On the shortcomings of Guinean development, Military Corruption and my Disenchantment with Boobs.

Hello everybody! It has been a crazy past couple weeks! I have been gone from my site for about 30 days traveling between the capital of Conakry and the country of Senegal. For the first two weeks of September I received physical therapy to treat a ruptured capsule on my wrist (soccer injury). After that failed to treat my problem I got evacuated to the country north of Guinea, Senegal. It was an amazing experience in Senegal…I went to an Africa-wide Malaria training, ate so much good food, met some cool Senegal Peace Corps volunteers, swam in crystal clear ocean water and went to some wild unforgettable beach parties.  

So much has happened since I posted a blog that I don’t even know where to start. Before I left my village in September we had just finished the month of Ramadan and I was beginning to put some projects in line. But being evacuated from my site kind of dented my program and I will have to start over and resume once I get back. Next week I will probably start teaching officially at our local high school. The subjects that I will teach will be Health/English/Life Skills. I also want to implement a World Malaria Map in my community so that people can be aware of the prevalence of Malaria in their country. I already have the supplies ready and I’m just waiting for my volunteer friends to become available (being that I am not artist and my friend Lane just so happens to be a baller in that department). There is other Malaria projects that I plan to undertake but those are still under review. Well, hopefully I’m not boring you too much on my work plans but just thought I’d give you guys an update.

So here is my second (really long) blog post that I have been putting off for months now… Hope you enjoy it J


April 11, 2012- Inefficiencies of Guinea

Let us begin today with a small glimpse of the strenuous and difficult reality that is life in Guinea. Statistically speaking, Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world with a long history of inequality, corruption and lack of stability. Based on social indicators alone, it has horrible rankings in almost every sector. It ranks the 8^th worst country in the world in the Human Development Index with low rates of literacy and infant mortality. Thousands of children die every year from preventable illnesses like malnutrition and diarrhea. One social indicator statistics states that almost 80% of the adult female population believes that it is acceptable for their husbands to beat them. Literacy rates are low as most of the women in Guinea do not receive secondary education.

This is the reality for most of these West African countries in 2012; they suffer from hunger, malnutrition and other preventable illnesses. As a Westerner looking in, it is easy for me to judge and scapegoat many factors for this meager lifestyle. I can single out Islam as a reason why women are treated as second class citizens and why there is not much social progress. I can argue that a rejection of “Western values” impedes development in their economy and government. I can probably even try to argue that Guineans lack motivation to progress their own educational system and the education of future generations. It’s easy for us to lose focus and blame the innumerable reasons why Guinea and Africa are not yet developed.

But, when discussing an intricate question like development, I believe that we need to shift our attention to the institutions that exert most of the influence over the priorities, direction and decisions of an underdeveloped state like Guinea. In Guinea, the organizations with the most influence in decision making are the government, the military and foreign investors. With the large influential nature of these organizations, one can begin to draw correlations between the lack of development and the imposing nature of the government and foreign enterprises.

Even now in 2012, the Guinean government is very corrupt and has minimal accountability to its people. Just a couple months ago a citizen was shot dead at a military checkpoint for not cooperating with the authorities. There are countless stories of minister’s pocketing NGO and government contracts for their own private use. If a prefect mayor receives finance for public infrastructure, a significant amount of it almost always seems to disappear. By the time investment money seems to reach the people, they are left fighting over the crumbs of the foreign aid pie.

Not surprisingly, these government bureaucrats enjoy a far superior lifestyle as compared to their fellow countrymen.  One just needs to drive through the capital of Guinea to see these wealth disparities. The citizens of Conakry mostly live in tin roof compounds with no power or drainage systems. Walking around the neighborhood of our own Peace Corps compound one can see the endless piles of filth that lines the periphery of our neighborhood. Continuing on to the more affluent parts of town, you will be mesmerized with the enormous and elegant houses of government ministers. Their Roman columns and Gothic-style roofs put to shame even some houses in Beverly Hills.

In the outer regions of the country (my home), the lack of welfare and social services becomes grimmer. Our local clinic (privately built and not publicly subsidized) does not have an ample stock of medicine to satisfy the needs of the community. Since the clinic has no electricity, women are obliged to give birth by candlelight if they go into labor during the night. The village doctor, administratively appointed, lacks motivation and enthusiasm. Last week, after being commissioned to return to the village for a  birth assistance, he complained about the money he had to spend for the taxi fare and casually demanded the pregnant women’s family if he could be re-compensated.

