Finding
Home, Coming Home
July
28, 2003
A lot of water under the bridge since I’ve last written…
literally. Conakry is, according to international weather authorities,
one of the top ten rainiest cities in the world. Every morning
and night, the sky opens up and mother nature’s fun begins,
spraying bullets of rain on my tin roof and bombing the city with
thunder. The sheets of rain collect in huge lakes in the streets,
making mud of the little maze-like paths that connect Conakry’s
courtyards and clogging up the traffic in long honking lines.
Sometimes the showers last all day at full force but the nightly
showers come like clockwork, like the bass and soprano chorus
of grenouilles and moustiques (frogs and mosquitoes)
that serenade me to sleep.
Since
our office sits at the bottom of a small hill (like most of the
city, without proper drainage), the parking lot becomes a pool
after really rainy nights. One morning I vacated my taxi prematurely
as the car instantly started filling with water. I had to take
off my shoes and roll up my pants to wade to the door. The boon
is also evident from the plants and flowers popping up in my garden
like well-fed children outgrowing their shoes – onion, garlic
and basil; fuschia foxtails (cou de renard, not the same
plant we call foxtail in English), apricot ‘double-fuschia,’
others whose names I only know in French, like yellow and green
speckled crouton.
After
six months, I’m feeling settled into my work, especially
now that I have ample support – an amicable, Amazon-tall
secretary and bright, eager French interns, here in Conakry as
well as in the field offices, who help me immensely. But if the
work has become more manageable, it’s no less hectic, as
new projects and urgent requests pop up without notice from all
directions.
I’m constantly bouncing from project to project, which suits
a concentration-challenged person like myself… Writing and
laying out articles and brochures, taking photos, working on joint
projects with other UN agencies, preparing documents outlining
our emergency operations for the coming year, chasing down and
renconciling figures from our sub-offices, schmoozing and arranging
missions for journalists, putting together a photo exhibition
and other events, developing a action plan on HIV/AIDS (I am now
the office’s focal point for this topic… luckily not
a huge crisis in Guinea yet, but we want to do some preventative
work – condom distributions and awareness trainings with
staff and beneficiaries -- so it doesn’t become one).
Meanwhile,
a good half of my time is spent chasing after folks for every
little thing and pulling my hair out over the ineptness and mismanagement
in the office (the chauffeurs love to play hide and seek with
us when we need to go somewhere; I’ve been fighting for
a month just to get toner for my printer and have succumbed to
writing desperately bitchy emails to my colleagues). The speed
at which I’m expected to crank out work is inversely proportional
to the speed at which people produce the things, be it statistics
or supplies, I need to get it accomplished.
A
mud-and-wood bridge on the one and only road into the Forest region
recently collapsed under the weight of one of our trucks, killing
two truck assistants and cutting off access to Nzerekore, the
heart of Guinea’s humanitarian operations. We had took ambassadors
and government officials over this very bridge months before to
warn them… now, at the peak of the monsoons, it’s
too late. Eventually local villagers did a quick and dirty repair
(basically laying down some palm trunks), which lasted a good
week. I joined the head of our logistics section visiting some
businessmen with a financial interest in keeping the route open
to see if we could get them to do something – Our only route
to quick action, as the government is broke and even if the UN
could mobilize funds, it would be hung up in bureaucracy for too
long to be immediately useful.
Things
are constantly in flux here. We just closed one of our sub-offices
in Upper Guinea, as it mainly served a camp of Sierra Leonean
refugees who have now repatriated. Meanwhile we are hosting more
and more Liberian refugees given the inflamed conflict in that
country. Virtually all of the upper management has left for other
posts in the last month, including the country director; most
of the international staff have contracts of one to three years.
It’s partly to ensure that no one has to stay in an unsavory
post for too long, and that there isn’t time for complacency
to settle in, but the result is sometimes a lack of efficiency
as people are constantly having to readjust, reexplain, reestablish
relationships.
The
new director has just arrived, yet another Italian (I’m
beginning to think the mafia has connections in WFP), seems strict
yet kind, the kind of father figure the office seems to need in
its chaotic state. My former boss, was likewise tough but
had wit and heart. One night I was in the office until 1 30 am
Saturday night trying to get out a project – I burst into
tears over the phone and Myrta left her soiree with colleagues
to come straighten it out and radioed the duty driver to come
bring me beers to get me through it.
