Last Update for 2006-07 School Year

Hello everyone!

This will be our last e-mail from Guinea this year. A big thank you to all of you who check up on us and keep us in your prayers. And a special big thanks to Charles who has operated this whole blog thing for us. God truly has watched over us here and has answered so many of our prayer requests throughout. We may post a couple of times during the summer so keep checking in every once in awhile!

Thank you for your prayers for my health. I feel 100% again. Hopefully we'll all remain that way these last couple of weeks!

This weekend we're doing selection in Boke and next weekend we'll finish up in Faranah. We'll have our students taking their final tests this week. Everyone seems anxious to get home and see family so we're all doing our best to take it one day at a time.

That early rainy season that was predicted did not happen. We've still only had 2 rains and the last one was 2 weeks ago. We have occasional lightning and distant thunder, but it never gets here somehow. No rain means fewer bugs though so theirs pros and cons to both sides.

We thought it would be nice to leave you with something humorous and very honest. So here it is...

Top 13 (We couldn't narrow it down any more) ways to tell you've been living in a West African Village too long...

13. You get cravings for Spam.
12. 2 grown men holding hands doesn't phase you anymore
11. You've survived home invasions by swarms of bees, lots of lizards, huge spiders, mice, bats, roaches, ants and other assorted bugs.
10. You try to communicate with the cows...in their language.
9. You've transported live chickens (9 actually) in your car. (And eaten them the next day)
8. You like eating usang fila (sweet potato leaves mashed like baby food).
7. You can open combination locks in the dark.
6. The thief outside your window turns out to be a cow.
5. You've seen cows in a car, chickens tied to windshield wipers, and 7 people fit inside compact vehicle (even with the center shifting console).
4. People offer you their children to take to America.
3. You appreciate road construction.
2. You blow by stop signs going 80 and don't even blink.
1. You can get dinner for a quarter but a Coke still costs 50 cents.

Also there are some pictures from our village to look at. We don't get to spend as much time there as we like, but these are our neighbors and friends. They put up with our poor and sloppy Malinke and don't laugh at us too much, so we like them!

Lots of love and see you soon!
Shannon and Carol

Ma, Luma and Ousmane - 3 brothers

Going to Muslim prayer & to get water

Everyday life

Eating dinner with Grandma

Bilingkoro boys

Bancuma, our village chief going out to work in the fields

Tene, her baby Abu, and other kids

Shy camera smiles

Our walk to school (those are mango trees on the right)

Our neighbor Sayo and her son Sinuba

bitten by a bug

Dear friends and family,

Three more weeks to go, and we’ll be able to see all those faces we’ve missed. Well, just when we thought we’d made it through the school year without getting malaria, Shannon decided to get sick. While he was in Kankan last week doing student selections, he accidentally missed taking his malaria medicine for three days. (That’s what happens when your wife isn’t around.) He found out the hard way that skipping out on your medicine is not good.

The good news is that we found out he had malaria early on, so he was able to be treated quickly. The first couple days were really hard with fever, vomiting, chills, and diarrhea, but everyday he gets a little better. His fever, chills, and vomiting are gone. Now he’s just sluggish and weak, but he’s starting to eat more. Mira’s mostly been teaching in his place, although he keeps insisting that he can teach more than he should. We’re making sure that he’s getting lots of rest. Please pray that he would continue to heal quickly and regain his strength. I’ve told him that I don’t want to be a porky wife standing next to husband with all bones on him when we get back to the States, so he suggested that I skip my medicine so that doesn’t happen. At least he hasn’t lost his sense of humor.

Pastor will be in Labe and Daloba this weekend continuing the student selections. He wanted Shannon to fully recover, so he will be going alone. Please pray for him that he would have a safe journey, the selections would go smoothly, and he would have the energy to see all those kids!

Besides that, all is well here. Some nights it’s been windy like it’s going to rain, so it’s brought the temperature down a bit by the time we wake up in the morning.

Hope all is well at home and see you all soon!

Love,
Shannon and Carol

Recruiting tour continues

Dear everyone,

All's still well in Africa. We just thought it would be good to share with you how student selection is going and about my travels.

So last weekend Pastor and I went to Nzerekore (silent 'N') and Masanta to test students. You might want to look at a map to see where those are in comparison to Faranah. Driving a manual 4x4 was not as bad as I anticipated. Pastor was a pretty good teacher so we split the driving time and nobody died (including the car itself).

As you already know, driving in this country is slightly dangerous, but Pastor and I both prefer driving without laws or police so it actually worked out well for us. The road was pretty good, except for a 3 hour stretch between Kissidougou and Masanta. For those three hours it was a winding, one lane, dirt path through the mountains. It's hard to explain, but if you could imagine a road construction crew getting angry and tearing up the road instead of fixing it you'd about have the conditions of this road. We never got over 30 mph and spent most of the time riding on the brakes. We survived though!

In both locations the local EPE (protestant church) was kind enough to let us use their facilities for our testing. Pastor sent a couple of university students from Faranah ahead of us earlier in the week to spread the word, do early registration and find places for us to stay and do the testing. We left Thursday after lunch time and drove the eight hours to Nzerekore.

