Katy Murtaugh's Next Big Adventure!

On Jaaraama naani, Laguinée!

Katy — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:02:07 +0000

So, that’s all she wrote for Katy in Guinea. My time there ended abruptly with an evacuation (see brief explanation below) and after a period of uncertainty (see long-winded explanation below), I am off for a bit of travel before heading home to go back to school! I guess my next big adventure is officially done! Fairly shocking really…

Sorry I was such a bad blogger, all this site is really good for now is to make sure there’s still easy links to my Guinea photos (and my round-the-world trip photos)!

The latest and greatest news…

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In September some friends and I went to Ghana for a vacation-slash-for them to take the LSATs. While we were in Ghana, on September 28, the Guinean military opened fire on a large peaceful political opposition rally in Conakry (the capitol city of Guinea); they were completely “out of control”; there was widespread violence against women and little to no aid for victims of any kind. I say “out of control” because it appears in hindsight that much of the military’s actions were premeditated and facilitated by Guinea’s current Head of State, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara (who came to power through a bloodless coup after the death of the previous President in December 2008, which happened while I was in the US for Christmas). There had been political tension in the air for a while as Dadis was suggesting that he would run for President in the as-yet-unscheduled elections, which are supposed to provide a democratic, free and fair way for the people to elect a civilian as their President. The point is that if Dadis runs, there will be zero confidence that the election would be free or fair. In a country full of people as peaceful (and downtrodden) as Guineans, violence wouldn’t be expected, but an unfair outcome would be. The leaders of the political parties had organized the September 28 rally to express their solidarity and the opinion of the people that Dadis should not present himself in the election. In the end, at least 150 people died; some outside estimates put it at over 200. The extreme actions of the military and Dadis’ complicity in them make the future for Guinea a lot less bright than it seemed when he first came to power and promised to ensure a peaceful and timely return to civilian rule.

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The end result for me as a Peace Corps volunteer is that Peace Corps evacuated the country and my friends and I were not allowed to go back; on October 9, we flew directly to Bamako (the capitol of Mali) from Ghana where all the Guinea volunteers were being consolidated at a training facility outside the city. And that’s where I’ve been ever since; I think of it fondly as the Land of Limbo. For the first week we awaited word if we would be able to go back to Guinea or if they were going to suspend the program. Limbo #1. That was sad and stressful because my friends and I who had been in Ghana hadn’t gotten to say good-bye to our friends and families and hadn’t gotten to pack up our stuff, but was offset by the fact that there were eggs in the morning, good roads for running and wireless internet! Then the word finally came from Washington that the program was being suspended. Time for Limbo #2. We all had to decide what to pursue next. Most of the people from my group who were supposed to end their service in early February anyway, decided to end their service now and either travel or go directly home. Most of the people from the other groups who still had 6 or 14 or 22 months of their service to go, decided to transfer to other countries. Some people who want to continue their service in Guinea opted to go home and wait it out until the program reopens, which may happen as early as 6 months from now.

