The regional driver, Conde, packing the Kankan car for a trip across the country. If we don't leave around dawn, we can't make it home by dark. A very long trip.
I finally got tired of trying to convince women they should do a small amount of work to save themselves time and work later on by turning their three-rock cooking system into a fuel-efficient stove. So I decided to build my own so I can cook with wood, in public, and demonstrate how, why, and what.
The nice thing is, I can't work alone, ever. There are always children with nothing else to do. So even though I'm not working with the target audience at first, I still end up teaching the inevitable crowd of children how to build a stove, why build a stove, and later they'll cook with me.
At the end, I had a lot of extra mud so I smoothed out the walls perfectly with a wide apron and then built myself a chair in front of the stove so I can sit down in comfort molded to me as I stir my pots of rice and sauce. The stove will be in use about three weeks after construction so it has time to adequately dry (otherwise it will crack severely with the first few cook fires.
I tried to keep her work load to a minimum - because she was on vacation and because it's better for my work if I can talk to people about why as a man I, too, can haul my own water, wash my own clothes, cook my own meals, and do all that for her as well. Nonetheless, it's fun to pump water.
One of the first days at site we went to the field with my family and helped them stamp on their rice to shake the grain loose from the straw. My sisters kept asking me how many bundles of rice I'd done so far; I kept replying I hadn't finished my first one. They have to make it a competition to entertain themselves and I didn't know we were counting until they asked...
I made Stephanie bike the 35 kilometers between my site and my regional capital, four times. She would get tired, obviously, so I would nap while she recovered.
Stephanie integrated so well, you wouldn't even be able to pick her out of this photo if you hadn't already seen her in a photo pumping water. My family loved her - they even gave her a gift when she left.
I eat moni for breakfast every morning. The first morning I brought it home in a giant bowl. To cool it off, you have to pour it from a large gourd spoon over and over.
Steph didn't like moni that much and had to look for alternative food sources.
On the way to the field to stamp on rice I took a side trip to photograph my number one enemy: the bush fire. People set them to avoid them later when hunters set the bush on fire to scare out their dinner. It's a nasty cycle that creates large swaths of rock from formerly lush forest.
Like I said, I took advantage of Steph's presence to show people that men work even when they are living with their "wife." Yeah, Steph was my fake wife for a her visit - to avoid people always asking to buy her from me.
Again, doing women's work is a good way to show men they are capable of more than sitting in the shade all day.
At the same time, my work is to share American culture. Granted the kids still haven't gotten the hang of not showing everyone their hand, but what are you going to do?
And I sing for them. When they're good. It's a good way to entertain people with activities they don't consider insane. That said, it's hard to sing and play and say hi to every single person who comes up to watch and listen.
After three weeks, Steph had had enough and we headed back to Conakry to drop her off for her flight home to blessedly cold Belgium, land of chocolate, beer, fries, and waffles.
My village has a huge hill that plummets to a seasonal stream and then climbs up a bit more. This is about half way up the larger hill looking over the village. Unfortunately I don't have a good filter to bring out just how beautiful this cloud was; a giant storm racing over the mountain.
My buddy Musa showed me a nice swimming hole. I'm teaching him to swim. I took a photo of him trying, but I can't publish it because it sort of looks like he's drowning. And he wasn't.
Look at the corn stalks. The tree branches don't quite do justice to the strength of the wind in this gust front. It flattened half the corn fields in the village. 
I work with Sidiki to reforest. This is his rice field.
And this is what's behind his rice field. Gorgeous.
This car is loaded down with fire wood. This is a small load compared to what a lot of cars carry. I just happened to have only taken this photo.
Remember that photo of the gust front and the corn? Nyari hid under a chair in my hut.
Cat prison: a rope tied to a zip line. Why? The neighbors want his blood because he's a dirty, rotten thief. Stole chicken eggs, fish, meat... At least the other half of the neighbors liked him because he ate their mice. Nonetheless, he's in prison now. There was an unrelated incident where some kid told me he was going to eat my cat. He backed off when I told him I would eat his legs and arms, one per week until he ran out. You never know what a crazy American is liable to do.
A while back I went down to Gbangbadou to help Jess set up a Moringa plantation at her health center. This is what it looked like the next time I passed through: the start of success.
This is a view from a bush trail. The rainy season is so much better than the dry season. Everything's alive, including the cows.
