Clash of cultures

July 23 2010 8pm

Our first Friday in Guinée and second day in Conakry. I wake up to the sound of rain. I walk to my patio and observe the action on the street. People are walking in the pouring rain, a few have umbrellas and many walk as if oblivious to the pouring rain. It is 8:30…we have slept in. I wake up Raymond to the words…...”we’re still here.” He is having a tough time…so far in the morning he says…..there are only 687 days to go”. I get our first breakfast ready, muesli cereal, bananas and cappucinos. I’m in heaven as I sip my cappuccino! A sense of normalcy sweeps over me…in my mind I am back home.
We leave for the US embassy where we meet D. and have a briefing with him. Guinée is considered number 9 in the top 10 in the “failed nation state “category; Haiti is number 1 right now. I guess this Failed Nation state category is the embassy lingo used for describing a country that is struggling with poverty, health, education issues and crime. Walking into the Embassy is like being back home…..the building is built like offices back home, normal offices everywhere. It feels good and weird at the same time…good because it is the known of my life and comforting. It feels weird because it is cognitive dissonance from the life we have seen outside this building, the wealth and the poverty sitting side by side, each existing in it’s own world.
From the Embassy, we drive to school. Life just gets a little rougher. The area we drove through to get to the school must be the poorest in Conakry. People seem to be living on the sidewalks. Two little boys were scrubbing each other down…one boy scrubbing his brother’s back, laughing as the suds poured down their backs. I watched this little bit of life as if I was watching a film; it seemed surreal to me. We were on our way to meet Deepak the treasurer of the school board who was handing over the keys of the school to Raymond. He offered us tea and expresso. He explained that his 2 daughters attended the school (grades 4 and 5). I wonder if I will teach them.
Leaving Deepak’s office in the dark because of a power outage, our driver managed to get us through the mayhem of huge trucks, children running and people preparing food. At one point he flipped his outside mirrors, barely scraping by the huge truck delivering exported goods from Deepak’s warehouse. He did this very matter of fact, obviously he has done this before. What a zoo! How can people live in such extreme situations amazes me. The contrast of the visit to the Embassy and this life on the streets was incredible and too much to take. I can’t find the words to describe the shock and the extremes of two cultures. We drove to visit the school. It was in bad shape…after all this was holiday time and it has been 6 weeks since school had closed in mid-June. I had a flashback of the schools I had visited in Senegal…there was a strange resemblance….here there were tiles on the floor while in Senegal there were dirt floors. Our little school was in bad shape. Mouse droppings and cob webs were in evidence. Paint was flaking off the walls and everything needed repairs, paint and lots of TLC! Raymond reassured me that it looked much better in May when all the workers were there for the upkeep. Nevertheless, my heart sank for I wondered how I will be able to teach well in such dire conditions. Ah well there are only 686 days left…