We stopped for dinner on the road and because a communication breakdown we ended up getting two different sauces mixed together (instead of half and half). It was a mix of peanut sauce and sweet potato leaves (spinach like). A strange combination and interestingly not that bad, although appearance was grotesque.

We started registering and testing both Friday and Saturday mornings at 8. We gave each child a simple IQ test where they were supposed to recognize similar shapes. The hardest part was trying to explain to the kids how to take the test. The language barrier made it difficult, but it really helped to separate the kids quickly. We tested about 120 kids the first day and were able to narrow the field down to about 12 potential students. Masanta was more difficult because we interviewed over twice the number of students.

It was a long morning. We worked nonstop from 8-2pm testing children and then retesting some of the best students. We took photos of almost 40 potential students from Masanta. All in all it was a good trip, but we were glad to get home when it was all over.

The real difficulty will come when we try to narrow down the students to 5 or 6 from each city. We are praying a lot and will send out the decisions on May 14th. This weekend we will visit Kankan and Dabolah. Fortunately they're not as far away and we hear the road is decent. Plus, they have internet so I can send this to you! Next weekend we'll be in Labea and Dalobah and then the grand finale will be in Faranah.

We had a very nice Easter! Everyone wore their Sunday best to celebrate the Savior's resurrection. And of course, what's Easter without a big feast to celebrate? We had chicken and rice, plus mangoes, bananas, and oranges. As an added treat the volunteers made some cato, which is kind of like a donut hole. The after lunch picture doesn't quite show all the carnage. These kids really know how to eat, often to the point where they have belly aches on Monday. It tastes so good though!

The rain has finally come. We were starting to wonder if it was really going to happen. It had become a joke to hear Mira say daily, "Today it's going to rain," because each day she said it she got more desperate and unsure. Her statements became more of a question, but we were hopeful too.

It actually sprinkled in our village about 10 drops of rain a couple of days ago, which we thought was funny. Finally, the big rain came. All of our water tanks were filled, so no more hauling buckets from the pump!

Well we have so much to do and so little time to get it all done in. Please pray that God would give us strength and endurance to finish the school year well.

See you all very soon! God bless.

Love,
Shannon and Carol

Open Wide!

Pastor delivering the test

Helpers Nestor and David

Masanta kids waiting

Easter Best

Before lunch

After lunch

'Batman' sent to recruit students

Hello everybody!

We're all alive and well. I am out around Guinea helping Pastor recruit new students for next year so we're near some internet cafes that we can e-mail from. We may be getting our internet access in Sambouya back soon too. Although with only 5 weeks left it's a little late. Better late than never though.

Not much has changed since we last wrote. The weather has grown incredibly hot. It feels like you're walking through an oven in the afternoons and at night we just lay there and sweat. Using a wet bandana cools you off a little bit, but only temporarily. The rain is starting to come though and those nights are a little bit cooler.

So far we've had one rain storm, which came a couple of weeks earlier than usual, and a couple of times when it's teased but only sprinkled or passed over. It was a real dust storm before the first rain came when the wind picked up. We felt like real Okies (or Arkies). The first rain washed the dust and dirt off of the roofs (our water collection system) so the next rain we'll get our water tanks filled!

We now officially live in the bat cave. One day last week we saw about 10 different bats in the house. Fortunately, most of them went back up into the ceiling when we tried to capture them, but 4 of them were flying around the house in the evening. Jeje and I are getting better at broombat though. I think Jeje even enjoys it (maybe a little too much).

The kids say we should just kill them so they don't come back, but none of us are killers so we just wack them and they play dead until we can throw them outside. None of us enjoy it too much, but at least it's entertaining!!! And since I'm the only guy here it also gives me the unofficial title of Bat Man:) (Though I don't recall him ever using a broom to defeat his enemies.)

The mangoes are here. We still can't figure how they grow after 5 months of no rain, but it's all just a part of God's plan I guess. It's nice to have some different fruit.

The next 4 weekends we'll be doing student selection for next year. Pastor and I will be seeing probably thousands of kids from all over Guinea and we'll have to sort through and find the 50 or so that we're looking for. A lot of prayer has gone into it here and if you could pray as well we would be grateful. If you could pray for our safety as we travel a lot (and me as I attempt to drive a manual which I haven't done since I was 16).

Also pray that God would lead us to the right students for this school. We've sent some native university students ahead of us to spread the word and do early sign ups, but still people will bring kids anywhere from toddlers to teenagers and try to pass them as 5-7 years old. For a small amount of money it's even possible for them to obtain false birth certificates, so we'll be relying mostly on appearance and teeth to judge ages. It should be a really fascinating experience. I'm very excited to see some other parts of Guinea too!

We've sent a list of items that the school will be needing over the next 3 years to most of our teacher/school contacts, but anybody who's interested can donate. TM is shipping a container of supplies to here in early August. If you want to see the list of items we're looking for and possibly donate something(s), click on this link, thanks! Also, please use this blog to coordinate if you are donating things. The space in the container is somewhat limited and don't want to get thousands of pencils and no paper to write on. :)

So that's the news from Africa. We don't have a clue about what's going on in the political scene now, but everything seems peaceful. Looking forward to being with you all again soon.


Love,
Shannon and Carol