I myself had already been trying to put together a third-year position and was feeling slightly guilty that if I could put something together in a week (instead of the planned 2 months), then the timing would actually work out much better than before, would get me some time at home in November or December and would get me home in time for Christmas 2011. So, I decided to try for a third-year position, but not just any third-year position, something very specific. Limbo #3. Many of you don’t know that I’ve been planning on going to nursing school and am particularly interested in palliative care in the developing world. I figured if I could find a third-year position working with an organization that does palliative care then the experience would make it worth deferring school for a year. I had already begun the process before all this mess started, pursuing a position in Kenya, but that was dead-ending with no communication from the Peace Corps staff there or from the organization I was hoping to work with. So, I was already going to give up on the idea since my research had not come up with any other options. Then one of the Washington staff who was here to help with the evacuation had some ideas about other countries with organizations working with people living with HIV/AIDS (primarily in Eastern and Southern Africa) that may have what I was looking for. So, I put together this list of about 8 countries (awesome, amazing countries like Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa and Lesotho) and we sent out my information to them all (my resume, my description of my service in Guinea and a letter of interest); then we waited. Let’s call this Limbo #4. We hadn’t heard anything and I was starting to get a little tired of all the uncertainty, especially as my friends were making plans and buying plane tickets. I set a personal deadline of Friday, the 23rd; if I didn’t have any concrete offers by then, I would call it quits and end my service and go home. Then, Thursday night, there was the slightest nibble of interest from Tanzania. Really all it was was an email from someone saying that there might possibly be something for me, but they weren’t sure and they were forwarding the email onto the right person. That email alone was enough to get me a little excited and for me to realize how much this was what I wanted to work out and I decided to forgo with that deadline and really put some effort into making something work. Yep, Limbo #5. Tanzania turned out to be a dead end and we didn’t hear from them again. At the point, there was a lot of waiting and a lot of people telling me that I should not be contacting posts myself and that I should continue to go through my various bosses. (Peace Corps is a governmental agency after all.) Then, I hear that Botswana wants me to sit in on an interview with a group of other volunteers being considered for a direct transfer there. So, I do that and it goes well, but they are fairly vague with me about if they have something; they clearly have something in mind, but they don’t know if it will work out logistically, so they don’t give me any specific information. Limbo #6? I was only hearing slightly negative things form the Botswana folks, so figured that was a no go. The next day a position pops up in Mali, which isn’t what I was looking for, but looks like a challenging and interesting opportunity. After some normal West Africa communication delays (when you’re in Limbo #6 waiting a few hours can seem like waiting a few days, especially when everyone keeps asking you what you’re going to be doing), I was finally able to set up an interview with those folks only to discover that the position sounds, well, awful and like I would just be extremely frustrated with the work and the organization. So, that’s off the table. Limbo #7? Then, Botswana gets in touch again and it appears that an offer is still on the table and I finally get the information about the organization and it is exactly what I was looking for and hoping for. I start to feel like I’m coming out of limbo. I start to have concrete conversations about when I would be leaving, who I would be working with, where I would be living. It’s getting a little exciting. There’s some detail-y problems about getting some time to go home in the first couple of months which toy with my psyche a little more, but eventually seem like they will get worked out. So, I’m going to Botswana, yeah! Limbo is over, yeah! I start letting people know, yeah! Thursday night I am on my way to write a mass email with the good news and instead find a cautionary email in my inbox (I don’t even remember what about now), so decide to hold off, just in case. The next day I get the go ahead to go on an overnight outing with the other volunteers who are left, because it looks like everything’s going to work out. That night I get a “I have really disappointing news” phone call. Limbo #8. The organization in Botswana flaked out and there is no longer a position with them. Awesome. In the same breath I’m told there is something interesting in Namibia, though not what I’m looking for and there could be something worked out in Lesotho, but it would take a week or two for it to be worked (if it were to work out at all). That was last Friday night. I spent the weekend wondering about Lesotho and finally realized that the universe was speaking loudly and clearly and I simply wasn’t listening. Apparently, it’s time to come home!

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So, as of yesterday, I am no longer in limbo! Unbelievable! I was starting to think it was never going to happen! I could envision a scenario where, if the Mali position had been desirable, I would go home still not knowing if I was staying or if I might be returning to Mali. But, here I am, decided! Here’s the plan as of now: Tonight I fly to Tunisia to meet up with some friends who have been there traveling this entire time, then I fly to Morocco on the 23^rd, will travel overland to Spain, probably fly to Belgium and then be home around mid-December! The one productive thing about all this limbo is that it has put me in the mood for travel. Originally when I was thinking about going home, I just couldn’t imagine traveling at all and just wanted to go home, which seemed like a waste given that I’m already out here. So, now I have a couple of months to do with what I will and then, hopefully, it’s off to New York to start school in January!

Hi from Guinea!

Katy — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:28:56 +0000

It was recently brought to my attention that a most recent blog entry from almost a year ago entitled ‘Still Alive!’ doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence! Oops! I am, in fact, still as alive as ever! Life in Guinea is rolling, tout doucement, as they say. Am busy getting ready for our annual Girls’ Conference and if you are so inclined to give us a helping hand (well, a helping dollar really), we need your help. Go to https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=675-139 for a project summary and to donate! Also working on starting up a new Village Savings & Loan in a nearby village, helping organize a new tourism association, picking up a lot of trash with the tourism agents, teaching English, trying to make bricks out of sawdust and banana skins to usefor cooking fires instead of wood, reading about the history of Africa since Independence (depressing), training for a half-marathon in October, helping a couple of small business owners get their finances in order, and wondering what’s going to come next! In short, I’m well and utterly thankful to be busy! Sorry for the communication lag… am hatching ideas for a couple more food entries, will keep you updated! See you in 2010!

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Still alive!

Katy — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:11:17 +0000

So, I don’t yet have a substantive blog entry for you guys, BUT if you click on the Guinea pictures link, there are a bunch of new pictures posted on my flickr page!

Life is good and busy in Guinea! The picture above is from a morning spent planting 62 pine trees at a nearby touristic site — good times, good times. I’ve also started a Village Savings & Loan, which is a totally cool program that you should all google. I’ve also been participating in a bunch of conferences, my main contirbution being a couple of sessions on women’s rights with a groups of Guinean youth.

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Stay tuned…I promise there’ll be more interesting things to come!

