random thoughts

It’s weird being an American woman and yet not being in America, and yet I’m not a Guinean woman even though I am in Guinea.  There is a range of experiences and definitions of “Guinean women” and while “African women” and “Guinean woman” hold very different connotations than what I hold as an American woman, there’s lots of room within those categories for difference.  The women in my compound, while each of them very strong and loving women, have taken very different roles in the day-to-day goings on of the family.  My host mother, the first afternoon I was there, spent the evening complaining that the embroidery on the 26 new pairs of clothing she had had tailored (for herself and for other members of the family) weren’t intricate enough, while another women sat beside her folding back up the clothing and trying to console her, and two other women sat around the fire cooking baby formula for the youngest son.  I thought the clothing was beautiful, but apparently it wasn’t up to her standards.  I relate none of this as a way of mocking or judging at all, but rather an interesting experience of the multiplicity of experiences even within my compound.  I’m still trying to find where I am in all of this, because I’m treated as a guest, but very much feel closer to the other women who go about their lives in a much more simple, content, and lighthearted way. 

In all of this, too, I’m finding out what it means to be myself, to be who I am in this new place.  I love my independence, being able to be out of the house and doing (mostly) my own thing.  I like walking downtown, through the markets, to buy bread and jam as a comfort snack, and going to the internet place to connect with those of you not with me here, and hanging out with friends in their different compounds.  And yet I also very much value the time I get to spend with my host family, greeting the women in the morning and laughing with the kids and talking about traveling with my host dad.  There’s so much going on in-between these times, too, of learning and trying and failing; of picking myself up and brushing it all off and letting it go; of reminding myself that it’s ok, that it’ll all work out in the end, that there’s something more to all of this, that each experience is valid and important and different; that there’s no way to do everything in three months and that even in Guinea challenge by choice is a thing.  There’s so much going on, new and different and challenging and rewarding, that every day feels like a rollercoaster.  It’s such a beautiful and difficult thing.