Week 4, OR Haters Be Hatin'

Many of you probably already know that last Monday, there was an attempted coup against the president of Guinea, Alpha Conde. On the day itself, most roads leading into the city were closed, and only the interns came to work to use the internet. I'm not going to lie- it was a little scary. I spent most of Monday night worrying about whether there would be violence in the streets reminiscent of September 28^th. Mostly because, well, the locals kept telling me that there would be violence in the streets reminiscent of September 28^th.

Luckily, everything is okay-ish now! There haven't been any riots or outbreaks of violence that I know of. A new Minister of Justice was just appointed, so there have been a lot of changes amongst all of the tribunals, making work fairly difficult for the last week and a half. Add that to the attempted coup and additional security everywhere, and you have a recipe for a very grumpy Mandy.

The good news? I've liberated two people in the past week. So far, my count is up to five during my entire stay. The kid that we got out of prison last week came back to visit me at the office a few days ago. He said he wanted to thank me before he went back to his village in Sierra Leone. 


Then he asked for my phone number. Touché, kid.

They can take away your liberty, but they can't take away your game.

So aside from the attempted coup against the state and the closed tribunals, things have been going pretty well! I even got some souvenir shopping in last weekend, during which my fellow intern, Jeny, and I thought we would look for some novels to read in French. After spending a fair amount of time explaining to the book-selling-guy exactly what we were looking for, he got very excited and led us all the way through the enormous marketplace where we had been shopping. Ten minutes and three vendors later, he emerged holding several Harlequin romance novels looking quite pleased with himself. My favorite was “Le Cowboy Romantique”.

We eventually left the marketplace and abused our wallets at some great artisan shops next to the water. After all of our money was gone we were too tired to shop anymore, we sat on a wall along the boardwalk and looked out at the water while a live band played in the background. Lovely. 

Anywho, that's about it! I have some pretty cool updates about my animals here, which I promise I shall share with you soon. :)

Here's a sneak peak...