his brother’s, and a two-story house for visiting family members.  Then my house, which actually looks quite modest in comparison, and across the way, three smaller houses that are rented out.  East of me are four more houses and one more under construction.  There’s a great gaggle of kids that runs to and fro from house to house—the usual bobo crew of preschool aged kids, plus schoolkids on vacation, plus visitors—right now, four of the Colonel’s grandkids are visiting from the US.  When the kids are out and about in town, though, it’s pretty quiet here.  I’d worried that I’d have trouble adjusting to city life: constant noise, a much higher density of people.  But it turns out that even in the thick of one of the older neighborhoods of the city, life is pretty quiet.  I can hear cars on the paved road, roosters crowing, the neighbor’s cow mooing, some construction work down the street, my neighbor sweeping her yard, and the kids calling to each other, but it’s not any busier than life in Sebhory. 

I miss my Sebhory family, though, and I miss my Sebhory neighbors.  I miss Mariama coming to say good morning every day.  I miss pulling water from the well for Fatimata Binta, who’s 8 months pregnant now.  I miss walking down to the other Mariama’s café for a midmorning meal of beans, mayonnaise, and bread.  Did I mention that it’s Ramadan right now?  I’m also missing lunch. 

I miss stepping out of my family’s gate in Sebhory and having so many good walking choices in front of me: east to the pine forest, south to Mount Sebhory, west to the fonio fields, north to the waterfall.  I’m still learning the roads and alleys of Dalaba, but there is a gorgeous section of pine forest west of me: it’s all timber plantations put in by the French in colonial times, and now the city of Dalaba is trying to preserve the plantations to protect Dalaba’s unique microclimate: flat-out cold in the dry season, misty and chilly in the rainy season mornings.  The pines continue down some very steep slopes into the ravines that carry rainwater out of the city: the soil here is clayey and slick even when it’s only slightly damp, which, in this season, is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  So as I was carefully picking my way down a slippery path, I was surprised to see, on the other side of the ravine, a kid going whizzing straight down the hillside.  I heard laughter and realized it was no accident: a group of kids had met up to go sledding.  They hauled broken plastic water cans to the top of the hill, sat inside and held on tight to the edges, and pushed themselves down a relatively straight and clear, and frighteningly steep path, screaming madly.  After the inevitable crash at the bottom, they’d pick themselves up and head back up the hill.  If anyone has been to Slide Hill Park in Davis, it’s the same idea, just about five times longer. 

On Thursday I went to visit Mr. Diallo in Dounkimanya, which is between Dalaba and Sebhory, down in the valley.  During dry season, the fields of Dounkimanya are irrigated from a huge dam build by FAO back in the 80s—it’s amazing how many veggies the farmers in the valley produce.  Huge quantities go to Conakry, Senegal, Sierra Leone—and a fair number stay right here, too, and end up in people’s cooking pots.  So different from my life in Hollaballe, Niger.  Mr. Diallo and I planted potatoes and talked—he used to run a vegetable delivery service to the homes of a lot of foreigners working in Conakry, but during the most recent political trouble in 2009, he lost contact with a lot of his customers, and since turnover is pretty rapid (most people are here on 1-2 year assignments), he’s out of touch now with the foreign community in Conakry.  During the cold season, he grows broccoli, fennel, kohlrabi, and other odd veggies that Americans and Europeans crave.  I’m hoping I can help him get a client list going again, and I’m also hoping he can expand his delivery season from just cold season to year-round.  I think he’ll have a better chance of keeping a stable group of clients if he’s in touch with people year-round: if you’re a foreigner finishing up your contract, it’s easier to remember to put your replacement in touch with Mr. Diallo the Veggie Man if you’ve just seen him last week, rather than not since last March.  I’ve also suggested that Mr. Diallo expand his product list to include other Fouta specialties: honey and green coffee beans, which are available year round, and bush fruits, which each have pretty short seasons, but are often difficult to find in Conakry.  

I'm hoping that here in Dalaba, with semi-regular access to electricity, I'll be able to update this blog more often.  Maybe even with more pictures?  

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.