Where is N'Zerekore anyway?

In the midst of working on my last proposal, I discovered this map of Guinea and N'Zerekore, my little home town in the Forest Region [Yes, you may need to read that name again. The pronunciation is Silent N Zeh-ruh-core-ray.]

World Detox

Thursday, /October 24, 2006.

I feel like I’m on email/computer/electricity/phone/contact with the outside world detox. Computer battery time is limited so I have to use it sparingly, so I’m re-learning about means of entertainment without electricity.

I have been here for 6 days and between the holidays, we’ve only had 2 days of work. That’s 4 days of sitting and trying to figure out what to do with myself in this little town.

I spent three hours this afternoon reading a book. I grabbed my camera and strolled around shooting discreet photos. I talk to my guards and the kids that walk by and went to the office to see if anyone was around (which they all were, but just sitting on the benches by the road chatting). Attempted to cook tomato soup and couscous. Fought off jittery jitters and twitches of the detox… “Email… I want to check my email…”

Internet/TV/iPods/Constant connection with humanity is a drug. I wonder if because we now grow from childhood surrounded by a million possible ways to entertain ourselves, we have lost the ability just “to be.”

Detox.

Moon at the End of Ramadan

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Everyone said that yesterday would be a holiday for the End of Ramandan. And the Muslim leaders in Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast agreed.

But when I got up at 7AM on Monday morning and yelled out the front window of the house at my guard, "ROLAND??? IS TODAY A HOLIDAY?" He just replied, "NO Jennifer. They couldn't see the moon."

"Does that mean I have to do go work?"

"Yes, Jennifer"

Awwww CRUD. So I went to work.

And the next day, I documented the moon over the trees from the gate of the guesthouse in N'Zerekore... just in case they wanted proof that Ramadan was really supposed to be over in Guinea. :)

Nightmarish Coffee and Earplugs

N’Zerekore, Forest Region, Guinea

Sunday, October 22, 2006

I have reached a new low in my coffee drinking life.

After about 7 unsuccessful attempts at lighting the gas stove in the IRC Guesthouse and thus using up all of my matches, I resigned myself to a breakfast of cartoned orange/pineapple nectar and instant Nescafe coffee in room temperature water with powdered instant milk. Ouch.

Still coffee is coffee and hopefully it will serve its purpose of jolting me awake after a sporatically sleepless night.

I need earplugs here.

Buzzing insects, then the pitter-patter of little feet in the ceiling and in my bags (God! Rats too?!?!?!). Then, at 3:20AM, Mr. Ramadan started chanting on a mega-microphone loudspeaker… loud enough to force just about anyone – Muslim or not – out of bed to pray just to make him stop.

Yes, I should have brought earplugs to N’Z.

Flying to the Forest Region with Daisy Duke and Mr. T

Saturday, October 21, 2006

My Air France flight from Paris to Conakry was my first introduction to flying in Africa. Got on the plane and was glad that my sense of smell isn’t very good because the body odor was pretty durn overpowering.

And that was Air France.

My flight from Conakry to N’Zerekore today was a whole ‘nuther flying experience. There are three ways to get to N’Zerekore:

1. THE Road. Meaning the [singular] only road leading from Conakry to N’Zerekore, which washed out in the rainy season and the government can’t seem to get their act together to fix it. One option down.
   
2. The World Food Program flight on Tuesday and Friday. But, with the road out and no other way to get to N’Zerekore, these fill up with bigwig UN people and lowly grant writers for NGOs don’t have much of a shot.
3. The Commercial Flight on Saturday. My only option.

They told me that the departure time was “around noon.” The departure time seems to depend on when the Russian pilots finish their cigarettes and feel like leaving. Finda and Emmanuel, 2 N’Z IRC staff and I managed to board the plane at around 1:15. A mad dash to the little rickety stairway to board the plane (why are they in such a hurry?) where I realized as I entered the cabin, that they were hurrying so that they would:

1. Get a seat (no guarantees that they counted the right number of passengers) and
   
2. Get a seat that wasn’t broken.

The runners were already fanning themselves furiously with the saftely cards (Russian and English) when I got on the plane... The seats that were left were the ones with the seat in front broken so that you would have the joy of having head in you lap the whole trip. Lovely.

