My Conakry day

You know, I think I could live this life in many months. If I could just figure out a way to have electricity a little bit earlier in the day, so that I could do my work at home - or if I could get some extra battery packs and charge them at night! A slightly faster internet connection would be nicer too - but other than that, sitting here on my veranda with a light breeze and all the sights and sounds of a conakry household around me. I think I could do another few months without missing home at all! Across from me, Aly's aunt and sister-in-law are making today's rice and sauce. Above them hang the clothes they washed this morning. To the right of me, Aly's friend is tightnening his new djembe. Behind me, Rokia Sano is working with Sophie on her dance for the Merveilles performance on Sunday. Off in the distance, I can hear the rhythm of Aly's drum class. All is GOOD!



And now we have the generator turned on for 30 minutes and I'm recharging my battery, so I'm trying to upload a video from the Dundunba we attended on Monday - we will see how it goes! It is a little over a minute, and I used avidemux to edit it a little, and that made it about 8MB smaller than it was.

I didn't write last night and couldn't upload any video because I was trying to move a couple of big emails out of my work email account so that I would have space for new messages, and that took all my bandwidth!



I did manage to upload some photos from yesterday, though, and am including them here now.

First, does anyone have any idea what this might be? this is what it looks like after being drenched a bit in water. They call it Tombinyi, and nobody has any idea even what the French name might be. Even the people who sell it don't seem to know what it is called. It reminds me of tamarind a bit in look and taste - it is very sour - but is definitely not tamarind. It has very long roots coming out of it.

The ever-glamorous Ms. Alice eating a hearty meal of African rice and sauce:

 

 Here's Fanta and Bountou:

And here's Papis and Bountou in our Salon:

Here's the fabric that I bought at Madina the other day, It is two different pieces - the brown on the left and the white with stripes on the right - that came together as an ensemble. I am completely in love with it!

Here is Amahma - he is a friend of Amara Camara's who I met on my first trip here. He is very sweet, and makes jewelry. This was him the first day he came by, and then yesterday he brought me a bunch of jewelry to check out. I just took pictures of it and will upload those tonight. He is also getting me a new silver djembe!

 Here's a shot of Rokia Sano, Sophie's dance teacher, taking a little break

Here is Aly's cousin Sana, the son of Aminata who lives with us in Atlanta. He is particularly fond of us because we helped him out when his appendix burst a couple of years ago!

Aly's big brother, Salifou:

Here is little Suke, Salifou's daughter. She still doesn't like me too much, but tolerates me now, and was trying to jump out from the house and scare me this morning!

Yetou!

Sana and Yetou:

Aly's drum class with Mohammed, Seydouba, Ballaket, Abou-Brad, and Tozo:

The other side of drum class - Tozo, Abou, Ballaket, Seydou, Aly, Mohammed:

Here's a long shot view of drum class place from the yard out front:

Here's the sheep that lives at our rehearsal place. It seems very happy, and follows its owner around like a dog, along with the dog below:

And this is the dog at our rehearsal place. It is very sweet and always wagging its tail, but it has a sore on its ear, and I noticed it was walking with a limp the other day.

Three brothers - Seydouba, Aly and Amado:

Here's Brad, Tozo and Ballaket drumming:

Aly's big brother Amado:

A full shot of everyone - Seydou, Sekou, Amadou, Mohamed, Ballaket, Tozo and Brad:

Little Yetou watching class from the stairs:

Ok, I'm tired of waiting on these pics to load! I'm going to post this and do another posting with the rest of the pics I took yesterday!!!