First day in....evacuation?

Busy day Friday started off at the US Embassy getting briefed by an RSO (Regional Security Officer). Informative meeting about what to expect and what not to expect during our sejour here in Conakry...no need to worry about terrorism...Al Queda is not active here in Guinea, (good...we had enough of those goons back in Saudi) but have to be ready and prepared for civil unrest and crime. First item on the agenda, looking at a map of Conakry and pointing out where the ‘flashpoints’ were in case things start ‘happening’. 5 major intersections need to be avoided...evacuation meeting point at the US Aid building ...nice to see that someone has everything under control. Also, found out why that hotel where we had attempted to have a leisurely birthday brunch yesterday morning was closed....turns out it is not closed but not very much business since it was taken up by one of the many druglords of the country...the RSO strongly suggested we go for coffee somewhere else.

After our visit at the Embassy, we fought traffic trying to find the keys to the school (member of the school board who works for a shipping company had it at his office...in the industrial part of town...could write a book about what we saw in that hour), and then a short visit to the school, we set out for ‘home’. Asked Bivan (Bivan means ‘patience’ in Malik dialect) the driver if he knew of a place where we could access the internet. We hadn’t accessed the internet during the past 3 days and felt like we were on the dark side of the moon. Bivan brought us to the center of town to an internet cafe where we both spent 30 slow minutes accessing and responding to our hotmails. Let family and friends know that we were still part of this planet.

Returned to our apartment where we’ve hunkered down for the past 2 days.

This weekend has been the ultimate exercises in idleness. No internet, no TV. Short visit to the store to get food...hope I get over this feeling of uneasiness when walking around. No matter what you do or how you act, us white folk just cannot blend in. This weekend has been like spending time in an Indian ashram...lots of reading, thinking, sometimes talking, sleeping, more thinking, more deep thinking, more deep sleeping. These past two years, when visiting our friends in Senegal, we always noted (and usually in sarcastic overtones) that our African bros appeared to spend a lot of time ‘pondering’ and ‘waiting’. Well, here we are, 5 days into our African posting, and we have, in the span of 48 hours, developed the art of pondering. It’ll be interesting to see if our new found expertise will stay with us when the Internet and the TV satellite is hooked up...hopefully this coming week.