The evening few from my bathroom. Ah the rainy season is heaven.I don't know exactly where the ideas started, but once there was a game created and named Ou Bien (like racquetball) we had to keep building. First we painted the lines for Ou Bien. Then we realized the strip of a walkway in front of the house was perfect for bowling, or even better, N'est-ce Pas? And when I say we here, I mean Alex and Jeffrey Lebowski.
That's when we decided Kankan was going to be the best house of all the regional houses. Alex and I designed a barbecue pit, basketball hoop, and ping-pong table, then spent one of our monthly visits to Kankan building the good times.
We bought materials, bought tools, and commissioned the hoop and poured the foundation for the barbecue pit. When we were trying to negotiate with the carpenters for the backboard and ping-pong table we were given ridiculous prices. We said forget that, if we buy a saw and a plane, we can build it ourselves. So we did.
Except where's the ping-pong table? We didn't have time to properly dry the wood we bought and it was shredding horribly under our plane. Rainy season isn't the wonderful natural kiln Kankan becomes during the dry season. So we scrapped the ping-pong table and made a couple benches instead. We'll make the table later when we can afford to pay for machine planing and it's dry enough to not destroy our wood in the process.
Tip o' the hat to Alex whose perfect serve and perfect shot allowed this film to be made in a single take. Miracle man he certainly is. If only we'd also had the time to grill something on the barbecue pit to finish off the video. Well, perfection and miracles never were guaranteed to be one and the same.
* * *
* * *
Because I'm white, I am automatically accorded doctor of medicine status. People constantly ask me for medicine or a diagnosis. Aside from one instance where I pronounced a kid a lazy, spoiled slouch, I refer them to their health center and real doctors. They rarely go, claiming poverty. There's a reason so many people here are blind or missing limbs. It's not lack of health care, it's a failure to value one's health. How many people in my village have lots toes, fingers or entire limbs because a small infection, easily treatable with Mercurochrome or soap, was ignored or deemed unworthy of attention? Many.
I recently had a chance to practice what I preach. I had a staph infection on my stomach about two inches in diameter. I started a round of antibiotics when a second infection appeared, but I was having trouble with the draining.
Once I got it to come to a head, I was able to squeeze it. I got about two teaspoons of blood and and a good piece of pus to come out. I'd never seen congealed pus before, so I went to the health center to ask if there was another way to get it all out. Doc said nope, just squeeze. Prends courage, ici c'est l'Afrique. I got most of it out, but there were still pieces embedded in the hole it left behind. I had to get the doctor to do the last scrubbing for me. I brought my gloves, surgical sterilizer, and sterile gauze; bit down on my rolled up shirt (no desire for dental problems resulting from ground teeth); and he cleaned it out.
I was able to save myself two potentially lethal days on the road by forgoing the anesthetic I could have gotten in Conakry. A worthy trade by any measure.
* * *
I've been helping my "brothers and sisters" collect termites when they pop out of the foundations of our huts. We grab the large, winged variety as they attempt to fly off. It was only after a couple weeks of effort that my oldest (still a bit younger than I) sister decided I, too, should eat them. I'd had my share of uncooked ones, but when she brought me the first plate of cooked ones I understood the effort. They're like popcorn with a protein kick.
She eventually showed me how to cook them and I even got a chance to do the whole process myself. Often when I cook with her I end up flinging stuff all over the place when flipping things in the air to remove wings, chaff, dirt, etc.
My soy, a small nursery, and my cooking hut. The pile of sand in the background is for an eventual new house my family wants to build. They won't have enough money to buy cement for another year or two. Houses are always built bit by bit here. Many of my neighbors grow corn in their houses during the long years between being able to afford the walls and being able to afford the roof.
A view of the same that's less attractive photographically, but will help you see what's actually going on here.
This is my hut, seen from under my family's mango tree. I built the hut on the right and you can sort of see my rain gauge in front of it.
Formerly the hut of the young boys, now the cooking hut of the first wife. Why? Half of her former cooking hut fell down a month ago. The walls on the porch of the house and the walls of the house itself were completed about four months ago.
The cooking hut of the second wife. That's Nyari on the bed out front. He spends his days on a zip line that runs from the mango tree to the far side of the interior of this hut. He plays around behind their hut when they're home amid the lentils and tomatoes I'm growing back there and the mango nursery I planted with my brother.
The rain gauge, and my cooking hut with its newest roof extension. In the background: my neighbor the mechanic. His video club is just behind my hut, hidden from view by my brick wall.
My small garden in the back yard. A giant millet plant, butternut squash, and three pineapples are doing the best. The bushy plants are from bulbs. I constantly harvest the leaves to compost them.