And better yet, I was sitting next to a mammoth she-man scary woman in an ironically beautiful yellow dress with head wrap and veil. [Picture and angry Mr. T from the A-Team in a yellow dress.] She had, I later found out, put her carry on under my feet so that she would have an empty space under her feet. She spent the whole flight either leaning on me or sleeping or looking at the book I was attempting to read -- glaring at me like she was thinking, “Didn’t you hear that it isn’t right for a woman to read?” Pucker face grouchiness...Pleasant airplane companionship.

Luckily, the temp of the plane got cooler as we got into the air and I escaped into 19th century Chile in my book… only to be interrupted by the flight attendant (yes there was one) offering muffins and “Capri Sonne” (Capri Sun, Safari Flavor) on a tray.

The plane didn’t have a cargo hold, so the front of the plane was filled with luggage… took up more space than the passengers actually I think. When they realized that the luggage took up too many passenger seats, they just asked one of the token white guys on the plan who was wearing shorts waaaay to short for his burly physique to go sit int eh cockpit. Mr. Daisy Duke driving the plane. Excellent.

After an hour and 45 minutes, we landed in the middle of a pasture and debaorded to the joyful singing of a large group of children outside the gate. Wow! Welcome to Africa! Singing children greet me at the airport! GREAT!

And then I found out that there was a Catholic bishop on the plane (was wondering why that guy had so much Bling-Bling crucifix action going on) and the kids were welcoming him. Still, I was pretty happy to enjoy his welcome.

We spent around an hour waiting on them to pull all the luggage off the plane. After around 30 minutes, 5 young guys pushed the first luggage trailer (like an oversized wagon) out of the “gate” into the parking lot and everybody just started grabbing their luggage.

Waiting on the 2nd batch, I got to see the plane refueling method: Two young guys struggled by with barrels of “TOTAL jet fuel” on their heads... uh, scary?

Then, we honked our way through the crowd out of the airport and bulleted down the dirt road back to N’Zerekore.

Ramandan = No Food = Bad for Hungry Texan.

Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, has made my first week in Guinea a bit more challenging: There is not a single spot of food anywhere within a 1 hour driving radius during lunchtime. And all the grocery stores were closed to prepare for the big fast-breaking dinner by the time I got off work. So it was like a Guinean conspiracy to be sure that Jennifer Klein fasted during Ramadan. Yesterday, I finally made it to "Exclusive Hyper BoBo", the biggest grocery store in town, for a retaliation food-stockpiling session for next week so hopefully I will make it through Ramadan.

Tomorrow, Oct. 20, is a national holiday because all the Muslims are supposed to sleep in the mosque tonight. They originally told me that they were sleeping in the mosque on Wednesday night and I would have Thursday off work. And now, they say that depending on how the moon looks this weekend, I might just have Monday off too.

I'm not used to having my work schedule declared spontaneously by a group of religous leaders based on their judgment of the moon, but as long as they keep declaring holidays, I'm not going to compain too much. Now if they'll just decide to let people open their restaurants in the daytime again, I'll be one happy Muslim-country resident.

Money, Money, Money, MONEY!

Guinea's got issues. It's pretty apparent just about everywhere. But the only new issue that I haven't seen before is [boring as this may sound] inflation. I've never been a place where, for example, $1 dropped to the value of $.30 in less than two years.

The economy was so screwed up that the restaurant menus just can't keep up and end up taping new prices, layer after layer, on top of the old ones in the menus. Tonight's menu had atleast 10 layers.

My welcome lunch with four IRC coworkers ended with a stack of bills in bill holder that made the top stick up at atleast a 80 degree angle.

And the money exchange process is quite interesting: The IRC car pulls over on the side of the road and honks. A little man with a HUGE stack of money plays frogger darting across the road through the traffic to get to our window, where he gives us the rate. I've never been much into the black market until Guinea but the formal banks can't keep up with the inflated rate.