Infrastructure is lacking as most of my village relies on underground pump water. Manually paved dirt roads and pot-holed highways are the only means of transportation since the government does not maintain transportation infrastructure. Electricity and light in my village are only available through privately owned generators that the village maintains on its own. Yesterday, after meeting with a student council group to speak about the progress of our village, we were forced to carry out our discussion under the illumination of candlelight.

The situation becomes grimmer for women, as Guinean men genuine believe that they are superior to their women. If a woman is handing her husband a cup of water, it’s custom for her to kneel as a sign of respect. In Guinean cinema, it is a culturally acceptable to depict women being beaten by their husbands as a way to humor its audience. In school, the class ratio is highly skewed in favor of men as teenage girls are expected and encouraged to stay home and take charge of domestic responsibilities.

But coming back to our subject, can we really blame government inefficiencies for the meager life that their citizens are forced to undertake? Does government direction (or misdirection) have a causal relationship with underdevelopment?  Can’t the people pull themselves up from the bootstraps and lift themselves out of poverty?

Well, these are difficult questions to examine and I won’t pretend to know all the right answers but I do believe that a population like Guinea’s who is mostly illiterate, who lacks access to political resources and who doesn’t have stable institutions from which to influence public policy needs the direction and support from a government that has its best interests at heart.

  Unlike the Unite States, for example, Guinea’s citizens don’t have a strong base of grassroots organizations to advocate policy that advances their social services and well being. There is no MADD, NAACP or so HACU. The infrastructure for public organizations like these is in its infancy in Guinea. The only representation that people have in government is when a member of their ethnic group gets elected for national office. In an illiterate and politically uneducated society like Guinea, this is where party lines separate….not by ideological platforms but by ethnicity.

 The lack of public institutional resources and coordination forces ordinary citizens to turn to the government for their well being.  Since Guinean citizens depend on the government for so much of their social services, government inefficiency really affects the population. 

April 12 2012-Foreign investors and transnational organizations

In 2008, there came a glimmer of hope as French educated opposition leader, Alpha Conde came to power and promised electricity, running water and more access to social services. People had hope that after years of repression and military dictatorships there would finally be a leader who put the people’s interests before his and those of foreign investors. But just like Barack Obama’s accession to power and subsequent failure to regulate Wall St during the 2008 financial crisis, so too did this president succumb to the continued exploitation of his country’s resources from foreign investors.

In Guinea, there are huge mining corporations that extract bauxite, coal, gold, diamonds and other natural resources. This is a huge industry as most of the bauxite of the world comes from Guinea. Not surprisingly, these enterprises are not nationalized or owned by any private Guinean citizens. They are foreign owned and have little accountability to the people. They pay the Guinean government millions of dollars in contracts and then make huge profits by selling the extracted material in Western markets. The largest foreign owned enterprise in Guinea is called Rio Tinto, an Australian owned mining company. Most of the other foreign enterprises are French and European owned.

The revenue that Guinea receives from this contract deals is miniscule as compared to the profits that these orgs make in first world markets. As a way to attract investors and foreign corporations, tax laws and investment policy is highly skewed in favor of investors as they are allowed to not pay import and export taxes on capital and machinery. These private corporations are allowed to run public utilities like telecommunications and water services. Under Guinean law, foreign investors are afforded the same rights as Guinean citizens and their foreign enterprises are even afforded national Guinean privileges.

These companies exploit and pollute the ground were the resources are being extracted in gargantuan levels. In the forest region of the country, large populations of apes are displaced and subsequently die due to deforestation. Driving through the national road, one can see the bald landscape after years of logging and slash and burn techniques.  Rivers and ground water are polluted due to cheap extraction techniques and machinery. The companies, because they are foreign owned are loosely held accountable to the wide-scale pollution they leave behind. The people often complain, but lack the political clout to cause significant change. The government, not wanting to lose potential contract income, is reluctant to enforce its own environmental laws.