My three compost pits, manure bucket, and gmelina nursery. There are also two lingues in the gmelina nursery for whatever reason.
Overview of the back yard with my small mango tree. 
My brother caught this turtle and wanted me to take a photo. When I took a video, he insisted I show it to my friends. That's his little sister next to him.
David: What are you doing?
Lansiné: I'm cutting it open.
D: Cutting it open... What's that called?
L: A turtle.
D: A turtle? What are you going to do with it?
L: Cook it.
D: Cook it!?
L: And eat it.
D: And eat it!? Is it good?
L: It's really good.
D: That's awesome.
For those of you who are disgusted by the fact that he's eating a turtle, note two things: One, he's a kid, turtles, lizards, and songbirds are about all kids are able to hunt. If it's his dad who hunts it, he won't get to eat much. When the kids kill something, they all share it with each other. Two: the distended belly his little sister is sporting is caused by a lack of protein in diet, which leads to the under development of her abdominal muscles.
My good friend Musa is like the average Guinean: hard to photograph. They always want to be serious whereas I don't want him to look like he's having his portrait painted two hundred years ago. He obliged.
I built and hung a bamboo shelf above my kitchen/office. The office is a bit cluttered with the kitchen in this photo, but these things happen. Before his incarceration, Nyari used the kitchen as an exit from the hut, pulling down my wall bit by bit as he enlarged the gap between wall and roof. Those bits of metal on the wall (largely hidden by the shelf) are the stars of the constellation Orion, formerly known as the lids of cans of evaporated milk.
My bush boots, water filter, rice-and-corn cleaning thing and the first innovation in clutter reduction: a hanging piece of wood with things tied to it. I didn't think to concentrate on them, but almost all of my tools are hanging from nails behind that door and the filter. Rakes, shovels, machetes, hammers, drills, axes, etc.
The second hanging stick. That purple bucket is my washing machine, aka I keep my soap, brush, and stuff in it and it's the rinse cycle during the dry season. Rainy season I use a stream. It was originally purchased to carry Nyari across the country. My beekeeping equipment is hanging on the right side of this stuff-hanging stick.
My hammock and chair: where most of the reading takes place. This is also the most heavily decorated part of the hut with maps, a thermometer, a soap opera (written by Jess), and work-related propaganda.
Musa and I pose in the garage. My solar drier is hanging above our heads. My clothing is all on the table behind me, next to the bike. The yellow containers above the solar drier are the panniers I made for my luggage-intensive trips between site and Kankan. I don't use them as much now that I'm mostly moved in.
My mosquito net. And bed. And one-person bed (new) which I take outside to sit underneath the fam's mango tree.
The overview shot. Those two brown things on the bottom left: calabashes. Soon to be beehives. This also gives a somewhat better view of Orion. The hanging cloth is my towel, skirt, sheet, car hammock, pagne extraordinaire. My favorite pants are made of the exact same fabric. It was the first fabric I bought here, too.Peace Corps Volunteers are paid once every three months. The money is sent to a bank account and we are free to leave it in or take it out when we need it. Ironically, the policy about monetary theft encourages us to irresponsibly take out all our money at once. Unfortunately, the poor Guinean banking (up to and beyond five-hour waits in lines with only ten people in them), transportation and communication systems encourage the same behavior for those living in smaller, remote villages. So at times there are PCVs walking around town with millions of Guinean Francs in their pockets.
Nothing - not even Mefloquine - can make you feel as paranoid, posh or powerful as walking around with a sack full of money, which is your food and drink for the next three months.
Money, even when fresh from the bank, is a health hazard. Literally. It's a major disease vector. Some bills look like scraps of beat-up paper bag. If you remember most people's bowel movements here end up washed away with a hand and no soap (and for young women, so do the bowel movements of their children), you will realize just what's on the money tens of people will handle on a single day in the market. Don't think too hard about the food they hand to you, either.
The first time I withdrew money from the bank in Kankan was with Adam. The security is mindblowing. An average day sees It's a Wonderful Life-sized crowds huddling aroud three booths mostly enclosed with glass or plastic. The rest of the crowd is gathered around open counters. There is one military policeman outside. Lines are rare and even if present, often ignored: everyone who has business in a bank is "important" and therefore quite used to pushing to the front of any crowd. Order is, after all, overrated. And the tellers facing the mob sit in their boxes among bricks of money sufficient to construct a hut.
