Noodles, Costco, and a Poverty Epiphany

A few months ago, I introduced my family to Costco Wholesale Club and my mother and sisters report that my dad is now head over heels IN LOVE with Costco... I wonder if he's faking doctors appointments in Dallas just to have an excuse to drive the 2 hours to get to the closest Costco. Yeah... Texans like buying in bulk. We have plenty of space to store it so why not?

It's the opposite in Guinea. Everything is broken down into very small packages. Market vendors buy a bottle of oil and sell it in small little bags.... 5 packs of razors and sell each one individually.

I never really thought much about it and the meaning of the small packages of everything until I went to the market with a value chain consultant. She walked up to a woman selling tiny bags of noodles... maybe 10 macaroni shells in one bag... held it up and said, "This... this is poverty." Hmmm... I stopped for a second and thought about it. Macaroni noodles are poverty?

Then, I -- feeling pretty dumb after finishing a graduate degree in international development -- had the epiphany that package sizes = disposable income. Costco exists in the US because people have enough income at their disposal that they can buy alot at once and stock up. Prepare for the future.

Guineans in the Forest Region only have enough disposable income that they can buy 10 macaroni noodles at a time. No income buffer. No savings. No safety net. One meal at a time.... 10 noodles at a time... That, my friends, is why noodles are poverty.

Learn sumthin' ever day, huh? ;)

Pumpkin Pie... Recipe for Disaster

In Japan, determined that even if I had to work on Thanksgiving I was going to have atleast something "Thanksgivingy", I taught myself how to make a pumpkin pie in my microwave. And I decided that if I could do it in a microwave in Japan, I surely could do it in Guinea where I have an oven. Surely.

So I went grocery shopping and sent the following email to my Momma and sisters on the night before Thanksgiving:

"Well, there is good news related to the Pumpkin Pie Attempt: I went to the SuperBobo grocery store and voila [note the use of French... it doesn't happen very often], they had all the necessary spices, most imported from India. I even found the evaporated milk! But....the problems are as follows:

1. I'm going to buy a pumpkin tomorrow and boil it.... is that what happens to the pumpkin that goes into the Libby's cans?

2. There is no solid shortening... only vegetable oil. I hope the pie crust will be OK with that. I've never made one before so this should be interesting...

3. I asked the housekeepers today if there was a pie pan in the kitchen. They said that it was rusty and that I should ask the administration to give them money to buy a new one. They came back with some tin pans... like cheap frying pans with no handles. That will make the crust making even more interesting.

4. The oven only has numbers instead of degrees... it says 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ... to 11. Soooooooooooo.... hmmmm..... who knows what temperature this is supposed to be on?

5. And the no rolling pin problem that Momma solved by telling me to use a glass. Will do.

6. No measuring cups. Will be guessing on all this.

So. This will be fun. Will tell you how it goes.

:) Jennifer"

On Thanksgiving day, I got up and set off to go to the traffic circle down the road to buy the pumpkin. Irene, the office assistant decided to go with me.

No one in Guinea buys pumpkins. They buy small chunks of pumpkin usually swarmed by a mess of flies, but never the whole thing. So we were trying to find some enterprising woman in the market who would sell us some bigger pieces.

I saw one woman with some whole slices of pumpkin, and Irene and I approached her just as she was shaking a knife at a screaming child in front of her. Lovely. Irene asked her how much the slices were and she told us... A bit expensive, but I told Irene to tell her that I would give her that amount if she wouldn't shake her knife at small children anymore. :) She laughed at me like I was crazy for suggesting such a thing... took the money of course and then, back home with the pumpkin.

I steamed the slices and then scraped the meat out of the shell and tried to stir it up, but it didn't really look like Libby's... So then, I found the blender and tried that option. Until the blender started smoking. Smoked pumpkin pie... interesting... I gave up on the Libby's appearance and went on attempting to grind up cloves with a mortar/pestle thing and make the pie crust.

After about 2 hours work, I ended up at the point where most American START in their pumpkin pie making process. With a pie crust, Libby's-like pumpkin puree, a can of evaporated milk, and some crushed mixed up spices.

