Koinadugo, Program Review, and the End of Sierra Leone

As I feared, the lack of Internet access in Sierra Leone severely limited the frequency of my blogs.  As it stands, this is getting posted from London Heathrow airport, where I thankfully have wireless.  I want to catch up on the last two weeks so that this feels complete, so I’m going to try to get through some stuff pretty quickly.

Our last week of fieldwork was held in Kabala, which is in the Koinadugo district (which is the diamond district) and is about five hours north of Freetown.  Everyone had been telling us that Koinadugo is the coldest region of Sierra Leone, and I was really looking forward to some cool air.  However, being the coldest region in Sierra Leone is basically like being the tallest dwarf, so it was still pretty hot.  It is actually up in the mountains, so it gets nice and cool at night and in the morning, and apparently in January it even gets some snow, so relatively, yes, it is a “cold” place.  Either way, it is extremely beautiful and has really awesome mountains jutting out everywhere.  Pretty cool.  That week’s emphasis was POG readiness assessment, so we went around to different communities assessing who has received their goats, if the goats are surviving and giving birth, and who is ready to pass along the offspring.  I continue to love going into the communities; the people are always so warm and welcoming, and we have ended up learning basic conversation in about five or six different tribal languages.  It’s always fun to try speaking to people in their native languages, and they always laugh and get pretty tickled about the fact that you’re trying.  Koinadugu is Heifer SL’s newest project area, and was only initiated in June, so it was interesting to see a fairly new project get up and running.   We especially loved our supervisor for this district, Abdul, who is a tiny little guy who weirdly reminds me of a mix between the Chinese guy from the Hangover and Samwise Gemgy from Lord of the Rings.   I’m not quite sure what kind of image that leaves you with, but he is precious and drinks milk out at the bars while bouncing around snapping and clapping and dancing. 

The last couple of weekends we spent solely in Freetown.  It has been nice staying in Freetown (even though this does mean that we didn’t go to the beach) and going out with all the people and friends we have been meeting.  We went to an Afro Beats concert at the National Stadium, which we were really excited about since we have been listening to tons of great music here and some of our newly favorite artists were going to be performing.  Of course, this is Sierra Leone, so nothing actually happened as was expected.  For one thing, the concert started at 4:00 pm.  However, nobody started getting there until at least 10:00 pm.  We didn’t get there until around 11:30 or so, and even then, the main performers didn’t even start until around 2 or 3 in the morning, and the main headliner didn’t even go on until 4 in the morning (also, two of the three headliners never even showed up; one was in Germany on a European tour, and I’m fairly certain he didn’t even know he was supposed to be at the concert and that someone just thought it would be a good idea for advertising if they said he was coming).  Anyway, Ice Prince was the main headliner, and at 4 in the morning, went on for about thirty or forty minutes, and it was totally worth waiting because he’s pretty awesome and we really like a lot of his songs.  The other nights in Freetown were spent going to some of our favorite places and staying up until five or six in the morning (Freetown is very much like Spain in that way, and your nights out don’t really start until two in the morning).   

Our last week found us back in Port Loko, the district about two hours away where we spent our very first week in the field.  However, we weren’t going for fieldwork; instead, we went with the entire Heifer Sierra Leone staff (which is 25 people, including us) for the yearly country program review.  We were actually very fortunate to be included in this, and it was a really great opportunity to see how the staff comes together to evaluate themselves and their work and move forward during the next year.  We were encouraged to participate and contribute, and on the second day gave a presentation about our experience as interns, offering our key findings as well as suggestions for Heifer’s future programming.  It was really well received and people seemed to really appreciate it.  I won’t get into too many details about the inner workings of Heifer, but it was extremely interesting to see how the staff regarded each other and the various dynamics between the different levels of staff.  It was a really wonderful time in Port Loko – it actually started out terribly because we were supposed to go to the MJ Hotel (where we stayed the first time we were there), which has air conditioning and wireless, and we hadn’t had Internet in weeks and were anticipating actually getting some work done, but due to a serious of unfortunate events, we ended up staying at a place still in the middle of construction that was more or less terrible.  However, a few things really picked us up, and one was that the entire staff stayed there, so we got to spend a lot of time hanging out with people, and we also had a wonderful cook, Mr. Conteh, who made us delicious food that was not cassava leaves and fish.  It was a really great way to end the internship experience – on the last night the whole staff went out together and I really enjoyed the company of everyone. 