Fui a ver el bosque protegido de un pueblo cerca del mío. Los habitantes habían plantado la mayoría de los árboles allí, pero la naturaleza también metió unos cuantos.
Los de los hombres crecían rápidamente y tenían mucho éxito. Los de la naturaleza daban a comer y a beber. Probé una variedad de frutas igual a todas las que había comido en mi vida. Bebé el agua de una planta que siempre la retiene, aún en la estación seca.
Llegué al pueblo ya habiéndome dado cuenta que el programa de hacer bosques del hombre no tiene valor. Decidí en ese momento que mi trabajo sería un programa para plantar los árboles que la gente use. Esto se hará al lado del pueblo para que dejen el bosque natural. Así el bosque puede exprimir su diversidad.
Sólo así se puede salvar los bosques trópicales. De otra manera, tendríamos bosques, pero perdimos lo salvaje y acabamos con una ciudad de hombres hecha en madera.
Malaria, likely the number two killer in West Africa behind traffic accidents, affects my life in direct, omnipresent ways.
I sleep in a mosquito net and never spend an evening minute outside the net without first having slathered my exposed skin with insect repellent. The net, at least, serves other purposes. Undesirables (roaches, scorpions, spiders and the many other denizens of my hut) don't sneak into my bed at night. I'm reminded of how wonderful that is every time I find a potentially painful or shocking experience lurking on a wall.
The number one malaria countermeasure isn't the net or the repellent, it's a weekly prophylaxis, Mefloquine (Lariam). It has interesting side effects, though to avoid a closer acquaintance with malaria, I suffer them with joking complaints.
I have woken up a few times with my hut laid out before me in perfect clarity. The most striking thing of those moments was a large yellow bucket with the word Best written across it in bright red script. I own no such bucket. And one of the greatest parts of living in my hut is lying in bed in the morning until I am surrounded by the glowing halo of sunlight creeping through the gap between my brick wall and the straw roof. At night, it's as dark as a cave inside, and I can no more see my hand in front of my face than I can see the contents of my hut.
The rainy season has started. Local mangoes are finished and now I'm stuffing myself with the larger, grafted varieties. They're more fun to eat because they're often full of worms and they therefore give you a greater protein kick if you don't always see them right away.
It also means that on nights I sleep outside I am risking an inadvertent shower. Last night, for example: I've been sleeping on the roof here in Conakry in my mosquito tent. It's basically a mesh on poles - no protection from the rain. That's what the roof is for. But last night the wind was so strong I had to dig around for thirty minutes to find ear plugs and it blew my tent horizontal - I had the mesh pressed onto my face until I was able to put heavy things all around the edges to weigh them down. Life is good, though - it was much cooler with all the wind and rain.
Here Amy and I are trying to collect rainwater to use later for whatever - bathing for example. After Adam finished he came out and asked me if he'd just used leftover rain water I'd brought in to use. I told him yes and he was relieved he didn't just randomly have twigs and leaves stuck in his hair after a shower.
That said, the best bucket baths I've had in country were all during heavy downpours. One of those downpours caught me while I was out jogging and as it continued until after I'd finished my shower, I never even had to worry about sweat breaking out after just having showered. Instead I put on long pants and a fleece jacket. I tell you, 70 degrees is cold!
Me levanto a las 5:30. Ya me haré despierto hace 30 minutos, pero hace falta un poco de luz para empezar el día. Bueno, para hacer algo útil. Hasta que haya, leo con una antorcha.
Saco mi cubo para bañarme y me preparo para estar a la intersección del pueblo para desayunar a las 7. Siempre lo mismo: la harina de maís y azucar con algo ácido - una fruta trópica que nunca se ve entre todas las cosas allí mezcladas - sólo sabes que hay un poco de su zumo para que la harina se haga bolitas. Saludo a todo el mundo. Puede durar bastante tiempo para cada persona: I ni sööma, I ni sööma, Tana ma si, Here sira, I ni sooma, Mba, I Condé, Mba, Tana ma si, Tana si te, Here sira, Tana si te. Y esas frases se repiten como te de la gana. Mientras tanto estoy buscando la persona con la que voy a trabajar ese día. Muchas veces se le ha olvidado. O puede ser que cojo la bici para ir a otro pueblo de al lado (entre 3 y 30 kilómetros) para hacer un trabajo allí.
En cuanto la halle, voy al campo o al bosque con esa persona y hacemos lo del día - puede ser qualquiera cosa. No es raro que me llevan allí sólo para pedir el dinero de una manera indirecta.
