Television Appearance by Yours Truly. And Other Details You Might Want to Know.

Alright, so since some crazy things happen and I have no way to call you all or write you all a letter that you'd get by next year to tell you all about it, I write in a journal. So the following is more or less from a journal entry from January 11th ... we all left our training site to visit our new towns/homes/jobs. I am in a beautiful town called Mamou. This was on day one:

So this morning Soylemane (who is the Guinean guy who I will be working closely with these next 2 years and I LOVE this man) and I are driving around and he's explaining to me that the new governor in charge of the city (who was installed by the military following the coup d'etat) has declared this morning a time to clean up. All the citizens of Mamou have to clean the entire place, no business can be open, trash is burning everywhere. Then as we pass by the gas station we see 50 people, mostly women, around all these military men, singing, dancing, cheering and waving brooms. We get out of the car (note: when there are crowds of people surrounded by scary military men, leaving the safety of a vehicle goes against primal instincts) and before I know what's going on Souleymane begins introducing me to people, including one of the infamously scary red berets (special type of military guy ... red beret = don't mess). These military men turn to the mob and the governor begins to introduce me, Kiki, to the town and explain I'm going to move here for two years. Everyone then gets very excited and begin cheering wildly, and then start shaking, then grabbing my hand. They're arguing to shake it. One lady even reaches out to touch my face- I felt like Mother Theresa. I was a serious celebrity. Then the governor shouts out "someone! give her a broom!" and all the women in the mob throw up their brooms (which, I should add, are like a bundle of straw tied together with string at one end). The governor gives me a broom and tells me that I can help clean the city. Then the crowd really begins to go nuts. Not going to lie ... I wasn't excited at the idea of cleaning up trash on this particular morning. Especiallywith all these people staring at me. But then I realized it was just a symbolic gesture ... and I had just officially been declared and welcomed as a Citizen of Mamou. After I was given the broom (and visibly overwhelmed by this dancing cheering mob of broom-laden women) these scary military guys pull me over towards them and decide they want to do a photo shoot with me! Please, will you, imagine these tough badass dudes with guns and dark sunglasses posing with me, and being like "oh, Kiki, try holding the broom like this." LOVE IT. The whole time this one guy with a camcorder circa 1992 is taping, and as I'm walking away from one of my favorite moments of my life Souleymane turns to me and goes "Kiki, you will be on TV tonight!"

Declared an offical citizen on day 1 AND make it on national television? Needless to say, I fell in love with Mamou.

My house is beautiful. It's big, clean, lots of natural lighting (ha ... what other kind would there be? ) and is a soft yellow on the inside. It's got a great front porch with big steps to sit on, and when you do sit on them you have a great view of the mountains. It is such a cheerful place. --i forgot to mention (as it's so normal now) that there is no running water. And electricity is for a few hours every other day. but another big bonus is a well right outside my front door. Ballin'!!! O, and I have guards 24 hours a day too. Yes, just for me.

So you now know I love my city, I really love my house, but what I can't even begin to describe is how much I love my new job. I have been seriously hooked up with what I am willing to call my dream job. Granted, I had to come to Guinea for it, but if it turns out how I think it could, Guinea is worth it. So, I'm working for an American NGO based in Boston called World Education. www.WorldEducation.org . Check them out. Their overriding mission is to help people in the 3rd world receive an education so that they can rise up and change their country, from the inside out. They're in a few spots in Guinea, doing different projects, whether it's helping illiterate people learn to read, stopping child traffiking & putting kids in school, or other sorts of badass things. I get to help out on two fronts. The first is working with young people and educating them on all sorts of things ... it could be about how to get started in businesses here, or it could be HIV/AIDS awareness. I'd love to even do something about educating the youth on the dangers and consequences of Femal Genital Mutilation (fact: 99% of females here have been circumcised. it's pretty awful & terribly sad). The second sphere in which I'll be working is with these groups of women who are all mothers. The goal is that these mothers can somehow earn enough money to supplement their husband's income so that their children can go to school- otherwise they're stuck in the market/tailor shop working crazy long hours. So World Education does micro finance, and I'm going to get to be involved in lending these women money, and getting it repaid at a super low interest rate. Micro credit. It's genious. And it almost always works. But, it's not easy working with groups of women and money when accounting doesn't exist, especially when it can't because they're illiterate and can't count. So creativity has to come in ... and maybe I'll be teaching them how to repay back loans with pictures or colorful rocks instead of numbers. So I'm lending micro credit. BUT ON TOP OF THAT, I get to be on the receiving end of those funds, with the women, and teaching them how to best utilize the money. What should they sell in the market? How much should they charge? How should they do marketing? Where should they be purchasing their supplies? All sorts of really cool things. Income generation/cost benefit analysis/interest rates/credit/inventory ... all the stuff I tried to run away from by joining the Peace Corps? It's back! Only it's so much more "my style" over here doing business eating rice and sauce with my hands than in a fancy business suit in an office. I'm happy with this.

So that, in a nutshell, was my site visit to Mamou. I can also add that my 5 friends who came to sleep over the last night learned I'm a screamer when Jason walked into my bathroom and saw A GIANT RAT. I was curious so I ran to see, and then stood frozen, screaming. But wouldn't move. And actually got in the way as they tried to catch it. They knocked a chunk of concrete out of my bathroom wall in trying to catch Splinter (shout out to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!) with a giant bucket. They were successful, although I'm still getting made fun of for the screams. But seriously, who WOULDN'T scream if a giant rat was running around your bath/bedroom?