July 15, 2009
Wo nu wali!
We’re going to have a little lesson in Susu, the local language of the town where we’re training. Wo nu wali simply means, “hi all!” It’s pronounced, “Whoa-new-wall-ee!” If you want to say hi to one person, simply say, I nu wali! (“Ee-new-wall-ee!”) The response? Simple. I nu wali!
I’ve been in Forecariah for two-and-a-half weeks now, and things are finally starting to settle down a little. We came here after a week in Conakry (“con-ah-cree”), the capital of Guinea. Conakry is crazy busy. Imagine a city of more than a million people without a single stoplight! The airport is really small compared to Indy’s. Normally, only one or two planes arrive every day. The day we arrived in Guinea, both planes arrived at exactly the same time, so the airport was absolutely packed. I felt like one of 200 sardines packeed into a can for five.
Forecariah has 14,000 people, and I’ll guess it has about 20,000 chickens, 5,000 goats, and 3,000 sheep. Everywhere around me are animals. Just outside the front gate of my house a goat and her two children are tied to a tree. Sometimes during dinner in the main room of my host family’s house, a chicken or two will stroll in to see if any food was dropped on the floor. We have one rooster at the house, and boy is he annoying! Between 4:30 and 5:00 every morning he likes to start screaming at the top of his lungs, and his pen just happens to be right outside my window. When the kids mock him, they scream, “co-ro-ki-co!!”
Every corner of Forecariah is alive with sounds. Mixed with the rooster’s crows at 5 a.m. are prayer calls from the mosque. Guinea is primarily a Muslim country, so at various times of the day I hear the imam’s (the equivalent of a Muslim priest) voice in arabic over a loudspeaker. Later in the morning the vendors begin selling their various items. My house is kind of far from any main road, so only food sellers pass by. On my first Sunday here, my host father purchased some buille (“bwee”) from a woman walking by, balancing a huge bowl on her head. Buille, tiny balls of rice in a sweet sauce, is commonly eaten for breakfast. At the market, street vendors balancing food bowls mix with a thousand others, selling anything and everything under the sun.
My house is also filled with noise from day until night. I’m living with a family of 12, along with about 15 chickens and 12 little chicks. My 2-year-old nephew loves to test the strength of his vocal chords, as does his 3-year-old cousin. Of my seven brothers and sisters, two usually stay around the house on summer days to do chores (like washing the bowls and fetching water from the well). Four walls surround the two small houses the family shares, and tucked into a corner of two of the walls is a small little room with an iron-barred window looking to the outside. Several times a day someone will shout “cawn!cawn!”, the Guinean version of “knock!knock!”, looking to buy something from the tiny store. Jaqueline (13 years old) or Daniel (10 years old) will run over to the room and sell a pack of batteries, fuel for a lantern, or maybe a sucker. There aren’t many toys here, so young kids often play by just helping with the chores. My 3-year-old brother Benjamin spent 15 minutes last Saturday helping me wash a handkerchief as I scrubbed the rest of my laundry outside on a washboard. He finally decided he’d had enoughafter the rain began pouring down on us.
Gotta run. Can’t wait to share more with you. À la prochaine!
Kevin