Another hour later, I had a pie in a pan that looked like it was ready for the oven. I started carrying it downstairs to the kitchen (no air conditioning in the sauna/kitchen so I was cooking in our lounge).

Of course, in all of my cautiousness not to spill the pumpkin filling outside of the crust on the way down the stairs, I missed the last step and half the pie filling went splattering down the steps, walls, and my pants. Excellent.

It can always be worse. I could have dropped the whole pie. And I had some leftover filling so it was OK.

I approached the oven with the newly-refilled pie and prepared to tackle the perplexing issue of the mysterious number vs. degrees system on the temperature knob. I decided on 8 of 11 for 400 degrees and got ready to put the pie in... but the oven door handle was broken off.

This is a situation that any Klein is prepared to tackle since I don't think our oven at home has had a handle for about 5 years. So I started looking for prying utensils and ended up with a metal spatula. Nothing like a bit of Breaking and Entering into your own oven.

Broke into the oven and put the pie in, said a few Hail Mary's and went back upstairs to clean up my (big) mess.

...The pie ended up edible. Ugly as sin, but edible. And if we take into account the extenuating circumstances, damn good (if I do say so myself).

Teachers vs. the Pentagon

A quote I discovered in my reading for work on Friday...

"Education is quite simply, peace building by another name. It is the most effective form of defense spending there is."

Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General
Speech before the Advisory Committee on Education: University for Peace, March 2001

Koulé School Visit

Friday, November 11, 2006

Three photos from my visit to the primary school the IRC built in a month in Koulé, 45 minutes away from N'Zerekore.

1. The students chasing after our white LandRover on the way home.

2. The school and the landscape.

3. The kids. The students are ALL 1st graders (if you can believe that)... they were having a session of their special Accelerated Learning program when I visited where students age 7 and above who have not completed first grade can go to school to have another shot at an education.

Religion/Sacriligion

Is it sacrilegious to use a Muslim prayer mat for yoga?

Just wondering.

My FORCE FIELD Mosquito Net

It may be the anti-malarial medication, which is supposed to induce very vivid dreams.... and I would sleep better if it was just medication-induced hallucinations.

But in reality, there are rats and huge lizards running around in my ceiling and occasionally in my room waking me up in the night with the pitter-patter of little feet above my head and in/near my bags. And large, loud buzzing insects...

So I have decided that in order to to preserve my ability sleep without worrying about waking up to rats as bedmates, I must hereby declare my mosquito net as a FORCE FIELD.
[What's a force field?]

I tuck in all the edges of it under the mattress to close it off from the rest of the room. And I declare it completely un-penetratible by anything. Period.

Logic would imply that if a rat can bust a hole through my walls to get into my room, he could also chew through a thin piece of netting... but not my FORCE FIELD.

That, my friends, is how I sleep at night in the IRC Guesthouse in N'Zerekore. The only problem is that it doesn't quite block out the prayer calls. I'm going to have to work on that.

I'm a Walking Tourist Attraction

Sunday, Nov. 4, 2006

I'm a tourist attraction in N'Zerekore. Kids run to follow me through town... (at a distance... can't get too close to the Tubabu!) Here's my crowd of kids from my walk home from the refugee church.

Laine Refugee School

Friday, Nov. 3, 2006

Last Friday I finally made it to a refugee camp to visit the school... very exciting for me since I had read so much about refugee education. The IRC Guinea refugee schools are supposed to be a "success story" in refugee education and I wanted to see why.

The students in this camp are Liberian and therefore theoretically speak English, but I'd try to ask some of them "What's your name?" and the could not understand anything I said. And I couldn't understand their English either.... oooooooooh Liberian English. It's tough.


I walked around the classrooms with the IRC staff administrator and the students immediately stood up to greet us in unison with "Good After-noon Ms. Jessica. HOW ARE YOU?" I looked around at my colleagues... Nope. No one named Jessica there. Still a bit perplexed about that greeting.

Most of the classes had around 70 students in them and they were partially in buildings and partially in tents... a sign that refugee education has been going on for a loooong time in Guinea... 15 years to be specific.

Without the schools for refugees, an entire generation would have gone without education... And who would be left with the smarts to begin rebuilding Liberia now that the conflict is over?

