The rainy season has officially begun in Guinea. This means sunny days with one to two hours of torrential rain in the evening. It began with a hail storm the other day and hammering rain last night. I'm hoping that the canals in town will keep the town from flooding, ‘Inshallah,’or did he dig them deep enough this year?
Over the weekend we held the first ever basketball and volleyball competitions in Kerouane. The competitive spirit was strong, and fortunately everything went according to plan. It was difficult coping with some of the people. It's very hard to understand some of them and their ways of doing things, and you realize that it might take a long time for change to occur. The adults tend to try and get involved, everybody wants to add their two cents even though they may have nothing to do with the situation at hand, or the qualifications to instruct or teach the kids. I explained the other day how I was disillusioned with the way they treat each other, and I dislike having to see someone yell at these little kids or push them around like live stock. Unfortunately, you have to be very careful with the way you treat these adults, even to the smallest detail of facial expression, because they will smile in your face but tarnish you name in the café’s and throughout the community. The strategy is to educate the youth responsibility, initiative and motivation. If we have the youth on our side, in Africa, you have the muscle. In 2007 they made the government declare martial law. A few months back an employee at the company witnessed organized groups of youngsters storm a merchants shacks, burning an entire block down because he was selling drugs and was involved in other spiteful activities. The importance of my brothers mission with the youth and with community development here is thus very important in creating change for the people of Guinea.
Over the weekend we held the first ever basketball and volleyball competitions in Kerouane. The competitive spirit was strong, and fortunately everything went according to plan. It was difficult coping with some of the people. It's very hard to understand some of them and their ways of doing things, and you realize that it might take a long time for change to occur. The adults tend to try and get involved, everybody wants to add their two cents even though they may have nothing to do with the situation at hand, or the qualifications to instruct or teach the kids. I explained the other day how I was disillusioned with the way they treat each other, and I dislike having to see someone yell at these little kids or push them around like live stock. Unfortunately, you have to be very careful with the way you treat these adults, even to the smallest detail of facial expression, because they will smile in your face but tarnish you name in the café’s and throughout the community. The strategy is to educate the youth responsibility, initiative and motivation. If we have the youth on our side, in Africa, you have the muscle. In 2007 they made the government declare martial law. A few months back an employee at the company witnessed organized groups of youngsters storm a merchants shacks, burning an entire block down because he was selling drugs and was involved in other spiteful activities. The importance of my brothers mission with the youth and with community development here is thus very important in creating change for the people of Guinea.
The 'match amical' held on Saturday gathered a rather large crowd on the basketball court and despite the rain on Sunday, the girls Volleyball teams played on. We had the speakers running on a generator, with the local boys of the ‘Discotheque’ chanting, playing music and narrating the game. The wood benches that my bro had made were set up all around the court, with people sitting and children running around and watching the match. I spent my time outside of the classroom working on a scoreboard for the weekend tournament. It would be the first time the kids ever had one, and that they ever really kept the score and counted basketball points by 2 and 3 point increments. Being the first time ever keeping an official score, they were so harsh in making sure it was exact!
The game had Lycee and College competing against each other, kids between the ages of 16 into their mid 20's. As Lycee was leading by 10 point by the second period, College discovered the importance of team play and slowly overcame and won the game by 10 in the fourth. Once the Lycee players began fighting over the water bottles we gave them at half time, I knew they had no chance. Sure enough the team fell apart, each man for himself, shooting three point shots one after another in the hope that they would catch up. The competitions had a great effect on the way they play now. They loosened up and discovered the importance of leadership and team tactics. On Monday they put all of this into play as they cheered each other on and practiced in the rain.
Something incredible happened when we were out on the court this afternoon. During the game, the kids started screaming, and I realized they were warning each other and the Babou that the rain was coming and to quickly move to shelter. I couldn't feel any drops on my skin nor could I see any water on the ground, but a deafening sound of gushing water on tin could be heard nearby. As I turned around I could see a torrent of water pouring off the roof of the youth center roughly twenty meters away. The sky above me was blue, the basketball court was still dry, but the rain was pouring down on the children running to take cover under the tin roof of the youth center. The rain moved like an advancing waterfall, from the roof of the building, and across the volleyball court that stood between us, until it finally reached the edge of the basketball court. Then it stopped. It didn't stop raining; it just sopped advancing, so I was still standing now only ten meters away from a complete downpour, completely dry. Each one of us was staring at the other in total shock, it was unbelievable. The rain moved onto the court, slimmed out, then stopped and we continued playing.
