Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Evacuation Life

I think it was October 8th I left Guinea not knowing that it'd be the last time I would see my home, my family and my friends. We were evacuated to Mali, Bamako to await the inevitable news that they would suspend the Guinea program. I didn't think it possible but there we were with only three days to decide what next.

I miss my village more than anything and not being able to say those goodbyes and have that closure makes it even harder to realize that my Guinea service is over. I did a good strong two years and am looking to transfer to Mali.

Being evacuated was weird cause the country was still pretty much the same, it's just all these strangers leaving to let Guinea fight it's own battle. We were able to get everyone out of the country in like 4 days, yet we only had 2 days to say our final farewells. There wasn't much change going on, things were the same. Yes there was a terrible massacre and people were grieving and people were scared, but I felt so safe in my village. In the villages it was fine, in larger cities it was calm. You wouldnt have though there was over 100 people killed for no reason in the region's capital.

So arriving in Bamako we were walking around and waiting for word for about 2 weeks, then given the bad news that in the next 3 days we need to relocate ourselves. ok. No problem. Then thats it.