Rainy reset

(note: this post was written a week ago. I did not have internet to post until now. Will post an update soon)

Everyone here is so welcoming and friendly. Many have travelled to visit just to see the American married to a Guinean man which just doesn't happen. They all have very kind words and well wishes. The girls are starting the make some friends. My sister in law's family lives close by and the children of various ages come frequently to play. We continue to explore the city and make a final decision of which French school to enroll the girls. 

On a couple of our outings we have had some encounters with the police. The first one made me very nervous. We were on our way to a wedding and needed to make a u-turn. We made it to a busy intersection that an officer was attempting to take charge of. We attempted to make a left turn and were immediately stopped. The officer began yelling. My husband and his brother started yelling back; this is when I started getting very nervous since I couldn't understand anything. They yelled back and forth for a while. My husband refused to give the officer his driving permit. We started driving forward as a second officer came to the car and tried to stop him to no avail. We drove away with my heart racing. The police didn't do anything about it. When I asked what happened I was told that the police officer said we should have moved forward three more inches before making a left turn. Seriously??!? What was really going is that he wanted the driving permit so that he could bribe us to get it back. 

The second encounter was actually legitimate. Our car was missing a vignette on the windshield. We were forced to go buy one immediately along with a 25% late fee. While I waited a female police officer came over to say hello. Hawa was nursing at the time and I was covering up a bit with a scarf. She gestured for me to remove the scarf and was very excited to see that I was nursing. A few minutes later she came back and proceeded to intentionally mess with Hawa becuase she thought it was hilarious to distract Hawa enough to pull off repeatedly leaving me fully exposed. Never in the United States.

Living in Conakry is such a rollercoaster. Every day I have hit rock bottom for any of the following reasons: no power, no water, too hot, no food readily available, food available but no power to cook myself (most cook outside on open charcoal - I have yet to learn this skill and I may choose not to). Nighttime is especially challenging with the added threat of mosquitoes. They stay away with fans on. With no power it's too hot to close everything up and Hawa strongly protests sleeping in the heat. Because the power only comes on for about half the day right now I find myself hoping power does not come on during the day. Yesterday it came on in the afternoon and I was seriously concerned; never thought I would ever be upset about having power. Somehow, every day Conakry redeems itself with playing children, beautiful views, glorious breezes and some pretty magnificent storms.

We had our first daytime storm today. The girls' had so much fun outside using one of the balconies as a slip and slide. With the rain comes cooler weather and a break in the humidity. Reset successful.