How to make Kanya

Guinean cooking 101: Kanya

Kanya is the Guinean equivalent of a peanut butter sugar cookie...almost. It is a tasty treat that is sold on the streets all over Guinea. I recently acquired a few kilograms of shelled peanuts, so my host family and I decided we should use them to make kanya. There are only 3 ingredients: peanut butter, rice flour and sugar. 

Step 1: Grill the peanuts and bring them to the peanut-butter-making machine in the market 

Step 2: Bring some rice to the rice-flour-making machine in the market and mix with the peanut butter and sugar

 Step 3: Pound the mixture in a mortar until it becomes super dense

 Step 4: Flip the mixture out into a bowl and cut it into little squares and voila!

Fete de Tabaski

Earlier this week we celebrated the Fete de Tabaski, which was a day of utter relief from the stress of school and political uncertainty. Tabaski (Eid al Adha) is an annual holiday celebrated by Muslims. In Guinea, people celebrate by going to the big community prayer outdoors, eating a lot, sacrificing a sheep or goat, and relaxing with the family. I celebrated with my friend Alexis and my host family. In the morning Alexis and I got dressed up in our nicest Guinean complets and adorned some head wraps borrowed from my host mom. We headed to the big field behind the village mosque, laid our prayer mat down in the dirt under a palm tree, and greeted all the women and girls from my village.It never ceases to amaze me to see all the people from my community in one place. 

After the prayer, we headed home. My family did not have a goat or sheep to sacrifice, so thankfully we got to skip the killing and butchering and went straight to eating rice! I paid for the ingredients of Riz Gras - the most delicious (and expensive!) rice dish in Guinea. The rest of the day was spent relaxing with the family and digesting the massive amount of food that we ate. 

 Riz gras with Abou

M'mawa and her son Bouba dressed up for the fete

Life in uncertainty

Things around here have been a little rough lately. There’s been a lot of stressful stuff that is all happening at once. I’m not quite sure where to start…

How about the Guinean legislative elections? They’ve been pushed back for years, and finally, after pushing the date back more than a few times this year, they finally happened. The time leading up to the elections was stressful for PCVs because we haven’t been able to leave our sites during this time, but also because many of us feared the worst: election rigging, fighting over results, people taking to the streets…and ultimately the evacuation of Peace Corps.

Election day I was very anxious, my ears were glued to the radio – my only source of information. The day passed smoothly, but no one knew when the results would be out. Some people said the next day. Some people said within 72 hrs, some people said one week. Well…it has been 13 days since the election and there are still no results…and it would appear that the results will never come out. The election committee was accused of fraud before they even published the results. I have no idea what happens from here, but I have been holding my breath all this time and am getting worn out of this uncertainty. I honestly do not have a clue what is going on; there is a complete lack of information. The election just needs to be over so everyone can go back to living life normally. I would have liked to write more about the details of the election but I have written exactly as much as a I know (almost nothing)…

Literally smack dab in the middle of the most tense time in Guinea (right after the elections) we get a message from Peace Corps informing us about the US Government shutdown…which, for me, was completely out of the blue. I hadn’t been listening to BBC news as I usually do because I was instead listening to Guinean radio. Imagine the shock for me – I was expecting PC to send a message saying the Guinean government had shut down and instead it was the American government! This was just one more stressful thing that I was completely uniformed and confused about. American politics seem just as messed up and uncertain as Guinean politics.

The third stress factor is school. Nationwide, students weren’t planning on coming to school until the elections were over. Since the results were taking a long time to come out it seemed that there would be a delay in the school year. Through some confusion the radio also announced that school was postponed, though a few days later it turned out to be untrue. So, the principal and teachers were ready to teach this week, but still unsure if school was really supposed to start and if students would really come. On top of that, as I explained in my last post, my school has enough of its own problems. The 7th grade building that was being remodeled is still not done – there is no ceiling or roof. No one knows for sure if 12th grade is being eliminated from our school or if they’re staying. No matter what happens the school will have way too many classes this year, each with way too many students. School kind of started but the schedule changes every day. One day I’m told I will be teaching 11th grade biology, so I start preparing lessons for that. The next day I’m told I won’t be teaching 11th grade but 8th grade biology. So I got home and prepare lessons for that. The next day I’m told I won’t be teaching biology at all, but instead Terminale physics. I start preparing for that. This morning I got my (hopefully) final schedule and I am teaching 11th grade and Terminale physics and 7th grade math. So…now I need to go prepare for that! I also need to prepare myself for teaching large classes. Last year my biggest class was 35. This year my smallest class will be 90.

That’s my current life situation in a nutshell. I’m just taking it one day at a time. School will work itself out. I have faith that American politicians will come to their senses. No one can predict Guinean politics, so I’m just not going to worry about that anymore.