We came back from Port Loko on Wednesday, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t hit me that I was leaving two days later.  I can’t even remember what I did those two days.  We went out, ate at our favorite places, visited the Heifer office to say goodbye to people, and wrapped up our lives in Freetown.  It seems surreal, especially sitting here in London now, that I just spent the last four months in Africa.  While I was there, each day felt like 50 hours and weeks felt like months, but now that I’ve left, I feel like it all happened entirely too quickly.  Crazy. 

Kailahun District: The Soil is Our Bank

Greetings!  First of all, holy crap I can’t believe it’s December!  Second of all, I am happy to report that I am in a much better mood than during my last post, which, upon rereading, I feel like I at least could tell that I was completely miserable while writing it.  Fortunately, this past week was a huge, much-needed pick-me-up, which is great for me but bad for you because I will probably be writing a ton of stuff! I will try to not depict every detail of every day, but it has been a substantially awesome week and there has been tons of great stuff going on!

Going into this week, we were really interested in what we would find in Kailahun for a number of reasons.  For one, it is the furthest away we could possibly be from Freetown, and is located right where Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia meet.  Also, Kailahun is where the civil war started, where it ended, and was really hit the hardest, so we were going to see an area that experienced pretty sustained devastation.  Along with that, we knew going into this that Kailahun used to be one of the most prosperous regions in Sierra Leone, so I was interested in contrasting its former grandeur with what I was going to see there now.  Finally, we had been told many times that Kailahun was an area rich with natural resources, and is the breadbasket of Sierra Leone, so I think that given all these things, we were really excited about this piece of our field work experience. 

Unfortunately, the drive to get to Kailahun is quite far, and not at all comfortable.  It took around ten hours to get there (we were supposed to leave at nine in the morning but, in true African fashion, left after one instead), and the last three or four hours of the drive is on incredibly bumpy, unpaved roads.  Other than that, it was a really scenic, beautiful drive (although I did take a Dramamine so I was mostly sleeping and just peeking out the window every once in awhile).  We arrived late at our Guest House, which is actually really cool because it’s a large compound of rooms.  We probably didn’t make the best first impression; we got there late and then demanded rooms with air conditioning and hot water (to be fair, we pay to have those things and they tried to screw us over a little bit).  Actually, it was pretty entertaining when we were picking rooms, because the guy showing us around was trying to get us to spend the most money (we each had to get our own room, but Kelly and I wanted to share a room and they said they don’t allow same-sex people to share rooms), and as he was showing us around to different rooms exploring our options, Tim found a sheet of paper that had a list of everything you are entitled to in the guest house, which included a working TV with six channels, air conditioning, hot water, and internet, and when Tim showed it to the guy he ripped it up, which I found hilarious (to his credit, I like his style).  He also told us that we needed to take 4 rooms, but that only 2 of us could run our air conditioning at once, otherwise it would blow the whole generator, so he tried not to turn the air conditioners on at all.  Luckily, we beat him down on these things, and Kelly and I ended up in an air-conditioned room with the hot water turned on.  (Side note: there are now fifteen guests instead of just the four of us, and everyone runs their air conditioners at the same time and there are no problems.  Go figure.) We got some much-needed sleep, and really enjoyed staying at the guesthouse ever since that first, not-so-great, night (and the guy who showed us around loves us now).  

We started work bright and early on Monday, and met with our field officer, Stephen Musa, to begin our week’s project.  (Basically, each week when we are in the field there is a different output expected of us; one week it was participatory assessments, one week it was readiness assessments for POG, and this week it is sustainable livelihood assessments.)  The first day we didn’t get into the actual communities, but were driven around introducing ourselves to the various stakeholders in Kailahun district.  One thing I really like about Heifer’s work is that they continuously partner up with other NGOs, IGOs, and government ministries if necessary to holistically improve their communities.  I really like this idea, because one frustrating thing about development is that you want to have an organization that concentrates on one thing, for example livestock and agriculture, as Heifer does, because then you can maximize your work, but you need to do a lot more to actually fix a community than give them any one thing.  Health, education and water matter just as much as the animals, and since it is too much for Heifer to encompass all of those things, so they form various partnerships and holistically approach community development projects.  I just realized that this is an extremely long paragraph, so let me move right along.

