Strolling along...

We’ve been back four weeks already and we seem to be coping well with the idea that we will be spending another year strolling along in the armpit of Africa. We arrived the 1st of August and literally hit the ground running. Went to school early the morning following our arrival, revved up, sleeves rolled, and immediately started to ‘move shit around’, as Patrick had so eloquently said two nights before. Since then, we’ve succeeded in:

• setting up a school library,
• setting up an art room,
• hiring, firing, and again hiring painters to paint the administration offices building,
• starting the arduous negotiations with the Port of Conakry people to release our container of $30,000 of school supplies without it costing us a few arms and legs,
• looking for and finding an apartment for our new overseas hired teacher,
• welcoming the new overseas hired teacher,
• postponing a few meltdowns by the new overseas hired teacher by convincing her that life here was not as tough as it seemed,
• finding and getting furniture to put into the new overseas hired teachers new apartment,
• finding another new apartment for the overseas hired teacher because she did not feel safe in the first new one we had found,
• negotiating a ‘fair’ release of the rental agreement with the first new apartment building,
• hiring a crew of guys to move the newly acquired furniture from the new overseas hired teachers first new apartment to the new overseas hired teacher’s second newer apartment;
• organizing and executing three days of staff orientation at school,
• welcoming over 60 kids on the first day of school,
• getting estimates for a new basket ball court on campus,
• getting another estimate for renovating washrooms on campus,
• learning in great detail how the new pump attached to our newly drilled well worked,
• looking interested when Huez described in minute technical terms how the new pump would be pumping water (that’s what pumps do) from our newly drilled well to our newly acquired holding tanks, and then another pump would pump the water from the holding tanks to wherever we wanted the water to go...sounds simple enough as I write it, but sure wasn’t when Huez was explaining it to me in his broken French/Spanish/Esperanto dialect/language. But then, naive as I am, in my supposedly successful attempts to look interested (why else would he go on and on and on about that pump!) in what he was saying, I kept asking questions like, “When does the pump know when the tanks are full?” That question really got him going...he went on and on about a ‘balloon’ or ‘ball’, at least it sounded like balloon or ball in his French/Spanish/Esperanto dialect/language...anyways, I digress.

Although, this is not quite an exhaustive list of what we have accomplished during the past 30 days, better that I stop here before I bore someone and hurt myself doing it.

With the arrival of two new American teachers on staff, the subject of malaria has often come up. When asked what should one do to avoid getting malaria, we tell people that we have chosen not to take anything, because the idea of consuming malaria preventive medicine on a permanent basis is something we do not feel comfortable doing. Furthermore, according to our family physician back home, whatever one takes will not keep one from getting malaria, but rather it will keep one from dying of malaria. Comforting, to say the least. There are two options to avoid dying of malaria: one very expensive pill ($4 a pill) one takes daily while in Africa, or a cheaper pill that one takes on a weekly basis. But, and we are talking about a big BUT here...this cheaper weekly pill can cause one to hallucinate. Hallucinations may include seeing guys urinating all over the place, goats munching on the tires of your car, or even guys in wheelchairs riding the freeway. Wait, I take that back...those things really happen here!

And finally, after six weeks of bingeing on anything or everything edible that came within eyesight of us while in Canada (can’t believe I went through those 6 pounds of bridge mixture in one sitting!), we have decided to go back to ‘eating well’ (as in healthier) since our return. Our gluttonous Canadian free for all has caused both of us to put on a few pounds...(that road trip especially did us in...did you know they now make Reeses pieces peanut butter cup flavored pretzels...how come I never thought of that?). When factoring in the undeniable and unavoidable truth that we are not getting any younger, we have come to the conclusion that, whilst in Africa, we may succeed in avoiding dying from malaria, but the excess weight will surely do us in. So we’ve eliminated all sugars and starches from our diets (no more of Aslam’s great bread), and try, as much as possible despite the daily deluge of the monsoon season, to go out and walk after school, avoiding the many pot holes, tires, rubbish, piles of burning something, fallen trees, mud, roadkill, and goat droppings.

By the way, just in passing, Madeleine read in one of her Oprah-ist magazines that one burns up to 270 calories during 1 hour of rigorous sex. Like I said, we do our best to go out for a stroll after school...