Arrival in Voinjama

In Voinjama, I am living in the IRC’s guest house, which is located in the same compound as our offices. The compound is very pretty, with lots of green grass, flowers, trees, and tropical plants. One tree in particular is filled with birds and what seems like a hundred individual nests, although when I asked what kind of birds these were, my coworker merely replied: “Just birds.”

While I am happy to live in such an attractive compound, the downside is living where I work. Since it was pouring rain when I arrived on Tuesday and again the next evening, I did not even leave the compound for my first 48 hours in Voinjama. All I could do was walk down the path to my office and then back to my house in the evening because it was too wet to go into town. This felt a bit like house arrest, and since the Kenyan woman who also has a room in the guest house is away for a conference, it was quite lonely.

Luckily then, when the office closed today, the sun was shining and I was finally able to see the town. As I walked out of the compound and down the red dirt road towards town, my immediate thought was: Oh my god, it is so beautiful! We are in the mountains, so every so often as you walk along, you arrive at an incredible view of the surrounding jungle. Needless to say, I was very excited to finally be wandering about and it took about all my energy not to start jumping up and down like an idiot in front of my coworker, who was showing me around.

Adding to this excitement was my discovery that numerous Peulh families live in my town!!! For those of you who do not know, the Peulhs are the ethnic group with which I lived in Mali and whose language I spoke as a Peace Corps Volunteer. There are many Peulhs that live in Guinea as well, and it seems that some families have moved here since the war and set up shop. Since I seriously love Peulhs, I just about exploded when, while buying some packets of powdered milk and Nescafe, I overheard the saleswoman speaking in Pulaar (the Peulh dialect they speak in Guinea). Naturally, I immediately introduced myself and made friends with the woman and her brother, all the while so excited that an onlooker might have thought that I had just won a million dollars or a free trip to Hawaii. Needless to say, it was a very good day.