The next day we went into the field, about an hour away, to the Kangama community, where we would be conducting a sustainable livelihood assessment, which is basically a way of saying you collect information from the community itself about everything going on there – what they have, what they need, what they want, and how they live.  We were greeted, as is becoming custom, with a loud song and dance from the women, but normally the songs end after a few minutes, and this one went on for about a half hour, which culminated in people thrusting babies into my arms and me getting my groove on with all the ladies, as well as a little dance-off with a four year old (I obviously lost, although I’m certain he was copying my moves).  One of my favorite parts of the whole day was the introduction.  We sit at a table in the front, and Stephen introduced each of us.  Each time he introduced us, we said our name, and everyone repeated it several times, and then Stephen asked if there is anyone in the community with that name.  I found out that I am the only Jessica (at least for a few miles around) and Kelly found out that there are other Kellys in the community, but that they are all men.  The women got a big hit out of the introductions, and it was a good time.  The meeting was a community meeting, and had all the stakeholders and key people from Kangama in attendance.  Particularly, there are two women groups that Heifer works with directly, so they were there, as well as the local chief and some men.  I could get into many, many details about the meeting, and there is a lot to observe, particularly about gender relations.  The men frequently negated what women said, or discounted their opinion, or answered questions about women for them, but some of the women were pistols, and a few made sure they got the floor and said what they wanted to say.  The best part of the entire day was when we were talking about education, school dropouts, and teen pregnancy, and one man (who is a teacher at the primary school) went on a pretty long rant about bad parents and that the parents are to blame for the problems with the youth.  Now, normally, I get a huge kick out of blaming parents, and I make it a point to try to blame my parents for at least several things a day, but there are certainly a lot of other issues going on, and this man was telling a group of women, who were picked for Heifer because they were widows, that they were bad parents.  The plight of women here, under normal married circumstances is not the best, and many of these widows have not only their own children to take care of, but children from their husbands’ other wives (polygamy is a big thing here) to take care of.  So, it was not entirely appreciated by the women to get the full brunt of the blame.  Well, let me now finally get to the best part, because as this man is ranting about blaming bad parents, a woman stands up and says to him “Well your son got my daughter pregnant, so what do you have to say about that.”  SHIZAM!  Everyone cheered and laughed and I mean, the guy totally deserved it.  Anyway, enough about that, the community meeting was extremely long, and tedious (but in a good way because it’s all about process and the process is a good one).  After the meeting, we had lunch and then walked through the community to see it (one thing we also did was generate a community map) and did a few individual interviews with a teacher and health workers.  Again, there is a lot I could say here, but education and health over here really is unfortunate and the amount of sickness and illness that people live with on a daily basis is enough to make you want to run away and not even think about, because the unfairness of it is entirely too much.

After going into the field and doing this assessment, we spent hours and hours and hours putting it all together; we took all the data, interviews and information and put them into analysis and reports and are ultimately coming up with a report where we propose a project for the community based on their needs.  They actually choose three things that they need the most, and their number one need is a rice mill for harvesting crops more efficiently, so that’s the intervention we are attempting to plan, propose, and achieve.  It is some of the most tedious work I have ever done, not in a bad way, but in a way that makes your internship completely worthwhile and you see how painstaking the process is. 

Aside from all that, we have done some really cool stuff in Kailahun.  Like everywhere else we’ve been, it’s an incredibly friendly and welcoming town, and we enjoy walking to and from the office and interacting with people.  We’ve taken okadas a couple of times (the motorbikes), and went out on Wednesday night (which is a country-wide Ladies Night, although if you’re not in Freetown, there really isn’t anywhere else to go) and went to a cool, local outdoor bar (it was more like someone’s big backyard with a stage) and saw a comedian who is apparently like the Chris Rock of Sierra Leone.  I can’t imagine ever seeing Chris Rock for free in a backyard bar in Eldersburg, but TIA.  There were a lot of young kids there, including a group of 12-year-old boys who I, once again, got in a dance competition with. It honestly was so weird that night because we felt like celebrities must feel when they go to a bar; for one thing, we had a security detail of a few guys (who were friends with our Heifer boss, who was also there) who were acting like our managers and setting up photo ops with people and then making people stand in a circle around us and take turns talking to us and stuff.  It was a little weird, but once we broke through all that, some dancing ensued and it was good times.  It got shut down when it started pouring, and we ended up taking motorbikes back to our hotel (I think about how my mother would have killed me to see me get on a motorbike with a stranger from a bar in Sierra Leone at three in the morning with no helmet on during the rain, but it really is what you do here and it’s so safe and nice and fun.  Except that night going up a small hill our bike happened to stop working and we happened to fall to the side and I happened to jack up my knee a little bit, but totally fine otherwise). 