Sauce d'Arachïde (aka Peanut Sauce à la Guinéene)

Katy — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:04:36 +0000

(If you’re unfamiliar with absurd levels of detail, refer to earlier baking post, or see below.)

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A Trip to the Market

Step One: Get Ready

- à la Guinéene:

Put on some of your nicest clothes (lots of people will see you)

- à l’Américaine:

Put on some of your dirtiest clothes (you will get dirty and laundry ain’t easy)

Step Two: Know what to buy, how much to buy and what to pay for it

Ingredient Price Quantity Total

Fresh Fish 9,000 FG/kilo 1 k (3 fish) 9,000

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Peanut Butter 3,000 FG/sack (1c?) 3 sacks 9,000

Potatoes 5,000 FG/kilo 1 k 5,000

Onions 1,000/bunch (5-6) 1 bunch 1,000

Peanut Oil 1,000/sack (2c?) 1 sack 1,000

Tiny Dried Shrimp 500/little bag (2Tb?) 2 bags 1,000

Maggi Cubes 250 each 4 1,000

Tomato Paste 500/little bit (1/4c?) a little bit 500

Piment 500/bunch (4-5) 1 bunch 500

Rice 6,500/pile (2c?) 2 piles 13,000

* Salt! I have a serious inventory of salt sent by my mother, so have yet to have occasion to buy it in the market, have no idea of the price.

** 1 USD = 4,500 GF

Step Three: Learn Local Language

Market language is local language. Market ladies will laugh and laugh at your attempts and they will love you for it and you may even get a cadeau out of it. There is little I find more satisfying than getting a sincere exclamation of surprise or joy or amusement out of a market lady. Plus, you might have to tell her how much the change is supposed to be.

Step Four: Dive In

It’s time to maneuver the crowds of mamas, old men, salt-filled-wheel-barrow drivers, megaphone-toting medication salesmen, kids with bananas/gateaux/cold-drinks-in-plastic-bags on their heads and piles of cow poop. Avoiding eye contact with the young male vendors who are likely to say “Porto, come here” is advised if you want to keep your general mood pleasant. Greeting the women and old men though is not only fun, but necessary. Woe be to him who tries to get a good price on something without first asking after this stranger’s family.

Step Five: Lug Everything Home

Be grateful that you remembered to your bring your good plastic bag with you (Guinean market plastic bags have the sturdiness of soap bubbles). If you are accompanied by a Guinean they will not let you carry anything yourself, lest you should become any more awkward than you already are in the midst of the market or in the street (hitting your head on corrugated tin roofs, slipping in mud, overly politely trying to step around something or someone).

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Finally, We Get To Cook!

Step One: Pre-Heating

First off, get out your handy charcoal burner, load it up and light those babies. If you don’t have a fancy American Bic, you’ll need to use market-bought matches, which are either head-less or simply burn the head up without ever creating a flame. We are making rice and sauce, of course, so you need two handy charcoal burners (though only light one for now, it’ll be a bit before we’re ready to start the rice). Just like Kingsford, the coals are nice and hot when they turn white. You’ll need one rock in each corner to support the weight of the pot.

All the while remember to try to turn off your inner voice that is telling you how much wood is cut down every year to make charcoal, which can be sold at a higher price than wood itself, using a process that actually wastes more wood than charcoal is produced (apparently).

Step Two: Scaling, Gutting, Cleaning the Fish

There is no such thing as boneless, skinless anything in this country (look forward to a future Chicken posting). But, if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford fresh fish instead of the scary, un-yummy dried or smoked varieties, then you don’t complain about the occasional anatomy lesson.

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Scrape off the scales with a knife and slice off the fins (we will be cooking the fish with the skin on). Cut each fish into three big chunks, slicing each one open along the bottom and pulling out the guts. Remember cutting boards are not allowed (because they are non-existent), only dull knives and the good sense God gave you to cut away from yourself (or not). Bones? Not to worry, we will judiciously bite into each one and fish it out of our mouths when eating the finished sauce.

Rinse the fish a couple of times to get rid of all that icky blood.

Step Three: Heating the Oil

Put a big ol’ marmite (heavy, 2-handled pot) on the hot coals and let the marmite itself heat up for a minute. Take your plastic bag of peanut oil and lightly touch it to the bottom of the pot, melting the plastic and releasing the oil, lift the bag away as you squeeze the remaining contents out. Melted plastic on the bottom of your pot? You’re in Guinea, don’t worry about it. Get the oil nice and hot.

Step Four: Salting, Frying the Fish

Generously salt the chunks of fish (as one should salt anything, generously that is). Gently place the chunks of fish in the oil; there’s not a lot of oil, so only put in enough fish to cover the bottom of the pot, saving the heads for last (no idea why). Stir the fish occasionally until all sides of all pieces are nicely brown and crispy. Once all the fish is fried, set it aside and remove the pot from the coals, leaving the oil as is.

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Step Five: Peeling, Cutting the Potatoes

Remember, no cutting boards and also no peelers. Otherwise, I think this is a pretty straightforward step, although I haven’t to be able to replicate the Guinean knife-peeling technique (whether for potatoes or oranges) which is usually short, quick strokes away from the body at an angle almost parallel with the floor (and by “floor,” of course I mean the ground — as an aside: indoor kitchens are a rarity given that electricty is inconsistent at best and in most of the country non-existent, when cooking over fire, whether wood or charcoal, outside is the place to be, consider yourself lucky if there’s at least a roof over your head).

Step Six: “Pilé”-ing Piment, Onions and Dried Shrimp

First of all, the verb “piler” refers to the action of pounding something into a paste (or a powder) in a wooden mortar that sits on the ground with a wooden pestle. It’s the original Cuisinart and many different textures and consistencies can be achieved, if you know what you’re doing (which I don’t). Other than trying to speak Pulaar, trying to pilé is one of the surest ways to feel like the funniest person in the world (and to get oil splattered on your pants).

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So, today what we’re pilé-ing is piment, onions and tiny dried shrimp until it is a fine paste. Piments are Guinean hot peppers. I’ve seen a couple of different varieties but the one in the pictures is by far the most common. They are quite hot, but also have a nice bright red flavor (not like a green-jalapeno flavor). As a condiment on the side, you’ll find minced fresh piment (delish) or dried piment pilé-ed to varying degrees (good for a little kick, but doesn’t add much flavor). In sauces they are usually added to both the sauce itself (pilé-ed and mixed in with the other wet ingredients, usually one if I’m around and two if they’re cooking for themselves) and then a couple are added near the end to be cooked whole for anyone who is looking for a little more heat to partake of. Bad idea: putting one of those whole cooked piments in your mouth, just don’t, really.

I don’t really know the role of those tiny dried shrimp. Once pilé-ed they look like a couple tablespoons of dust and don’t have an obvious impact on either flavor or texture, but in a country where money doesn’t come easy, I imagine they’re not for nuthin’.

Step Seven: Mixing the Peanut Butter, Tomato Paste and Water

As with everything else there’s no exact math here, just eyeballed amounts that balance what you’ve got on hand and how many mouths you have to feed. Also as with most everything else, the more expensive it is (i.e., the less water), the better it is. I’d say, from what I’ve seen, you need at least twice as much water as peanut butter and can stretch your sauce out from there as much as you need to by adding more water. The amount of tomato paste is…you know…some.

Step Eight: Combining, Cooking All with Fish-y Oil

To your peanut-butter/tomato-paste/water mixture, now add the ingredients you pilé-ed and the potatoes.

Put your marmite with the remaing oil from fish-frying back on the coals and heat the oil. Add your sauce and cover. Once it comes to a boil, it continues uncovered.

Step Nine: Heating Water for the Rice

It’s rice time! Get that second charcoal burner going and a big marmite half full of water on it heating up.

For as much rice as is eaten in this country, and for as much as the price has increased (more than doubled in less than a year), rice is a hot topic. There are many issues involved, which I am not knowledgeable enough to expound upon, but to give you an idea of how hot a topic it is here are some of the issues that come up in rice discussions: importing rice to a developping country that is capable of growing enough itself, not subsidizing the cost of rice (leaving the cost of rice at a level where some families are unable to make more than one meal in a day), a population so dependent on rice that alternatives aren’t exploited (lack of creativity? lack of knowledge? preference?). All I know is it is a big deal, and everyone can tell you the price of a sack of rice at any given time, and can tell you how much they make each month relative to the price of a sack of rice.

Step Ten: Picking Through, Washing the Rice

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Well, if you’re a patronne like me, you can afford the “good” rice — a reasonably political statement by which I mean rice that is clean with fine, white grains, but which is also unfortunately rice that has been imported and which at the time cost 6,500 GF and now costs 7,500 GF per pile (a little more than 2 cups, I think). The upside: no rocks on which to break a tooth, essentially no work before you’re able to cook it. The downside: supporting someone else’s economy and lining the pockets of corrupt importers and government officials. (Incidentally, Guinea’s largest rice importer, or so I am told, is currently building a vacation home in my town in the form of a cement palace with 15 ballroom-sized rooms.) Okay, I might be bordering on territory that is inappropriate for an apolitical Peace Corps volunteer and so I will end by saying I should seriously suck it up and spend the 20 minutes to clean my Guinean-grown rice rather than buying the imported stuff. Go Local.

