Estersauce and Juggling

The IRC Conakry has two housekeepers: Hannah and Ester. Hannah cleans [occasionally] and Ester has been assigned with the task of taking care of Igor, the Russian "Durable Solutions Advisor" who also lives in the Guesthouse.

Igor does not cook. As a literate and educated individual who obviously has the capacity to follow instructions, he surely CAN cook. But Igor, as a rule, does not cook.

He does not reheat food. He does not go in the kitchen. He does not boil water... because "in my country, women are better cooks than men so men do not cook." He does set aside kitchen utensils for use for juggling though.... (I'll let you sit for a second and get your head around that statement).

I could go on a long digression/soapbox about this, but I will restrain myself and go back to Ester: Ester cooks for Igor and, during Ramadan when there was no food anywhere during lunchtime, I started chipping in to have a portion of whatever Ester cooked for Igor. There are three possible options in Ester's cooking repertoire:

1. Fish
2. Chicken
3. Meat (They always say "meat"... I don't know if I want to know what "meat" this is)

At first, I thought Igor would chose the core protein item and Ester would make something to go along with it. But after about a month, Igor and I realized that Ester knows how to make one thing, which she combines every day with rice and fish, chicken or Meat: It is a tomato based sauce with about 3 cups of oil in it, carrots, eggplant, peppers and such. Igor and I now endearingly call it ESTERSAUCE.

One day I decided to be ambitious and teach Ester to make spaghetti and meatsauce so that maybe she would know how to do something different. In international development terms, I decided to call it "capacity building of local staff."

It took the whole morning of interruptions in my work, but she managed to actually cook something that might actually be recognized as meatsauce. The next week, Igor asked her to try the spaghetti again on her own, and (sure enough) we ended up with Estersauce on top of spaghetti.

So I have given up on dear Ester. I've been cooking for myself since I came back from Texas. And Igor will get to enjoy Estersauce for the next two months until his contract here is over. Maybe that might convince him to be the first Russian man to ever go into the kitchen?

I doubt it. He's got the utensils reserved for juggling.

Conakry... the City of [No] Lights

Everyone wants too see photos of Conakry it seems. This is difficult for a few reasons:

1. Conakry is ugly. I'm a perfectionist photographer who doesn't like showing off ugly photos and it is really hard to pull something not ugly out of Conakry. To be honest.

2. I'm scared to go walking around with a camera that is worth a couple years annual income of a lot of the people here. I treat my camera like it is my child and, like any good parent, I try not to expose my child to potentially dangerous situations. :)

3. And, most importantly, it's illegal to take photos in Guinea. These last two items mean that I only get to shoot photos from the car window where I can speed away if a police/military/scary person decides that I look like a good target.

Nonetheless, here are a few Conakry photos:

Conakry sits on the Atlantic Ocean and has a downright ugly coastline because of the trash, rocks, mud and (probably) toxic waste. It reeks. But, a sunset can even make the coast of Conakry look a bit better. This photo is from the balcony of the Regional Security Officer of the US Embassy's house.

The view from the other side of the balcony is Miniere neighborhood of Conakry, where the IRC guesthouse is located. I thought this photo is decent because it shows 1. an abandoned partially constructed building like those that seem to abound in Conakry, 2. the jungle takeover of a house (if there even is a house in there?) and 3. fancy-pants expat housing.

Next is the view out the front window of the IRC Landrover of the best road in Guinea (that I've seen atleast). There are four lanes and street lights that the occasionally turn on. This is the main road in/out of Conakry, so during rush hour, this is a parking lot on one side of the road.

And finally... a couple women walking outside of the Marche Niger in downtown Conakry. I hopefully will have a few more photos soon.

The Islands... Is this really still Guinea?

The weekend after I got back to Guinea from Christmas in Texas, I was lucky enough to get invited to go with a bunch of Embassy folk out to the famed "Islands" off the coast of Guinea. We headed out in an Embassy boat (I don't usually think about my tax dollars going toward speed boats in Guinea, but hey, as long as I get to use the boat, I'm OK with that) and ended up in a tropical paradise that just can't be Guinea. We were all shocked. I'm still in denial. Here are the photos: