D-12 days...

Carrying babies is something you do see here every day. Just because you have a small child you cannot ignore your daily duties and I don't think they have any proper kindergartens here so mums just end up taking their babies everywhere.

Here are 2 pictures I took today in Mamou:

D-13 days... ATM (African Toilette Manual)

After a very embarrassing experience today I decided it was time to revise the ATM (African Toilette Manual and add one more step before the first one. Here is the updated list.

(Yes, just in case you were wondering, these are ALL based on painful first hand experiences!) J

There is one door that doesn't lock, it won’t even close properly. As you can see in the picture, inside the room there are 3 stalls, none of them have any doors. Keep in mind as you read the manual!

0. Check if there are others in already. Don’t assume it’s empty just because it’s quiet or be ready to shake hands with a military man who has just finished his business.

1. Roll up your trousers as high as you can while you are outside waiting.

2. Take a deep breath before you enter.

3. If you must take another breath, never breathe through your nose! Use your mouth unless you want to throw up!

4. Don’t put your cell phone, iPod, camera or even TP in your pocket as I guarantee it will fall out.

5. Be as fast as you can otherwise you can meet new friends WHILE you’re doing your business.

6. NEVER touch the walls! The brown decoration is not a 5 legged octopus imprint!

7. Watch where you step. Really!

8. Once you positioned your feet on the rocks, squat and keep your eyes closed!

9.  Aim slowly or you will get splash backs. Trust me, you don’t want that!

10. Put your clothes back on first BEFORE you start looking for the little bucket to wash off the remnants of your poor aiming skills.

11. Run to your hand sanitizer and use it generously BEFORE you touch your nose because you forgot to keep step 3! It’s just plain disgusting!

12.  Pray to God you will sweat out the next batch and don’t have to return again.

And the lucky number 13: 

Because it’s hot and you keep drinking to avoid the dehydration-headache you need to go soon again, but by this time the bucket is empty, the hole in the ground disappeared thanks to people with no aiming skills and yes, you involuntarily smelled what's inside and now you have a throwing-up-headache. Congratulations!

D-14 days... Telecenters

When I first heard this world I pictured big buildings will agents taking calls like in a call center back home. Often when we asked for people’s cell phone numbers they gave it to us without missing the beat, but they also added that they might not be available when we called. I didn't quite understand it until I stopped by one Telecenter and asked all my questions.

Here (I am careful and try not to generalize too much, but as a matter of fact I observed the same phenomenal in Guinea, Salone, Togo, Benin and Ghana) many people don’t know how to read or write, have no steady income, yet EVERYBODY has a cell phone! Correction, everybody has a cell phone number or two! :)

As it turns out Telecenters are tiny shacks with a private generator. People either take their phones there to charge (costs about 20 cents for a 30 min charge, $1 for a full charge) OR they can use the various cell phones available there when they need to make a call. They can buy top up cards (anything between 20 cents and $15) and for a small fee use one of the cell phones in the 'store'.

The Telecenter guy has charger for the main cell phone makers. No, no smart phones and definitely no iPhone charger. Try to think back 10-15 years, which models and companies were popular back then? If you bring a phone he has no charger for, no problem. Following good African traditions he will make one. It might destroy your phone on the long run, but hey, he isn't working under warranty! :)

D-15 days... hats

I guess hats are a huge part of the British culture so I will see many once we get there, but these African female hats are a whole different matter.

Since we have very bad internet connection here in Mamou, but I had some time today, instead of uploading more pictures I created one - postcard style. It's what it says: I just love all those coulourful hats, there are million and one ways to wrap it around your head. Here are a few:

I guess he got the memo that says REAL MEN WEAR PINK. :)

D-27 days... Thanksgiving

So the day started with somebody telling me the following story:
"We, Americans love our heritage! I overheard a fellow American explaining the meaning of Thanksgiving to our local day workers. He said when the pilgrims from Europe got to America, they started farming. During the first fall they invited the local Indians to have a meal together. In that area there were lots of wild turkeys so that's what they ate and hence we celebrate Thanksgiving with turkey every year."

You surprised poor day workers were confused??? :))))

Yes-yes, today the Americans celebrate their Thanksgiving, some of them even know why! Our wonderful chef and galley staff presented us with this amazing meal tonight! Green bean casserole with fried onions, nice turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes, fruits and pumpkin and apple pie! Sarcasm aside, there are indeed sooooo many things we should be thankful for!

To all my American friends, I want to wish you Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy the turkey tonight and the shopping frenzy tomorrow! Just remember, in this part of the world many children will go to sleep in dumpsters hungry or sick tomorrow while you fight over expensive toys in your stores...!

D-28 days... African restaurants

I already mentioned African food, but going into a restaurant in West Africa is an experience everybody must have... well, at least once!

Most of the better restaurants here are owned by Lebanese people and thus serve good Arabic food. Sure, they cater for western people as well just as much as for Africans, but their really strength is in good Arabic food like Shwarma! (kebab type of meat with veggies wrapped up in a thin, flat bread) :)

Safest way to drink here: they do give you  a glass that's washed with local water and what not
so you can forget that. The can itself is quite dirty as well, so just grab a straw,
 turn that little thingy around and it will hold your straw straight! :)

Last night we tested a new place called Istambul. It's in walking distance from the ship and is a pretty upscale place - compared to other restaurants around us. It has A/C and they have napkins and table cloth on the table! Pretty impressive! (again, probably for you it's kinda poor and you wouldn't like it, but when you are here long enough you learn to appreciate the little things!)

First you order drinks. What I love most about Africa is that you do have western drinks, but they all have Arabic names and they are made with real sugar instead of corn syrup; they are very sweet! Here is my 'Fanta orange' drink disguised as a Miranda Mango :)))

We tried to order in Frenglish, but we weren't too successful. Our waitress said that they 'just ran out of chicken shwarma'. Of course! We know, this is the standard line of no, we don't have it, don't even try later!

Fine, some of us ordered beef shwarma. Darren and I were adventurous and we tried the 'Istambul Special'. From our little charade game we figured it's a little bit of everything, hence the high price. It sounded like a good deal so we thought we could share one plate. Yeah, think again. Somehow our waitress didn't understand it so we ended up ordering one for him and nothing for me. :) After everybody ordered the waiting and guessing game starts: what you ordered / what's on the picture in the menu / what you are actually getting and the correlation in percentage between these 3! It's a great game if you have time and you are not so hungry!!!

Amazingly it didn't take long for our food to arrive. Even more so amazing that the waitress did understood us after all and brought extra plates! We were about to dig in, when somebody asked the standard question: who has hand-sanitizer? Yeah, good point! Back home you'd be considered rude if you did that in front of the waitress, but here it's a must unless you wanna get fast-fast. Actually, even after hand-san you can still get a nice, long, painful fast-fast, just think about the many possibilities: the meat is not cooked enough, the fresh veggies are washed in local water, the sauce has expired milk in it...etc.

But even with all these risks you just bless the meal and start eating. And it tastes delicious! For once the chicken (hah, did you catch it? They did have chicken after all!!) is well cooked, the beef is well seasoned, the veggies look fresh, the sauce is wonderful and the portion is enough for the 2 of us easily! And suddenly you forget that you are in Africa, that poverty, cholera, thefts and death just outside the door and for once you have a splendid meal with wonderful friends!

Oh, best bit: Ali was kind enough to pick up the tab for us! What a blessing!!! :)

D-31 days... African church

Ha-ha, did any of you seriously think I wouldn't miss long, loud, humid, loud, sweaty, loud African Church Services and wouldn't dedicate an entire post just for this unique phenomena??? :)

Yes, yes, here we go!

For this Sunday we got invited by a pastor who works with us for the Jesus Film. It took us about an hour to get to his part of town on a Sunday morning. We called him and he sent one of his members to walk to the main road and guide us through the 'scenic route' (a.k.a. trash heaps, mud, sewage, pots and holes...etc you get the idea, basically typical African passage ways).

The first thing we noticed was the loud loud off-key singing. Somehow maybe African churches believe that the louder you scream into the mike, the closer you are to God - or what??? They must have a sound system regardless of the size of the church or the congregation. They only have 2 settings on the sound system: off or   fully cranked up to 10 - nothing in between!

The church buildings are usually small without windows, or even if they have windows it's covered with thick curtains. The ceilings are often covered with Christmas decorations or other colourful hangings. Church services go from 2 to 4-5 hours. In one church here in Conakry the pastor graciously reduced the service to 2 hours for Mercy Ships people... :) Not sure how I feel about it.

The first part is just a warm up, which is followed by some introductions and prayer time. Then we have the worship with loud music, dancing, clapping, lots of activity. All that in a small building with no air flow. Unlike Africans fotti people (white) do sweat a lot, even in comfy cotton dresses. It's still beyond me how they can tolerate the heat in their plastic dresses that do not breath at all!!!

Thank God they saw our discomfort and lowered the volume - seems like my prayer for a broken generator was unnecessary! The pastor was from Cameroon, he was planting this church here and thus was preaching in French. One of the worship leaders was translating to English for us. Often it was hard to follow them as they tried to shout louder than the other in a tiny building where no sound system was needed to begin with. Oh well... :)

The sermon itself was very good, we truly enjoyed it and were deeply challenged by the level of faith these often persecuted Christians have! After the service the pastor invited us to stay for a while, to chat, encourage one another and pray together.

Sadly we had to return to the ship as others needed the vehicle, but this was definitely a church I would love to return again! (which according to my dear hubby says a LOT!)

...not in Bel-Air! (weekend adventure part 2)

... Finally we arrived to the place...

Which is called Sobane, BTW. :)

Now I am glad we agreed to keep our drivers for the whole weekend! We are in the middle of nowhere, far far FAR away from any public roads where we might be able to find a taxi! There is no way we could leave this place without them. Right there we decided not to pay them until we leave on Sunday as we didn't see any guarantee they'd be back for us if we let them go anywhere. Yes, that meant we had to pay for their meals as well...

Oh, and - of course - there is NO RECEPTION there! Good thing we all made sure we had cell phones in case of emergency... :)

After an African style group discussion with the maintenance guy there we managed to bargain down the price to an acceptable level. 1 bungalow with 4 double bed rooms and a living room for the 10 of us for 2 nights for 3.000.000 GNF. (you can do the math's). We just started to unpack when Michael came in: "why do you sit inside in the dark when there is a fabulous sunset outside?" So out we went with our cameras. Sadly it was low tide, actually the lowest low tide I have EVER seen in my life. The beach must be on some type of plateau as the waterline drew back about 600 meters! And the sunset... WOW! The waves left wonderful marks on the uneven sea bed, but as we ventured onto the sand it started to sink. Soon we discovered it was mud; it took about 2 seconds to sink all the way to your knees.

When we asked the guy for dinner he presented us with the 1 option: FISH. When I mentioned that I saw chicken running around he said that can be arranged, too. Funny thing is we didn't even expect him to elaborate on further options like what kind of fish, how we would like it to be prepared or what portion. We just ordered some fish and chicken around 6.30 pm. As we were settling in we saw him going out on a little boat fishing... Yup, you can guess when the food actually arrived to our table: AFTER 9.30 pm! The fish was edible, the chicken not so much. Poor thing being an 'African chicken' he didn't have a chance to grow up eating anything other than trash so no wonder he didn't have any meat on him just skin and bone - try chewing on a wooden stick with a rubber band around it and you get the idea.

Unexpectedly after dark the generator kicked in and the A/C in the room started working! Wow! I honestly didn't see this one coming; our rooms cooled down fast from 35 Celsius to an enjoyable 17. We locked the doors and sat outside in the dark. We did have some lights outside but they were attracting huge bugs and all sorts of flying creatures so we opted for the darkness. It's amazing how your other senses like hearing go overdrive when you can't see much! Suddenly all the noises of the night became super loud: birds, crickets, frogs, bats and (somewhere very close to us) the waves crashing into the beach - yay, the high tide was back! Above us a storm was dying, no rain left just lightning and thunder. Soon the sky cleared up and we could see the Milky Way while the sea was licking our feet! Friends together, we each had a cigar in our hands and were meditating on how perfect the moment was!

The generator ran out of fuel around 2 am. Why is it important? Because all went dark and hot in a heart beat. We woke up shortly after and were sitting on the beds waiting for a miracle. It came in the forms of another rain, which cooled down the air for a bit.

In the morning I had a cold shower, there was high tide again and we had coffee and a baguette we bought yesterday so life was good again. We tried swimming and failed due to the still shallow beach - not sure what we were expecting... it was still shallow and muddy. We went for a walk instead determined to enjoy the day. We passed amazing rock formations, million shells, saw a fishing village, goats and vultures fighting. Kids were playing football while men pushed some boats upwards into the sand for fixing. Splendid morning!

It made me think; where else can I be so free? Such a blissful place! It's October - the yucky part of autumn - yet we are strolling on the beach in Tees and shorts, it's warm and beautiful and above all: it's nobody there! *love*

Darren and I walked along the beach for hours. I was barefoot, he in his socks and snickers... (no comments) We saw little rivers ending up in the sea - oh how I wish my 5th grade geography teacher could see me now! :) We walked by trees with air-roots and trees that thrive in sea water. I picked up some little leaves that live in the open sea just floating freely. Walking on shells was a nice treat for my feet, I quite enjoyed it.

When you walk slowly you can see small movements on the ground. If you stop and stay very quiet, you get to see little crabs with only 1 big claw coming out of their holes. It looks like they enjoy the evening and just want to wave at each other. It's a really special moment and we would have missed it had we not taken the time to stop for a minute and observe the world around us! On the way back we behaved like proper tourists: we picked up plenty of shells; some for their prettiness, some for their cool shape. If you want to localise / geographically customise Rorschach Tests (psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation) SHELLS would be my way to replace the inkblots! :)

Sunset was amazing yet again! I am getting used to these spectacular sights and if you ask me now, I surely do NOT want to go back to Europe anytime soon only to be faced with dark, cold, grey, rain, wind...etc.

I didn't want to end up not being able to eat anything again like last night, so against my better judgment I ordered fish like everybody else. To my outmost surprise it was delicious! I did finish it all in one go. After eating our feet took us down to the water again. The tide was back and once again we found ourselves enjoying the cool night. The moon and the stars were out and we could see tiny fluorescent things swim in the sea. We called them the "Firefly of the Sea' - they look like small jellyfish that need water and movements to be able to work, so when the waves toss them way out of the sea onto the sandy beach they flicker for a short while then fade into nothing... until another wave comes again and relights their fire or (if lucky) it takes them back into the sea.

While the girls were swimming at night we tried to take long shutter speed pictures of painting with his cigar - when it didn't work we turned our attention towards the crab hole and with a torch we tried to figure out how deep the holes go and how to trick the crab inside into coming out to enjoy the 'sunlight'. It turns out the crabs are not stupid and instead of coming out they pulled more sand over them to hide completely.

Michael, Penny, Darren and I were sitting outside of the bungalow once again wondering when will we have a chance to be together like this again - the downside of our work. Good people come and go, they shape your life, you share wonderful experiences with them and then they disappear into another corner of the Earth. (in Michael's case he submerges under the sea with potentially staing under for 6 months... :(  )

Note to self: If you want to know where the tiny scratches and cuts are on your body just use a bug spray and you will know for sure! All of them! :)

We set the A/C for 17 C again, but just like last night as soon as the power goes off the room temperature rises and soon you find yourself awake. And that's when you realise the pitch black darkness can be blinding indeed! Just like the silence is deafening! It was a special revelation!

The rain started around 5 am that cooled the air once again. We woke up around 9 and through the open window (with broken mosquito screen) we were listening and watching the rain over the ocean. Snuggling in bed with husband on a lazy Sunday morning with this view... *like like*

Some were already up and greeted me with 'don't worry, coffee is coming'. :) Our drivers have disappeared; we hope they will be back in time. But as soon as the phrase 'in time' crosses my mind I start laughing. What's 'in time' for Africans? We didn't even tell them what time we want to leave. They have plenty of time all right and no watches...

So we wait... In the meantime we try to settle the bill... not an easy task! It turns out the chicken was a lot more expensive as the fish as it's 'harder to come by'. Really????? I have to pay extra for the food I couldn't eat because - let's be honest - there was NOTHING edible on that chicken!

We stuffed the cars again and embraced ourselves for a loooooong way home. 4 in the back is still too much, but at least the weather is nice so we try to divert our attention from the inside to the outside by taking pictures from the bumpy car. Great fun! Darren took pictures of a monkey, I captured some mud huts. We drove by many colourful clothes that are hung left outside on the dirt ground to dry. I will never understand this country!

Thank God our driver knew a shortcut to the shortcut and with some off road driving and driving on the part of the road that would be considered sidewalk in Europe we made it back home in a record 4 hours! Along the way we saw African travel at it's best. The general theme here:

"How many people can you put into an African vehicle?"

" ONE MORE!"

 On this picture if you look closely you can see an unpaid passanger on top of the bags:
a MONKEY! :)

This picture shows a check point - there are one too many on every road. Basically it gives police and military police an opportunity to make some money on the side and rest assured: they WILL find something that can be redeemed for some cash! I took this picture from the back of our moving car with good zooms, but you can still see how they stop each vehicle.

All in all this was a great weekend, we wouldn't go back to this place, but for a one time adventure, it was perfect!

EXCEPT THE FACT THAT POOR HUSBAND GOT MALARIA HERE! :(((((((((((((((((((((
But that would be another post...