This day Oumou picked through the ethically tainted rice for the few un-shucked hulls and then rinsed it twice in water.

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Step Eleven: Cooking the Rice

When the water is boiling, add the rice and cover. Check in a while and add water as necessary. Stuff any guilt down to where you can’t see it and make mental note to boycott imported rice. (Just by the by, I don’t actually prepare rice at home and so this was my first encounter with personally grappling with rice realities.)

Step Twelve: Finishing the Sauce

Guineans will all say, for no matter what kind of sauce, you know when it’s done when you see “the oil come out.” I’ve asked so many people now in so many different situations, that I do it now just to chuckle at hearing the same exact thing. When the oil starts to appear on the surface that means that a sufficient amount of water has boiled off. Assuming that the potatoes are fully cooked, you can now add the fried fish and the whole piments (if the potatoes are not fully cooked or almost so, then add more water). Crumble and sprinkle the Maggi cubes in. Taste; add salt. Let continue to boil for a little while, softening the piments. Remove from fire. Wrappers of Maggi cubes serve as perfectly adequate pot holders, if you’re Guinean.

Step Thirteen: Watering the Coals

When finished, dump the charcoal out on the ground and sprinkle water over them to stop them burning.

Let’s Eat!

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Step One: Portioning for Many

At this point it is time to divide everything up for the various people who will be eating it. It is likely that you have been preparing not only for yourself and those present, but for your brother who lives on his own up the street and a few others here and there, and there’s also those Americans who have been salivating for the last two hours. So, the sauce gets divded up among several containers with a politcal savvy informing how many of what kinds of pieces of fish go into whose bowls (mid-sections being more desirable than heads, for example) and which bowls the whole piments end up in. The rice, too, will be divided among several containers and will always be very pleasantly molded into a lovely dome shape even if it is to be massacred in a matter of seconds. The political savvy also goes towards informing proportions, no matter how much you protest, women and kids will make a little sauce go a long way, often filling their stomachs with mostly rice.

Step Two: Serving the Americans in a Room By Themselves

Another norm that is hard to break is the expectation that we, as Americans, will be served and will eat in a room all by ourselves, even if there is just one of us. It is normal here for men and women to eat separately, for kids to eat separately, I guess we’re just one more category that eats on its own.

Step Three: Pig Out

I am of the opinion that a finely made sauce such as this one is not meant to savoured, it is meant to be devoured. And, remember, you’re in a room by yourself, so go for it! You should have already practiced your profuse local-language thank-you’s, so that you are able to utter them through your peanut-sauce stupor. Burping is not only acceptable, but appropriate and appreciated — burps away!

Oh, intrepid blog reader, once again, good on ya’ for making it to the end of this long, detailed entry!

We all know that food is culture and I now find myself in a place where I am hit over the head by that fact every single day. Stay tuned…will be cutting the throat of a chicken soon and learning the special process for making fonio (one of those ill-exploited rice alternatives)…many more details to come, I’m sure!

Pictures are here!

Katy — Sun, 04 May 2008 13:36:40 +0000

I am for the first time connected to the internet via my very own laptop! Which means that I can use flickr’s uploader rather than their dumb on-line tool, which means there are pictures for your enjoyment on flickr. Just use the link over there on the sidebar! I have yet to grace the blog itself, but progress has been made!

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Baking in Guinea!

Katy — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:32:33 +0000

Holy smokes! What a trip! I am so sorry I was ever critical of bread in Guinea; I take back anything bad I ever said about Guinean baguettes (except for it not having enough salt); they have to do so much work to produce what they produce that they deserve nothing but admiration. I am fascinated by this process and now feel like there producing a “pas mal” product given their conditions and their equipment.

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There’s a women’s groupement here who has a center for girls’ education (for girls who otherwise won’t have the opportunity to go to school). They teach math, literacy, French and also technical skills like fabric dyeing. They, in the somewhat recent past, received a grant to build a bakery (a wood-burning clay/stone oven with a building built around it, with a little extra space for a baker to work) and have been looking for someone to teach their girls baking skills, enter Katy. We had a few false starts, but I finally got to spend some time (i.e., 7 hours) with the baker who uses the oven currently for baking baguettes to learn how to use it. Below I’ve outlined the completely impressive process for churning out 90+ baguettes in 7 hours with nothing but your two hands and this gargantuan oven. It’s a slightly detailed account, mainly for my own recollection purposes, but I also know that there are a few of you out there who will be as interested as I was in how the process works.