One United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) staff member visited the IRC schools in Guinea and said that if, in 2010 there is an educated class to govern Liberia, it is because of the IRC schools in Guinea. The IRC was basically a Ministry of Education for the 80,000 refugee students attending their schools and they negotiated with the Ministries of Education in Sierra Leone and Liberia for the recognition of their students diplomas and their teacher's training certifications.

I honestly could go on for hours about this... but I'll step down from my soapbox. For now. :)

Inciting a Daycare Center Riot

In the midst of visiting classrooms in the Laine Refugee School, I stopped by the Young Mother's tent. Basically, it is a daycare facility in the school where young mothers can leave their children so they don't have to drop out of school.

And BOY, did those kids LOVE ME. I walked up and a few of the toddlers saw me and their faces CRUMBLED. SCRUNCHED UP IN A WAILING OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING STANDING THERE LOOKING AT US AND IT MUST BE AN ALIEN AND WAAAAAAA!!!!! WAAAA!!!!!!!

Within about 5 seconds I was standing in front of about 15 screaming and bawling children. I bet the daycare attendants loved me. Nothing like inciting a riot in the daycare center...

Whoops.

Guinean Truck Stop Food (Please God don't let it kill me!)

As I set off in the white LandRover with the IRC Community Renewal team, I asked the English speaking guard to ask the driver to be sure there was somewhere that we grab some lunch. Got the nod, and we set off to Macenta.

Half way there, we pulled over to the side of the road and James, the Guinean driver, said "Food." I saw a stand with women selling bananas and bread, and thought that I we were grabbing something to eat in the car. Bananas and bread are safe.

But, the Community Renewal team is a hearty eatin' bunch and opted for a sit-down meal at what would likely be the Guinean equivalent of a truck stop. I've eaten many a "steak on garlic" (chicken fried steak on garlic toast/heart attack on a plate) in the truck stop in Bellevue, Texas ("The Fryin' Pan"). And they have some mighty fine coconut pie there too.

But I could tell that this was not going to be a "Fryin' Pan" experience.

The boys sitting at the table behind where James decided to sit turned to stare and then started laughing... I hoped it wasn't a "Let's see if the foreigner dies eating this food" laugh.

James said something in the local dialect to the woman huddled over the big steaming pot outside near the road, and she brought out one big plate of rice with sauce over it and four spoons. Time to dig in. All four of us in the one plate.


These are the times when, even though I'm not Catholic, I feel like I should say a few Hail Marys over my food. "Hail Mary, full of grace... .... please.... please.... please.... don't let this food kill me." Then, I think back to Peru, of the meals in the indigenous communities on plank tables with dogs, cats, chickens, guinea pigs, and children running on the dirt floor under my feet... and I take comfort knowing that maybe growin' up in the country and drinking water from a well in the pasture have given me a stronger stomach than most foreigners who have been drinking treated/purified water their whole lives.

I'm not dead yet. Didn't even get sick during the next 8 hours of bouncing up and down over the amazingly bad roads visiting one government official to the next official collecting the 5 necessary signatures to be able to finally, at sunset, visit the Guinean community near the Kuankan refugee camp, and announce, "We are going to train you to create a committee to decide what your priorities are for community development."


It's hard to feel like you made any progress in the day with just collecting signatures, but it helps me realize the difficulty of operating in this environment. There is no email or phone or fax or ?? to just ask the regional governor, prefectural governor, sub-prefectural governor and sub-sub prefectural governor, "Hey, we're going to ___ village to talk to them about community development and to see if they want to start a project there. Do we have your approval?"

Instead, you spend entire days popping in and out of offices with huge propaganda photos of President Conté saying "Ce Va?" over and over and over again. Other times, as you go further down the ranks to the community level, the meetings are sitting under the tree with the kids/grandkids nearby.

And the added difficulty of having to meet personally with all the bigwigs is the roads: A truck broke down in the middle of the dirt road to the community, and the passengers were outside with a huge stick trying to pry it out of the hole. James and the Community Renewal team assisted atleast enough to get our LandRover by so we could go on about our work. (that's not fog in the trees... it's smoke off of the wheels of the LandRover trying to get through the mud)