Though
I would like to stay in Guinea after my contract expires in January,
I don’t plan on extending my contract (my boss has suggested
he might try to rotate staff and put me in charge of one of the
sub-offices implementing rural development projects, but that’s
iffier than iffy) In any case, I feel like I am accomplishing
and learning enough to stick it out in spite of the frustrations
of working here. There are lots of organizations doing interesting
work here – and there is much to be done – so I don’t
think it will be difficult to find something else satisfying.
Unlike
my first months in Guinea, when I was constantly on the move,
I’ve been stuck in Conakry in the last months. We did,
however, organize a weekend for the international staff on the
beaches of Freetown, Sierra Leone. We peasant volunteers (I am
technically a volunteer, though I earn nearly 20 times the average
Guinean) went by road while colleagues with proper UN passports
took the helicopter.
Like
Conakry, bidonvilles abound in Freetown but the tall hills sprinkled
with lights (unlike Conakry, one of the only capitals in the world
to lack electricity) give the town an elegant air, reminding me
of San Francisco. We spent a lazy day at “River #1,”
running barefoot on the white sand and taking a boat upstream,
listening to the clicks and whirs of creatures stirring in the
mangroves, glimpsing the white curve of an egret’s neck
hidden in their roots, gazing on green hills dreamily blurred
by the mist, napping in the sun after stuffing ourselves on coconut
milk and fresh-caught grilled shrimp… and the UN calls Freetown
a hardship post? We danced the night away to zouk, rap, “slow’,
and Europop, my colleague angrily pushing away the locals who wanted
to get down and dirty with us. It was nice to be out and about
with colleagues, to talk about something other than maizemeal
stocks and drought assessment missions for a change.
In
my alternate life I’ve continued training with Guinea’s
national boxing team. I am really quite terrible next to these
tuff guys – we just made a video in preparation for my return
home and I was appalled to see my sissy punches. But it’s
hard not to get an inflated ego there – the children chant
‘Avril le champion’ when I come in and the guys all
lavish attention on me.
Though at first they all just seemed like a bunch of brute jocks,
I have gotten to know and love them each individually… There’s
Balde, who speaks good English, a young pot-smoking cop and self-proclaimed
former thug, now finishing his degree in engineering. Ibrahima,
who has the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen on a boy,
keeps hip hop flowing on the radio while we tap the sacks. Bangoura,
a bodyguard for one of the government’s ministers, teaches
me ‘kingboxing’, as they misname that sport here.
Hablai, a rapper with terrible pitch, abandoned school to pursue
the world boxing title. A supposed "drageur" (womanizer),
he denies rumors that he got one of the only other female boxers
pregnant.
Then
there’s Amadou, a young, smart, scrawny, curious guy who
can proudly name all 50 states (we play a game where he tries
to name them all fast… when he misses I punch him while
saying the name of the state he missed). I explain him my Buddhist
beliefs, he lends me African novels. Amadou dreams of going on
a cross-country American trip, marrying the mother of his adorable
young girl (he is from a different tribal group, one that prohibits
marriage after sexual relations have already taken place, rendering
this dream difficult). And like the rest, he mainly dreams of
living abroad as a world champion and boxing legend.
Yet
I’ve chosen Saroudja, the team captain, a sweet young little
thing with a grand smile and a gentle demeanor, as my Saturday
night fever… He improves my left jab and Soussou (one of
the local tribal languages), I teach him how to salsa and eat
with chopsticks. We lie in the bed in the rainy wee hours, listening
to Salif Keita, Baaba Maal and Guinean and American rap, Capi
translating the Susu, Peul, and Malinké.
Saroudja, like most local youth, is fascinated by black American
culture. He watched an Ice-T flick I brought home three times,
admiring the music, language and gestures… Luckily action
flicks require little translation.
Far from being a vain tough-guy, the Capi insists on cleaning
my house though I already pay someone to do it (Africa is making
such a bratty - though rough-footed - princess of me), and watches
over my fitful sleep when I’m sick, which has been frequent
lately: the evil eye (conjunctivitis, or Apollo as they call it
here, as there was a big outbreak around the time of said moon
mission) which had me half blind and looking perpetually stoned
for a week, minor boxing wounds, mainly from my bad hand-wrapping,
two knockout colds, an assortment of female ailments, tummy upsets,
a persistent lung pain, 2 million mosquito bites, luckily not
resulting in malaria…
Saroudja
and I come from such different tribes, classes… He quit
school the year his parents died, his mother passing in his very
arms, a devastating blow for a Mama’s boy. I am fond of
him, comforted by his presence, still I know though he may be
a friend for life he is but romance for a spell.