The Westerners that work for these corporations live well above the means of the general population. They have access to Western food, electricity, satellite TV, pools and tennis courts.  They also never have to experience the dreariness of Guinea as they usually only stay for 6 months intervals. They never have to interact with the people as they only socialize with their small pockets of Guinean elites and other Westerners. In the capital, I once visited an ex-patriot bar and the lobby had a sign that clearly states, in English, <Entrance by invitation only>.

April 15-The imposing hand of military corruption

Continuing our discussion on the inefficiencies about Guinean government, let us lightly touch upon the subject of corruption and the military. Corruption is a normal part of life in Guinea. Everybody from military personnel to teachers and administrators take bribes from the poor citizenry that just want to get by. On the road, military checkpoints serve nothing better than to harass the people for money. In school, teachers and principals regularly take money from students who want to improve their grades. Male teachers often force young girls into sleeping with them in exchange for a better grade. Corruption is an ingrained aspect in the social fabric of life that goes unquestioned. Like the ongoing promise and sub sequential failure of electricity in guinea, corruption is yet another hindrance in the difficult lives of Guineas poor.

To highlight this encroachment of corruption in the daily lives of these people let me tell you a little story about a cross country trip that I took in back in January 2012. Early in the month, all volunteers were allowed to spend three days at their site to meet there village and get a feel for their new site. After all of us where finished with this visit, we returned back to our training site in the Western part of the country.

 At the near end of our 13 hour long journey we were stopped by another military checkpoint on the side of the road. We paid no real attention to this as this must have been the 6^th checkpoint that we would have crossed. Suddenly we noticed our driver having a somewhat aggressive conversation with the Gendarme (as an outsider, I find it quite common for Guineans to yell at each other for no apparent reason).

They next thing we know we see our driver sprinting into the desert brush and the Gendarme yelling and chasing after him. As we try to come to our sense and evaluate the realness of the situation before us the Gendarme has come back and attempts to explain to us what the hell is going on. He explains to us that our taxi driver is a bad man and that he has threatened to kill the Gendarme with witchcraft. He then casually and with the most genuine tone explains to us that it is his rightful duty as someone who has just been threatened with witchcraft, to have our driver shot and killed

 He then proceeds to let us know that since our driver has fled and is unavailable, he, the most likely drunk gendarme, will act as our intermediary driver for the rest of the voyage and deliver us to our destiny.

“Hold the fuck up!” we most likely all thought to ourselves. 

 Just then our driver returned to the scene and like a sinner seeing the Prophet Muhammad in the flesh, bowed down on all fours, kissed the feet of the gendarme and begged for forgiveness.

Turns out that he did indeed threaten to use witchcraft on the Gendarme. Although he may not have threatened to kill him, in a superstitious society like Guinea, the threat of voodoo apparently renders a life ending response. The next 20 min or so our group was left scrambling as we were searching for solutions to our predicament. Clearly, we did not want these military personnel to drive us to God knows where and since our driver was under a potential arrest and execution he was also unable to drive us to our training center. After considering spending the night in the area and waiting for another Peace Corps driver to pick us up, we decided that it would be better to try and negotiate the release of our driver.

After much arguing, shouting and overall miscommunication between all parties, the Gendarme came to a simple conclusion. All our driver had to do was sign a letter that states that if the Gendarme died in the near future that he, our driver, takes full responsibility for his death and will subsequently be brought to justice…….Yes, you did read that correctly. If the Gendarme died of the common cold, our driver, will be jailed for the “crime” of hinting black magic towards military personnel.

Yes, this is the ridiculous and outlandish reality of Guinea’s legal justice system. The letter was assembled by two Gendarmes using a scratch sheet from a Real Madrid children’s journal and one of our volunteers spare pens……a legal binding document. 

So you can imagine why our driver was reluctant to sign the letter. Running out of solutions and considering that it was nearing dusk we pressed our driver to just sign the letter so that we can continue our journey. After more discussion the driver signed the letter and the Gendarme finally let us proceed. This ordeal took about two hours and our car was eerily silent the whole ride back.

It’s difficult to consider and analyze the reasons why we were caught in this situation. It could have been our driver’s attitude toward the Gendarme. Or maybe one of the volunteers could have intervened a little more…or maybe the military in Guinea have an unlimited amount of power.

March 2 2012-Boobs….Erotic feature or nourishment appendage?