Side note as to the ridiculousness that happenes here sometimes: Dalaba has about 40,000 people in the town itself; I learned last night that it also has a total of 71 of these huge ovens. I simply cannot imagine how after 40 or so ovens, someone thought building another oven was a good idea, which clearly somebody did another 30 or so times. (Granted, this oven I’ll be using was probably the 71st.) Because of this plethora of ovens, and also bakers, there is a bakers’ association that creates a rotating schedule for who bakes/what ovens are in operation on any given day. Each day one half of the ovens/bakers are in use, and they alternate days. The amazing astonishment of this is that there is actually a practical and financial loss by letting an oven not be used for more than day at a time – an oven that has been brought fully up to temperature one day from cold (which takes at least 5 big, long, fat pieces of wood, 3,000GF each to 5,000 GF), can be brought up to temperature the next day in about half the time with about half the amount of wood. Every single baker in town is forced to use their oven in the most inefficient way possible, waiting just long enough for the oven to completely cool before firing it up again. On top of that, since baguettes are usually the only thing they bake in these ovens, no one makes any use of that residual heat to bake anything else that requires lower temperatures and it just goes away. I was amazed! I sort of thought it was in domains like these where practicality won out over everything else, especially when it came to being fiscally conservative, but it seems there was some decree of what “fairness” ordained in the face of more bakers and ovens than the town can employ.

Anyway, here’s what I witnessed:

Mixing

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Even though baking happens at night when there is almost always electricity here in Dalaba, there’s not money for anyone to buy something like a big ol’ mixer, so the baguettes of Guinea (which are even more ubiquitous here than in France, given their lack of any competing breads) are made entirely by hand and are mixed entirely according to look and feel. First, roughly 25 kilos of flour goes into a trough (not dissimilar from Anne’s goats’ feeding trough, though higher off the ground), which is to say a 50 kilo sack is opened and about half of it goes in. A pre-measured “2 gram” plastic bag of salt is added (though was definitely more than 2 grams, given what I saw him measuring out, I couldn’t figure out what he meant by “gram” — he definitely didn’t mean gram, but he didn’t mean kilogram either, an unsolved mystery). A tomato paste can is used to measure out the yeast (good ol’ SAF instant yeast), and it looks like he’s shooting for about 3/4 of a can. He does his best to mix the dries thoroughly and spends at least 5 minutes with his arm swimming back and forth and down into the corners (although he may have been showing off for company). Then in one half of the trough, he starts to compress and pat down the flour, getting it ready to receive a deluge of water; he pours about half a bidon of water (at least the size of a Fry-on container, though it might be bigger….how quickly we forget) into that side and starts swinging his arm back and forth to incorporate the packed down flour underneath a little at a time; once the flour all they way to the bottom has been incoporated, he starts adding some of the flour from the other half of the trough, still one-armed, starting to scrape down the sides and check the corners. At some point it’s clear that more water is needed; the mixture is ressembling dough, but there’s still a bunch of flour left on the other side of the trough, so he makes a wet, sticky mess out of that remaining flour and combines his two mixtures. He’s now working the dough with one hand and adding more flour with other, trying to make the mass a less sticky one. Once he’s got the consistency he’s looking for (fairly wet and loose without being sticky), he repeatedly plunges both hands down into the dough and cuts off a big chunk of dough (like you would if you were plunging your hands into a river to grab a fat fish); the first few chunks (probably a tenth of the entire mass) go back on top of the pile making a space to the side of the trough where the following chunks get transferred as they get sectioned off. He goes through the whole mass of dough like this probably 7 or 8 times, every once in a while tossing some flour in around the edges to keep it from sticking. While he is certainly working the dough, it looks to me like this sectioning off serves more of a mixing role than a kneading role. The dough now rests for maybe 20 minutes or so.

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Kneading
At this point he starts to give the dough double-fisted, straight-elbowed punches directly down into the dough; he seems to be putting the whole weight of his torso into it by way of his two fists and locked arms. (He speaks very little French, so I can’t ask him a million questions; the head of the woman’s groupement is there to be my translator.) He covers the dough with punches and then pulls the far side up and over the rest of the dough, another 10 punches or so, then pulls the near side up and over the rest of the dough, another 10 punches and then pulls the right side up and over the dough, another 10 punches or so and then pulls the left side up and over the rest of the dough – the punching/pulling routine was probably repeated three times, with one 10-15 minute rest in there somewhere. To me it seems like, after all that work, it is only approaching the desired smoothness, uniformity and slight tacki-ness. It looks like the gluten development is coming more from than the pulling than the punching, but it’s hard to say without it having been my hands punching down into it! Given the quantity of dough, this is the back-breaking step.

