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June 12, 2003, hey gang. i hope you all are well and happy and enjoying increased success in both your work- and love-lives, or at least the possibility of success in the near future, and if not, that’s ok too, things’ll turn around. yeah? it’s been a few months and you all need an update. no, i have not been murdered by a jealous wife, though back in march it seemed as though maybe that might have become a possibility......uh, nevermind. nor have i been trampled by wild buffalo or poisoned with the nocturnal rifle or sent into the jungle to find the two french men whose ultra-lights crashed somewhere over near the congo. i am writing to you from the land of milk and honey, clotted cream and shepherd’s pie. that’s right. jolly old england. no, i have not yet left gabon for good. my folks are here in london since january and with my last 8 vacation days i’ve come up to visit and shop and remember what it’s like to see rows and rows of stores and hundreds of white people at every corner. it has not been as bad as i had feared. mom and dad are great and having a fabulous time – this was always one of the places they wanted to live for a while, you know, with the museums, and the theatre, and the restaurants. there are middle aged geezers like my dad at every turn so i think they feel much more comfortable here than say, in new york, where the young people are equally trendy but the old people are less......calm. Gabon is good. the last few months have been busy – the end of school has all these holidays, so there’s less time to work with students. i took the aids club to tchibanga for kara’s AIDS soiree, where we did skits and then went dancing (and drinking...i was a chaperone, it was wierd, but everyone had fun and no one died, so good for me). then we made a condom costume out of an old shower curtain and did a little parade for international condom day (feb 14). i had trained them to do aids talks back in february as well, so in april we started our Tour of Ndende, to talk in all the neighborhoods and the primary schools. we even a catholic youth group, which was one of the easier audiences to reach, actually. catholics here don’t have condom hangups, at least not as many as the christian alliance kids. the kids put together their own presentation, with an outline i gave them (HIV vs AIDS, transmission, how it attacks the body, prevention, don’t reject people, conclusion, condom demo), and boy – they do a bang up job. now with so much practice they’ve gotten really good at answering all the tough questions:
"How am I s’posed to have kids if I have to use
condoms?" and many more. Also at the end of the year, in addition to the Tour, we organised a drawing contest and put the winning design up at the main crossroads/market, where all the high school kids and all the people traveling through town have to look at it, every day. there will be pictures on the web soon – www.econ.uiuc.edu/~hanko/gabon.html. my postmate did the line drawing and the aids club kids did the coloring. we’re all pretty pleased with ourselves. right before i left town we organised another big soiree, with modern and traditional dance groups from tchibanga and mbigou, skits, eating contests, and certificats for all the big men who’ve given us money this year for the Club. Plus certificats for the club members and the winners of the drawing contest. it was a lot of work, mostly at the last minute, because that’s just how things go here – you control so few aspects of the situation that you just gotta go with the flow. we fed fifty people that night, all the invited dancers, plus the group we were paying to help us with security (you had to pay fifty cents to get in, so we had to put up barriers of palm branches and school desks and then patrol everything). i’ve learned to delegate authority and i mostly let Destin, the photographer/university student, run the show. i just paid people and coordinated from above. everything was working great, but we forgot about the high school genie. we didn’t ask permission to make a lot of noise and so he wrecked our speakers and our microphones. the sound system, which had worked fine previously (and worked fine the day after), just would not cooperate. it sounded like we were underwater. so we had to cut the program short, stick to the dance groups, the eating contest, a couple skits, the certificats. we were pretty bummed but it turned out hardly anyone noticed but us – the audience didn’t know we only did a third of the program. two days later i left town. COS conference in libreville, to find out about health insurance when i get home and where my readjustment allowence will be sent to, and to drink large amounts of alcohol with people i’ve seen only three times since swear-in. allison is seeing a minister and stringing along a deputy, so fortunately we never had to pay for anything. now i’m london for a week, then back to libreville for two weeks of pre-training. a new group of volunteers arrives at the end of the month and i’ll spend all of july in Gabon’s biggest backwater teaching them about.....well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. i’m working with Martin, the health trainer, and he’s completely competent and completely adorable, and if it were anyone else i’d say screw em and go back to be with my friends in ndende. But martin, he’s a sweetheart, and I can’t say no. after the training i go to mimongo for my neighbor’s wedding, and then back to ndende for a month before i COS september 12. a week or so in bamako and then Home. my tentative plan for Home is to chill out for a month or two and then try to find a job. I’m looking at getting an MPH, starting 2004, so i might just move to the place i’d like to end up for school and look for something to occupy me....i don’t know. it’s not really well thought out. boston, washington, baltimore, new orleans.....if you have any suggestions (or warnings!) let me know. if you’re thinking about sending packages, don’t, because it’s not sure i’ll get them before i leave, and i don’t really need anything anyway. i’m stocking up on barbecue sauce here in london for July 4 and that’s really the only thing tempting me in the stores, besides all the Gap clothes on sale. I’ve found it very easy to fall back into the consumerism, which is slightly disturbing. But there’s just so much stuff. The first day I nearly keeled over from too much visual stimulation. All the ads! On the buses! The display windows! Look here! buy this! yes, well. I think that’s enough. I hope you all are having a wonderful summer and getting to wear fun warm-weather clothes and do exciting outdoor activities. be well, do good work, smile often, love/hugs/smooches where appropriate, hannah p.s. congratulations to Brian, who just got married! (i hope!) |