Something incredible happened when we were out on the court this afternoon. During the game, the kids started screaming, and I realized they were warning each other and the Babou that the rain was coming and to quickly move to shelter. I couldn't feel any drops on my skin nor could I see any water on the ground, but a deafening sound of gushing water on tin could be heard nearby. As I turned around I could see a torrent of water pouring off the roof of the youth center roughly twenty meters away. The sky above me was blue, the basketball court was still dry, but the rain was pouring down on the children running to take cover under the tin roof of the youth center. The rain moved like an advancing waterfall, from the roof of the building, and across the volleyball court that stood between us, until it finally reached the edge of the basketball court. Then it stopped. It didn't stop raining; it just sopped advancing, so I was still standing now only ten meters away from a complete downpour, completely dry. Each one of us was staring at the other in total shock, it was unbelievable. The rain moved onto the court, slimmed out, then stopped and we continued playing.
Leaving the base in my white Toyota four by four landing pod on Sunday on the way to the game, I had one of those hallucinations you get every once and a while here on the red planet. Another downpour flooded the land for an hour or so just before the 4 o'clock volleyball game. I was determined that the sun would dry everything up rather quickly so I was heading over to sweep the court, begin installing the benches, sound, scoreboard, and to distribute the new rubber shoes we had bought for the players that morning in the market. As we drove down one of the main mud streets of Kerouane, I was gazing out the window, staring at the mud huts or 'les cages' as they call them in French. Children were picking mangoes out of the trees with eight meter long sticks. Some children were waving at the passing vessel, others screaming 'babouni', yes the little white man was flying by, the conquering hero. Some women were setting clothes out to dry, others were using long heavy sticks to ground rice or grain in large carved wooden pots, or ‘meneoc,’ that look like drums. Men were sitting back in their chairs and drinking their afternoon tea and sweetened coffee. Some of the 'cages' are set up next to one another, often circled by a little pile of rocks to delimit their yard. Open fires burn on charcoal and pots of boiling water let steam escape and mingle with the trees. The dirt roads wind through the huts and houses, while bright green weeds tangle with the trash that litter any empty lots or ruins. Goats and chickens roam between the 'cages' and the abandoned skeleton shaped concrete structures left over by diamond diggers. Wild dogs appear and disappear between the houses. Along with the noise of our space engine, small generators, motorcycles and some old Renault trucks growled and spit out chocking grey smoke that filled the air. Repeating through my mind was this story the company's French doctor told me about a family that had turned towards their local medicine man to heal their child. Instead of going to the hospital to help their child recover from burn wounds after spilling boiling oil all over her body, the medicine man used rabbit hairs to heal her wounds. Using a local herb, he blew a magical smoke onto her skin so that she would recover more rapidly. The little girl died from the infection of bacteria in the rabbit hairs. It's just hard to come to reality with the situation here. Without any communication with the rest of the world, no post office, newspapers, or any paper whatsoever, only the local radio, Kerouane could remain in the dark, unheard of, and using century old customs and traditions for another hundred years to come unless we intervene.
Everyone at the company talks about the fact that the people sit on some of the largest deposits of natural resources in the world, like iron-ore, diamonds, gold, oil, hundred of thousands of mangoes, but despite all of that they still live traditionally, in poverty, with the customs passed on to them by their predecessors. They still have no electricity, proper sanitation or infrastructure, the government and leadership are corrupt, nothing happens without the accord of the elders, they have no proper army, and they have no police force to provide any sort of security. And unfortunately putting the responsibility and fate of the community in the hands of a divine power will not bring change. Unless people are educated and learn from our involvement that they can each make a difference and a contribution, everything for them is fine the way it is. Men will keep drinking tea all day, and they'll continue sitting around and sleeping under the mango trees, on top of billions of dollars of natural resources. For that reason I think the presence we have here is crucial. But in the end business is business, and without a complete involvement, both in personnel and financially, we can only achieve results on a small scale. Unless your business in Africa is focused in giving back to the people, then history will just keep repeating itself...Veni Vidi Vici
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