I Dreamed of Africa: Welcome to Guinea

Our First View of Guinea from the Plane

We are in Guinea at last. After a total of sixteen hours of flight time from Chicago to Guinea, we arrived. The temperature and humidity hit us the moment we stepped off of the plane, and we were immediately drenched in sweat. After going through customs and collecting our baggage, we were loaded into Mercy Ships vehicles and taken to the hotel where we will be staying for the next two weeks. Our new work assignment is working at the local school for deaf children. We are painting their classrooms and doing general repairs. Our transportation is a VW style minibus with four wooden benches in it. The seventeen of us, plus driver, crowd inside. It is a tight fit, but somehow we manage it.
The children are so excited to see us every morning. I learned some basic sign language when I was younger, which has been of great benefit. Even though the main language here is French, I am able to communicate with the teachers and children in the school with sign language.

First Rule of African Taxies: There is Always Room for One More

The Children Were Facinated by My Long Hair

With Some of the Schoolchildren

After the classrooms were cleaned and painted, I and my teammate Gabriela were placed in charge of designing and painting murals for the classroom walls. We have finished two of them already, a mural of the solar system and undersea scene. We also started to paint a map of Africa, and next week we plan to start a map of the world, paint the sign language alphabet on one of the outer walls and finish the map and flags of Africa. The heat makes the work exhausting and we are so grateful that the hotel has a pool that we can cool off in at the end of the day. I have fallen in love with these children, especially the head teacher's daughter Aichat. She hardly speaks. Her father is deaf, and she and her family live at the school. Surrounded as she is by children who do not speak, she converses much more in sign language than she does with speech, but she is such a dear child and always comes running for a hug from me whenever we arrive.