Acabamos normalmente la mañana. Si tengo un programa para mediodía, será algo parecido - o no tendrá nada que ver. Hay mucha variedad. Entre los dos programas, voy al "bar" (una banca que quizás no caiga y quizás tenga un techo/parasol). Como el arroz con una salsa asquerosa que escondo con una montaña de pimiento fuerte.
Hace calor. Si no tengo un programa, me siento bajo un árbol para leer algo escrito en el inglés a los chiquitines o tocarles un poco de flamenquillo. Nunca dura - la música les interesa, pero todos quieren hablar conmigo mientras tanto y es dificíl hacer las dos a la vez.
Voy al pozo para coger el agua a las 4. Si hay mucha gente, puedo esperar hasta una hora para poder pedalear un poco. Cojo lo suficiente para bañarme la noche y la mañana, para regar lo arbolitos que he plantado por todos lados, y para lavar las cosas que están sucias - platos, el suelo, el gato, los niños...
De necesidad paso por el mercado - unas cuántas mujeres que venden lo que han sacado del jardín o que han hallado en el bosque para comprar la cena. Vuelvo después de saludar todo el mundo - una pequeña variación de la mañana. Decido si me interesa cocinar o si me voy a ascostar pronto. De todos modos me lavo y estoy en la cama antes de las 8 para leer una o dos horas con la antorcha y dormirme mientras el vecino, un video club, empieza a hacer más ruido que una discoteca y que puede durar hasta medianoche.
Mañana empieza de nuevo!
Aquí no se puede dar dos pasos sin ver una oveja. Las ovejas se han comido todos los árboles que yo había metido delante de mi cabaña. Pero aunque los guineanos viven con ellas, se sientan con ellas, y las ven a todo momento, nunca piensan a beber la leche de oveja. Comersela, sin cuestión; pero la leche nunca jamás.
La tomaría yo mismo pero no puedo pensar de la leche de oveja sin querer el queso o aún mejor la cuajada vasca - comida divina que echo de menos.
Hablo sin parar de la comida española. Una vez me tocó la suerte de ganar un jabalí entero. Fui a cogerlo y lo preparé para hacer cuatro jamones, salchichones, y no sé qué más. Lo que no sabía en ese momento es que el clima de España es perfecto para hacer el jamón ibérico. Creía que fue la preparación sólo que hizo famoso el jamón serrano. Qué tristeza volver a casa al día siguiente para ver el jabalí entero estropeado - salvo las costillas que Nyari y yo habíamos comido la misma noche que lo ganó.
La cerveza de Guinea no es una de las mejores del mundo. Tampoco está muy buena. Cuántas veces he dado las gracias a España por haberme enseñado la clara - la cerveza con limón para vosotros los madrileños. Tenemos el vino de mesa aquí también - marca Don Simón, claro que sí. Nunca me lo bebo sino que sea en forma de tinto de verano.
Me he prometido ir a España para veros todos antes de empezar otra vez la vida en otro lugar. Ahora es más seguro que nunca: veo la necesidad de comer a la española otra vez y prontito.
Julián, para que sepas, una vez me tomó la cerveza en un coco para ti.
Atop the Peace Corps car so I could take a photo of other volunteers; our car broke a brake pad and got a flat, extending our trip by several hours and giving us that much more time to sing songs and enjoy good conversation and good company.
The Peace Corps vehicle I took in to Conakry for July 4 and a JET meeting was a bit packed. Having nowhere to lean and sleep, I made a sling for myself with my pagne/towel.
I was weeding in my back yard one day when a chameleon fell out of either my mango tree or the neighbor's, landing right next to me. I picked it up on a stick and played with it for a while before it got too boring.
The mango tree in my back yard has huge mangos, but the majority of them are harboring worms. Bad luck.
Working hard, making raised beds for the rainy season garden at Jess's site.
Also while visiting Jess, we intended to work with the school to help them create a garden to improve their nutrition. Unfortunately, they stopped going to school before term ended and the project didn't get too far.
Jess lighting charcoal on fire to cook me a fantastic dinner at her site while I was in town to work on a Moringa olifera garden at her health center.
This is another holdover from training. I left this chicken behind by accident. I'm sure someone's eaten it by now. No matter; I have my cat. And I can always get a new chicken if I get hungry some day.
I took this photo during training. Buildings often have doors long before they are finished. Had I been a day earlier with my camera, it would've been even better: there was a bare minimum frame, the door, and the windown: not even all those sticks for a wall were there yet.