Bulk Rise, Portioning
After that it rises in the trough; tonight it rose for 30 or 40 minutes and didn’t even double, though I suspect the intention was for it to at least double because he later made a comment about not having added enough yeast. From here he weighs out “3 gram” portions of dough (looked to me like maybe 12 oz-ish), and as the table fills up, pre-shapes each portion into loose boules and lines them up. The dough is still fairly wet, though not sticky, and the boules grow into each other rather quickly. When all the dough is portioned (at least 40 minutes), the dough sits for another maybe 15 minutes and tonight it rose quite a bit on the table. The yield was 94 baguettes.

Shaping
He shapes his baguettes in almost the same way as I think of as being “Dan’s-way-of-rolling-Katy’s-way” – de-gassing, rolling it up in a nice compressed way, flattening again, folding the top edge down to the bottom edge, flattening again, folding the top edge down to the bottom edge again and firmly sealing the seam. To finish it off, he deliberately makes odd little extra bits on the end, which remind me of the unfortunate over-sized outie-belly buttons that are common here.

Final Rise
The baguettes rise on 2 portable shelves separated by canvas, seam-side up. The room tonight was an odd mix of temperatures between the no more than 65 degrees outside and the at least 500 degree oven about 3 feet away, and the baguettes seemed to feel the cold more than heat (the oven radiates amazingly little heat, there must be more effective insulation in the walls than I imagine) and took an hour plus to be ready.

Heating the Oven
The fire gets started in the oven with leftover coals and 3 or 4 new, fat, long pieces of wood about 7 PM. That burns with door of the oven open (and the front chimney open and the back chimney closed) until it stops producing a flame and is smoldering; then the door gets closed and it smolders until everything in the fire is white on top; then several fresh smaller, thinner pieces of wood get added and left to burn again with the door open. This time when it stops producing a flame the fire gets one fresh big piece of wood (I suppose maybe they’re called logs, English is failing me these days), and then maybe another once that one has stopped actively burning. The point of all this is to get the entire oven hot, hot, hot and to have it sustain that heat once the fire itself becomes a more mellow, hopefully constant, smoldering presence. I would say the oven is slightly larger than the size of Cafe Soleil’s copper counter area and probably 7 feet tall with an interior space that is probably 8 by 8 and no more than 3 feet high.

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Cleaning the Oven
The oven has only one chamber, maybe it’s the same with these types of ovens in the States, I don’t know, but I had assumed that the fire was built in a separate chamber, probably below the baking chamber, but the fire is made in the same chamber that the bread is baked in. In order to evenly heat the oven in the first place, the fire is made right in the middle, then once the bread is nearing to be ready to be put in, the smoldering coals get shoved to one side of the oven, and THEN the baker has to wash the deck of the oven, because of course the bread is baked directly on the stone. First this involves a 9-foot-long stick (if not longer) with a metal half-moon on the end for scooping and shoveling the coals to one side, then a different 9-foot-long stick (if not longer) that the baker ties a bunch of t-shirts onto the end of to be dunked in water and used to swab down the part of the deck not occupied by coals. To start he does this about 4 times, re-dunking his t-shirt pole vault in a big bucket of water each time. This obviously cools down the oven a fair bit, which is fine because it is now well after midnight and the oven has been getting progressively hotter for the last 5-6 hours.

Gauging the Temperature
Once the deck is acceptably clean, he dusts it with a heavy smattering of flour and closes the door. It’s temperature reading time, if the flour burns in less than 1 minute, it’s too hot and the t-shirt pole vault goes back in for a few more passes, if the flour burns in about 2 minutes then it’s just right (I don’t think the oven is ever not hot enough, so I don’t know what they do at this point if they discover that the oven is too cool, probably scoop all the coals back into the center and get a little annoyed with themselves for making the bread such that it was ready before the fire and/or starting the fire too late). Tonight, the flour burned in less than 30 seconds, so the oven was too hot and got another 4 or so passes with the t-shirt pole vault.

Prepping Baguettes
Each shelf of baguettes (of about 45 or so) is dealt with in turn, with each baguette getting transferred onto the peel (which can hold three at a time), getting scored (one big, long slash right down the middle), and then getting brushed with a flour-water glaze (really thin, maybe 1 part flour to 8 or even 10 parts water, where half the water gets combined when it is hot but not boiling and then the entire mixture is made to boil in the oven) and then getting placed on the deck. Assuming a non-sprawling set of coals and a skilled baguette-placing baker, the oven can hold about 50 baguettes.

Baking
Generally, the maximum expected time to bake: 8 minutes! And if he’s got a big batch (50 kilos or 75 kilos of flour), he’ll save himself some time by keeping the oven pretty hot, such that the bake time is 4 minutes! It took at least 20 minutes to fully load the oven, with a lot of opening and closing of the door, I’m thinking his 4-8 minute count starts from when he closes the door for the last time on a full oven.

