Jason with the family he stayed with during his training.
Jason's new townhouse.
Following is his email. Get the French dictionary out quickly!
Je suis voluntaire!
Bonjour tout mon famille et tout mon amis,
I hope this finds you well and doing good. A couple hours ago I officially swore in as a Peace Corps volunteer here in Conakry, on Friday the 6th of February, 2009. The ceremony was ok, the food was great (grilled chicken!!!). Life here has been an interesting adventure into everything from the bizarre to the grotesque, and I have loved every minute of it. Despite a rather stringent routine of activities scheduled by the Peace Corps, there isn?t a day that goes by that I would call ordinary. Every day something happens that I could never expect and usually it makes me laugh hysterically, or have a total WTF moment. The talk amongst the volunteers generally consists now of hilarious conversations involving the activities of everyday life: Questioning when our legs will stop being sore from having to squat over the latrine all the time. Sharing our plethora of responses to being called Fotay (white man) by the local kids. Making jokes about the different living conditions and pests we have to put up with, i.e. rats, spiders crawling on your face when your sleeping, cockroaches, etc.. Luckily, unlike most, I haven?t really been sick since my bout of Guardia. A few days ago I had a stomach ache that turned into headache and got really dizzy and just passed out, but since I woke up and was fine I don?t count it as being sick. However, since then my stomach has always felt a bit knotted and I haven?t been able to regain a very good appetite. Leaving training in Forecariah was bittersweet. I was greatly relieved to be getting out that town which was always 100 plus degrees, and to be done with the training program which was beginning to become a very annoying routine. Yet leaving my family was actually somewhat difficult. Over the past 8 weeks I grew a lot closer to my family than I ever thought I could have, and they truly seemed to enjoy and want my company even more than I did there?s. I ended up giving them all the candy I had left (thanks grandma), bought them a chicken, and gave my brother souleyman a years supply of condoms. Now we are in Conakry where we are celebrating for a few days the start of our actual work. Tonight we are having a celebrity/character party, I am going as Hunter S. Thompson, and we are making some alcoholic beverages with a lot of great fruit, and REALLY horrible tasting gin (that?s about the best this country has for a decent price). It?s anyone?s guess as to whether it will actually taste good or not, if it doesn?t I have a backup plan with a bottle of very nice French red wine I was able to buy off of a French embassy worker yesterday for a fairly hefty price. Yesterday I went down to the national bank of Guinea to withdraw my money for settling in and for my first 4 months at site. My withdrawal alone nearly cleaned the whole national bank of all its money, and what I got was 5,000,000 in 1,000 notes, which formed a stack so large that I could barely fit it all in my backpack. But it is nice to say for once in my life that I am a millionaire. I leave Here Sunday for my regional capital along with everyone else whose site is in the Fouta region, and will be there for 3 days (more celebrating yiipii) buying everything I will need for my house and whatever else. On Wednesday or Thursday I am taken by PC vehicles to my site in Gongoret. For the first three months I am basically not supposed to do any work except for settling in and integrating within my community. It will be nice not having to do something every hour of the day again, but I am sure I will get bored so I will have to start some sort of project. Seeing how there is now cell phone service in Gongoret, I am going to figure out some day that I will walk up the mountain to where I can get service so I can talk to people. As of right now I think it will be Sundays at 12:00 eastern time, but that may change nor will it likely be consistent. Speaking of cell phone, the last email I gave out my phone number but it was wrong. The number is 011-224-67-20-99-72. The last time I forgot the 224 part which is the area code so if you tried it probably didn?t work. Well for right now I have to go because there are a lot of people waiting to use the computers and I have been on for awhile. But I have 2 more days here so feel free to email and I will write back, and pictures will come later (when the internet here is working faster). Talk to you all soon.
Jason
OK. It wasn't all in French. Thank goodness. It would have taken hours to understand what's going on.
This is my favorit. The spiders are apparently good sized over there.
Big and beautiful spiders bring "big time good luck". Don't they?
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