Then, he starts counting out stacks of 5000 Guinea Franc notes -- not by the note-- but by stacks of tens with the 10th notes as a folder for the other 9. That seems to be the way everyone now holds their money in Guinea. In packets of 10. I exchanged $100 and it would just barely fit into my purse. Geeeeeeeeeeeeez.

Home Sweet Office/Home

I live approximately 10 steps and 10 stairs from my desk. My boss, the Country Director, lives down the hall and the "Durable Solutions" advisor lives next door. We're a very happy Tunisian-Canadian/Russian/Texan family, though Kamel (the Country Director) describes himself as "a monk" and Igor, the Russian Durable Solutions expert, has a passion for unicorns.

I think I'm going to adapt the current laundry drying location which strategically places my underwear in our living room where my co-workers watch TV. Slightly more mortifying was when I saw our housekeeper, Hanah from Liberia, putting my laundry in a pile on her head to carry downstairs to iron... I could just see her parading through the office with my bras on her head, but she thankfully just tucked the underwear into the other clothes and took off.

I have a room of my own with air conditioning and my own bathroom. There even is a little patio balcony overlooking the backyard with a pool. I'm living in the lap of luxury compared with the basement in Georgetown with no air conditioning. YEA!!

Guinea? Whud ya wanna go thur fur?

On Saturday, October 7, 2006, I dropped Mom and Dad off at the airport in Dallas and went to the Bass Pro Shop. One would think that Mom and Dad would drop ME off at the airport considering I was on my way to Guinea, but things never quite go in the typical fashion in the Klein family.

Mom, Dad and Mary Sue were on their way to Vegas to watch Mary Sue get a big Pharmacist of the Century award with tickets bought months in advance. My ticket, bought 10 days previously, left about 10 hours later, thus giving me time to sleep in the suburban in the airport parking lot, go to buy water purification tablets at the Bass Pro Shop, pay homage to Target, and have one last go of my beloved Tex Mex at Uncle Julios with Dr. Paula Noe.

Then, the flights began. Dallas to Atlanta. Atlanta to Paris. Paris to Conakry, the capital city of Guinea, West Africa. Near Liberia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali, Sierra Leone, and right on the Atlantic Ocean. It is not New Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea or Papua New Guinea. Just plain GUINEA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinea [Geography lesson is over now].

I'm here working for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) ( http://www.theirc.org/) . The IRC has been camped out here in Guinea for 16 years now while West Africa has been fighting it out. Refugees from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast have all ended up in Guinea and the IRC has been providing education and protection to the refugees so that: 1. there weren't 80,000 kids sitting around for 16 years with nothing to do but make trouble, and 2. there would be people with some skills aside from firing guns left to go back and rebuild the countries when the fighting was over. Amongst other reasons.

But all this doesn't tell you what I am doing exactly: Basically, I'm writing: Report writing to the people who give us money to keep working with the refugees (namely, the US State Dept.'s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration(PRM)). Grant proposal writing to get us more money. General liaison-ish-ness between the field and the donors. And since I've only been working for a week, I'm not sure beyond that.

DC to Guinea via Texas... slight detour

Once upon a time, I was living in Washington DC in a moldy/sneezy basement north of Adams Morgan with a strange Chinese landlady and her mysterious husband(?) who loved to talk about bein' in the Peace Corps with Kinky Friedman, future governor of Texas.

So I decided to go to Guinea. No more World Bank and cafeteria food from the Gods, but no more allergy apartment with Mr. and Mrs./Ms. Sketchy.

So, on Monday, October 2, Momma Klein and I loaded up the car with all my crud (Momma barely fit in the midst of the crud -- almost had to strap her to the roof) and headed back to Texas. Two days/1400 miles of 10% rearview mirror visibility driving and a lot of outlet mall shopping later (hey, you have to go to the bathroom somewhere!), Momma Klein and I bounced our way across the holes in the dirt road up Klein hill.

Step #1 of the Road to Guinea.