Having
learned from past nightmares with men who jumped too rapidly from
bed to marriage, I told le Capi upfront that I had a coeur
d’acier, heart of steel, and not to fall in love with
me or expect a future but rather to learn to enjoy our time for
what it is. While he has respected my wishes to keep it casual
– we reserve our fun for the weekends, and no one in the
team knows about it – his family is wild with appreciation
and amazement that I have let him into my life. His sister brought
me a shiny purple and black purse and a gaudy necklace before
she had even met me.
Such
gestures are touching, knowing how great the poverty is here,
disenheartening and draining. Often there may only be one person
in the family who is working – and by family I mean extended
family, mom, brother, sisters and their kids, on which all the
rest depend and share their 50 bucks a month. Most have little
education (and in the rural areas the rates of education really
dive), but even those who have a degree are often employed.
My
dance teacher Lansana’s brother has done extensive volunteer
work with the Red Cross, teaching people in his ‘hood how
to prevent illness and water contamination, distributing food
to Guinean evacuees back from the Ivory Coast, helping do conflict
mediation during elections and football matches, when fights run
rampant…. Yet he has searched for the past years in vain
for work. I’m always especially eager to help when it is
someone motivated, with a plan, and not just looking for a handout
that will be dust by tomorrow. I put together a CV with him and
am trying to get him enrolled in a computer course. I also used
a donation my mom left in my hands to get Lansana’s mother
back in the marketplace. She was a cloth vendor before their father
died. As it is expected for the widow to remain at home, in prayer,
for four months after the spouse’s death, she lost her business
and now needs money to get restarted.
Everyday
I’m asked for money from someone-- my boxing trainers, local
colleagues, guardians, artist friends -- for shoes, cigarettes,
bread, medication for sick mothers and brothers, rain-ruined roofs,
transport to funerals, money to cover them til the end of the
month… Even though I am in astoundingly good financial health,
it is tiresome, because I feel I am everyone’s safety net.
And now that everyone knows I’m headed back to the states,
I’ve been bombarded with requests – organizing box
and dance videos to try to get contracts abroad, orders for hip
hop style clothes and walkmans, a proposition to export African
artifacts to in the U.S.
Gifts
arrive at my doorstep as well – Lansana surprised me one
day with Doundoumba clothes in a bright blue tiger print and a
pigeon for the house I “mistakenly” set free, Capi
shows up weekly with a bag bursting with cakes and coconut and
peanuts and mangoes (and one night, a kitty), my gardener friend
(with whom I am doing this little export biz) with a pink-blossomed
tree his boss brought me as thanks for the help I had given him.
My
house does feel like a home now. A middle-aged Lebanese-American
woman and her three kids have moved into the house in our little
complex. The adorable girls with their dark long curls and wide
giggling smiles come and play hide and seek with me and stalk
my new tiger-kitten, Kéké, into hiding. Sometimes
they drive me totally nuts, pounding on my door (normally they
just knock without entering) and ignoring my pleas that me and
“the baby” are resting.
I
don’t go out much these days, as much of my amusement comes
to me, a stream of visitors, teachers, and suitors. We now hold
Sunday afternoon dance rehearsals on my patio, two drummers supplying
the rhythm, me supplying the breakfast they gobble up as if it
was their first meal in days. Slowly I’ve built up my repertoire
of dances -- Doundoumba, the strong man’s dance, Mani, the
dance of women, Saba, Senegal’s national rhythm, Tiriba,
the dance of masks, Yankadi, the rhythm of seduction…. I
dance with zest in my own yard but get timid when it comes to
the marriage parties where each is expected to dance alone in
the center (thankful that no one has handed me the handkerchief,
as that means you have to dance).
In
short, I feel like my horoscope was right – Conakry is a
special place in my destiny, the astrological magnet that drew
me here was not mistaken. As frustrating, sad, difficult, and
crazy this place is, it feels like home, for now, and there aren’t
many spots on earth that I've said that about – perhaps
only San Francisco. In fact, I feel confident enough about my
path here that I am finally giving up the apartment that has served
as my home – and home base whilst traveling – for
nearly ten years. And it is to that base I will return August
2, til the 20th. I am certainly ready for it, fed up with my failed
French lessons and bureaucratic battles, needing an injection
of clean streets and good radio and meandering conversation with
you…
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