Guess who's back. Back again. Guess who's back. Tell a friend.

Wow. I’m back in Guinea. Six months after being hurriedly trucked away from our sites, in the midst of what I at times feared would turn into a civil war, I’m once again sitting in the Volunteer house in Conakry. Things have come back to normal here in Guinea, and from what PC staff tell us, the situation is even improving, however slow or marginal the progress might be.

We’ve only been here about 5 hours at this point. And it’s just now starting to sink in that I’m really back. It’s pouring out. Not that wimpy American rain that leaves you wondering if it will just be too much effort to open an umbrella. It’s an honest to goodness downpour like you only see in Africa in the middle of the rainy season. And the electricity already went out (though of course, being at PC HQ, the generators kicked back in.) But yeah, I’m back. I’ll really believe it tomorrow when I go to the Malinke lady in the morning to buy some eggs that I can mix with tonight’s shawarma to make a delicious shawamelette. And it will sink in some more later in the day when I go to buy some cheke next door. Once I interact a little more with Guineans, pull out my first Susu phrase in six months, venture into the Taoyah market, and wash my clothes by hand again, then I’ll believe I’m really back. Right now, it’s still a little surreal.

There are currently a whopping eight of us in country! That’s half of what will be the total number of volunteers in Guinea for 5 months. Everyone else will be trickling in over the next month and a half or so.

But you can definitely tell Peace Corps Guinea was evacuated a few months back, at least when you look at the volunteer house. The walls are freshly painted, the books are all organized, eighteen hundred trunks no longer line every wall of the house. The house is actually clean! And I mean really clean. The refrigerators are spotless. The mountains of clothes, shoes, and random foods and books in all the rooms have disappeared. And I have a room to myself. So it feels a little empty, but before long it will once again be full of volunteers jockeying for a clean bathroom or an empty bed. That being said, we have all decided that we are going to set some sort of precedent to make sure that all future volunteers know that the house is going to stay as close to this clean as possible.

The trip into Conakry went well. All our flights were on time, our luggage made it, and the airport wasn’t any more hectic than usual. Though we did get a great welcoming, as almost all the staff was there to greet us, along with Kim, Lisa, and Bonnie, who had just had their own two day odyssey back from Mali.

Well, I suppose I should get to bed. It is after all, three in the morning here, and I want to be able to get up in time for a morning omelet sandwich, maybe even a fish sauce sandwich if I’m really feeling like getting back into the swing of Guinean things.

Now, I only have to decide which of the eight beds in this room I want to sleep in…