Resting

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Once the bread is baked, albeit mostly rather unevenly, it gets pulled out on the peel and put on flour sacks until the kid sitting there feels like it’s not too hot to touch and he can “clean” it – he takes a rag and rubs down the bottom side of the baguette to get rid of (or try to get rid of) any of the ash that was still on the deck – then the baguettes get placed vertically in the mixing trough to cool, where they will wait until morning to be sold to vendors and individuals. One baguette might get broken into for a quality check. (Tonight he wanted “to make sure there’s not too much salt,” I almost laguhed out loud – it appears the extremely small amount of salt is an actual preference.)

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It is now about 1:30 AM and the bakery needs to be broken down and cleaned, a full day for a Guinean baker. One side effect (of many) of baguettes being the only bread that’s made around here is that when the dough/bread is resting/rising, the baker has nothing else to do; he just sits and waits for the bread to be ready for the next step!

25 kilos flour (250,000 GF for a 50 kilo bag)
“2 g” salt
75% of a tomato paste can of yeast (instant)
80% of a bidon of water
Baguette = “3 g”

(50 kilos = a little over 100 pounds)

Like I said, slightly

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FYI

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:43:39 +0000

Hi! Just uploaded a bunch of posts at once and the meatier ones first, so go down and go back, much new info to be found!!

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Pas de Panique!

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:22:56 +0000

Before heading out to site, Peace Corps gave us a book compiled by previous volunteers called “Pas de Panique!” — it’s a guide to all the little useful things to know about at site, like creative/practical uses for old milk containers, anti-bug strategies, etc. It’s pretty funny and I thought you guys would appreciate a couple of quips from it…

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From a compliation of quotes:

“Just because I rock, doesn’t mean I’m made out of stone.” -PCV

“It’s not unlike some parts of Minneapolis.” -PCV parent in Conakry

One section written by someone who must be a kindred spirit: Success Redefined (As in, “If at first you don’t succees, redefine success.”)

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Success is:

- peeling an orange like a market lady without making any holes.

- arriving at your destination without your or someone else’s vomit on you.

- not spraying your shoes when peeing in the bush.

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- cold beer.

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- making it to the latrine. (Sad, but sometimes true.)

Anyway, just a glimpse into the things have become funny in this world of drinking oranges and (I do realize that puke and pooping one’s pants have always been wonderful sources of amusement, but here in Guinea they carry a new, more sincere comedic weight.)

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SED Games

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:21:49 +0000

There are a lot of things I admire about my APCD, but a big one is his light-heartedness. In the newsletter that goes out he posed a challenge to create 3 themed tongue twisters (Guinean economy, bush taxis, dried fish), 4 lines each. The prize? Your choice of bread pudding with caramel sauce, garlic hummus or a pile of pebbly rice. My submissions may be more alliterative than tongue-twisting, but here they are nonetheless.

Sylla’s sister is a sucky salesman; sales simply isn’t her shtick.

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She certainly has staples to sell: sugar, soap, snacks, shoes.
But, her un-signaged, sad, sagging shop is in shambles and her service is seriously substandard.
Sylla’s sister’s SED friend shall shape up Sylla’s sister’s shop, so Sylla’s sister can start saving!

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Poor portos pay a price to pile into a puny Peugeot.

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Portos who are peeved at being pinched pine for packages plentifully packed with palliatives.
Portos who are patient play pleasantly through the pitching pandemonium.
Portos with plenty of pluck, par contre, are patently pleased with the panoply of people, pails, parcels and papaya.

The Phenomenon of dried fish:
Frail flounder fossils, found lying feebly in a fishy funk.
Faux fish with fairly frightful, fragile fins.

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Frankly, a feeble feast failing to fill a famished foreigner.
With forbearance, the finicky feeder forgoes fussing and fretting, finally forking the phony flounder.

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Since you asked…

Katy — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:20:40 +0000

I’ve had a couple more people ask about sending things which is wonderful and generous of you – here’s my list of coveted Americana:

Pepperoni, Beef jerky

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M&M’s
Crystal Light and Propel mixes

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Powdered soup mix
Powdered sauce mix (esp. Knorr Alfredo, Kraft cheese and McCormick Sloppy Joe)
Dried fruits and nuts

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(Oh, and Mom, if you come across any short-sleeve or no-sleeve polos that would be AMAZING)

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My mom is a package-sending expert, so she can share with you all the tricks for making sure packages get here. FYI: it ain’t cheap and every little thing sent is charished, so don’t think I’ll be disappointed with something small!

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