 So, now that we lightly discussed some serious matters in Guinea let us now turn to a perkier and more upbeat subject that everybody enjoys…boobs. And let me tell you, there have been a lot of boobs. In the Western world (particularly the United States), there is this perception that breastfeeding is a private affair that should only be done in the home sphere. But here in Guinea, breastfeeding is as normal as honking your horn at cows when they don’t move out of the way when you are driving (this is actually quite prevalent). I see the full spectrum of boobs numerous times a day, every day. These range from small perky (built for speed) boobies to eighty year old grandmas who log around things that looks less like boobs and more like empty rice bags (definitely not built for comfort).

Ordering and buying food at the market you hardly think twice when the lady that’s selling you potatoes is breastfeeding her infant as she is handing back your merchandise. You might pause for a quick second when you notice that the potato you just bought lightly grazed her dirty pillow as she was putting it in your bag…… but then you justify your analytical thought process by thinking, “Screw it, I’ve eaten grosser things in Guinea”. 

Breasts are not as eroticized as they are in America. I have quite literally been slapped in the face with so many boobs everyday that I have become desensitized and disenchanted with them. It’s almost like they are just…..I don’t know……how you would say it……. just another appendage of a women’s body to provide nourishment for their infants. It’s almost like they have a scientific purpose to be there that is not for men’s viewing pleasure.

 Imagine that! A brave new world where women’s breasts are not used as a feature to eroticize their body but just as a necessity to provide food for their newborns! I cannot imagine such a sexless Utopia!

 March 16 2012- Can I get some cold cereal please?

One of the hardest things about living in Guinea is the lack of access to good food. I mean, don’t get me wrong I love eating the same rice and sauce EVERY night and sharing this dinner out of the same bowl with four other men who did not wash their hands beforehand. But however appealing and delicious this dish may be (it’s not), there have come times when I really miss my mother’s cooking, sushi and cold cereal.

Man I miss cold cereal! I once had a dream that I poured Golden Grahams into a huge bowl and topped it off with some ice cold milk. Just when I was about to take that first bite, the dream Gods decided that this would be the moment that I would wake and face the cereal-less world of a small African village. After coming to the realization that I would not be able to eat cold Golden Grahams, I think I almost cried.

So after eating only Guinean food with my family for almost three months and practically crapping on myself for the better half of that time, I decided it was time for me to start cooking for myself.

The first meal that I made for myself after these long three months was a simple potato, egg and onion scramble. OH MY GOD! I could have sworn I saw our heavenly father as I took that first bite of that divine dish. When you live in an underdeveloped country where it is a luxury just to have running water, I swear that it’s the simplest things in life that give you the most pleasure. I quite literally made love to that dish as I relished what she offered to me down to the last ketchup- smudge of sweet ecstasy.

APRIL 10- Note to self: don’t have kids.

 If you would have told me a year ago that I would soon be handling crying infants and constantly cleaning snot (and other foul substances) from my hands and clothes, I would have told you that you are crazy! But, this is what I do during national vaccination campaigns when I enjoy the privilege of walking around the village and administering oral polio vaccines and Vitamin A supplements to our blessed children

I’m not sure what it is about me that make kids cry, shout, and scream bloody murder from the bottom of their lungs as soon as they see me. It could be my ruggedly-handsome good looks or the highly intelligent aura that radiates from my presence or my earthly-natural musk that makes these kids cringe at the sight of me. But however high I like to fancy myself, it’s probably just the fact that I am an American foreigner

Regardless of the reasons that illicit these reactions, it is the violent reactionary nature of the kids that makes our job difficult…The actual vaccination is really simple; the infant just tilts its head back and in go two or three drops of liquid.

Simple? Not when you work with these kids. I had seen kids running at lighting speeds to escape my foreign claws, others who throw such spectacular temper tantrums that I feel obligated to bow in response to their award winning performance. One bold little punk, after not showing one bit of reaction as I administered the drops, looked at me straight in the eyes with so much focus and intensity that I thought he was going to explode from exertion.  After what seemed like 2 minutes of this death stare, he tilted his head down and spit the vaccine right onto my exposed chest.

 Thus, note to all: Children are evil creatures with no remorse or empathy. Stay away from them at all costs. They will tear you up and take pleasure in your misfortune J