Getting Closer... Visas, Taxi Postmen, and an Unexpected email

It is finally starting to feel like we’re really headed to Guinea soon. For so long it has been such an abstract idea that has involved paper work but no real contact with Guinea. We bought our plane tickets on-line, sent our passports away for renewal, sent them away again for visas, and have been making to-do lists like crazy. This whole process has been very slow- from knowing that we would go back “someday” to knowing that we’ll be going back on November 6^th. And while we’ve been plugging away on logistics, Guinea and the people who we miss there have seemed very far away.

And then, suddenly, in the last few weeks we’ve started to see real signs that we’re getting closer to Guinea itself, not just the idea of it. Two weeks ago we received our Guinean Visas from the Guinean embassy. While the embassy is in Washington D.C, there was something thrilling about seeing the return address as “l’ambassade de la republique de Guinee.” And even better, inside our passports is a 6 month visa. It was our understanding that the standard tourist visas is for 3 months. We thought we were pushing the envelope a bit asking for the less common 6 month visa. As there is no tourist industry in Guinea (though that shouldn’t stop any of you from visiting us there!) the man with whom I spoke at the embassy during the application process was a bit confused as to why we’d want to stay so long. When I explained that we wanted to really spend our time visiting people who we care about there, he said he’d see what he could do. And it worked! We’ll be “legally” welcome in Guinea for 6 months. If we want to stay longer we’ll apply again.

But all of that pales in comparison with what happened yesterday. The really big news is that, for the first time in almost 5 years, I heard from someone who I know from Kerouane (where I lived while in Guinea)!!! I can’t begin to explain how big this was for me. Matt and I have sent several letters to Guinea since we’ve been back, either through the post or via Americans traveling to Guinea from the U.S. The mail system in Guinea is interesting and I can’t say I completely understand it. Basically, outside of the major cities, mail delivery relies heavily on bush-taxi drivers. If you wanted to send a message to, say, Kerouane, you’d go to the taxi station closest to you and hand the letter to a taxi driver headed that way. Sometimes a driver ends up with a whole stack or, sometimes, a sack, of letters. Then, when he gets there, he hands the letters off to taxi people there. Somehow, sometimes, letters get where they need to go. While in Guinea, Matt and I lived in different parts of the country. In his town there was a post office. He wrote me often and gave letters to the man at the post office. It took a long time (sometimes months) but I received his letters. (Matt did his best to make those letters non-time sensitive and it was funny to get those silly time-less notes). It’s much faster to send the mail via either Peace Corps drivers (who travel the country visiting volunteers and dropping mail off in volunteer mail boxes in regional capitals) or bush-taxi drivers.

All of this is to say that when I’ve sent mail to Guinea over these past few years, I’ve had no idea where it would end up. It felt a little like throwing mail into the wind. Recently I sent a few letters to a Peace Corps volunteer who was in the states but headed back to Guinea. This time though, I decided to send a letter to not only my family in Kerouane, but also to a friend of mine who worked in Kerouane during the school year but whose family is in KanKan (the closest regional capital). Bingo! I got an email from him yesterday saying that he received the letter and was excited to be in contact and to see Matt and me soon! Wow. When I was in Guinea there were cyber cafes in Kankan but they were very unreliable and it didn’t seem that many people had email accounts or email access. But that was a few years ago. Apparently times are a’ changing. Yes!!

Now that someone in Guinea knows that we’re on our way, it feels real. Yes, we *are* on our way. In the meantime though, there are a ton of things to do to get ready to leave Missoula. And, unfortunately, leaving Missoula is starting to feel real too. It’s such a weird feeling to be so excited to see our families in California and Texas and Guinea and yet be so sad to leave our friends in Missoula. I wish I could build a great big bridge connecting all of the people who we love.