The other cool place we went was Koindu, which is a town literally right on the border with Guinea and Liberia, and it’s where the war broke out first.  It is a really cool, sleepy town, and Kelly actually mentioned that it reminds you of the Wild West, and it really does.  I’ll put up pictures of some of the buildings and streets, because it’s exactly what it reminds me of.  One thing that’s crazy about that place is that there are tanks from the war literally just on the side of the road for you to hop on, look at climb on.  There are also ruins everywhere, not like ancient ruins, but from the war, there are crumbled houses and stuff with trees and vines and plants growing all over them.  It’s crazy to be there and think that before the war, it was the busiest, most populated, well-off town, and now it’s empty and people are scared to ever go back.  I would love to see it in its former grandeur to compare. 

That’s it for now.  I thought I did a good job keeping this short (you have no idea how much stuff I left out) but alas, it is long again.  It was a really fantastic week here, and I think that so far, Kailahun has been my favorite place in Sierra Leone.  We head back tomorrow, and then are going to a concert on Saturday in Freetown at the national stadium, which I’m sure will be a lot of fun!

I have thoroughly enjoyed finally having Internet again, and will hopefully have a few more posts before I check out of here on the 16! 

Western Rural District, Thanksgiving, and No2 River

I feel like I am getting behind in my posts, and I’m in the middle of a week and haven’t written about last week yet, but to be perfectly honest I don’t really feel like writing that much (this is probably good news for you, since usually these are incredibly long).  I’ll just throw a few things out there and hopefully get some pictures up soon.  Last week we were in the field in the Western Rural District, which is all about 45 minutes to an hour away from where we live in Freetown.  We spent Monday through Thursday on site (visiting four communities) preparing them for a POG (Passing on the Gift) ceremony that happened on Thursday.  The POG ceremony is when people pass on the offspring from the animals they had received.  Some stuff to throw out: one of my favorite groups was a women’s empowerment group, and they are all widows from the war and IDPs.  They had their shit together the most, and are also the funniest, nicest women ever, so I really enjoyed them.  The Western Rural district is hard; apparently there are way less NGOs that operate there, and it is hard to get the people to fully participate in the process, so we saw some more contentious meetings than we did in Port Loko.  Also, I know I have told a few people this, and I wasn’t sure whether or not to include it in my blog (but I feel like it would have been fake not to), we had a bit of a horrific experience on Thanksgiving.  The day started out wonderfully but ended terribly.  Kelly’s husband, Steve, came to visit, so Kelly was very thankful for that, and Steve brought me pretzels and peanut butter, so I was incredibly thankful for that, and the plan was for him to come with us into the field (for the POG ceremony), then go to a chimpanzee rescue reservation, and then to the beach for Thanksgiving weekend.  These things all happened, but after our last POG ceremony, we had the very unfortunate experience of watching an eight-year-old girl from our Morthaim community die.  She had drowned in the river, and Kelly and Steve attempted CPR for a while, but it didn’t work out, and it was really terrible.  I don’t want to get into it much more, but it certainly put a huge damper on our experience.  We continued with our plans and tried to salvage the trip (the chimps reserve helped, as well as lobster dinner on the beach).  It sucks when something like that happens and shifts your perspective on a whole place for a little while, and I know it doesn't negate all the great things we have seen, but it definitely shifted things a bit and I think we're trying to bounce back.  Since then, we had a 10 hour drive out to the Kailahun District, which is really awesome, and that’s where we are spending this week.  Hopefully I have another blog up at the end of it!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and is getting into the Christmas spirit – I have a lot of catching up to do when I get back! 

Banana Island :-)

Happy Monday, Everyone!

Actually it’s Tuesday, but I wrote this out on Monday, and I didn’t get any Internet until today, but I’m keeping my original saying.  I hope you all had a great weekend.  I missed a very special event this past Sunday, the christening of my newest cousin, Maeve Elizabeth Butler.  I was very sad to miss out on her special day (and spent the entire day wondering if my mother was as entertaining as she was at the last christening…), but luckily had a pretty fantastic day of my own, seeing as we spent the weekend at Banana Island.

Banana Island is relatively close to Freetown, and pretty easy to get to.  You have to take a boat to get there, so we drove from Freetown to Kent beach, which is a little over an hour drive away, and then we got taken on a boat (which is called a pampah) to the island.  The boat ride takes about 30 minutes, and is a really beautiful ride.  You can look back at the coast, and look ahead toward the island, and everywhere you look is bright blue skies, white sand beaches, vibrant green trees in the jungle, and you feel like you are in the middle of Jurassic Park, which is a feeling I’ve had pretty frequently over here. 

We arrived on Banana Island and were led to our hostel/guesthouse, called Dalton’s Banana Island Guesthouse.  There are only two guesthouses on the island, one is Dalton and one is Banana Island Guesthouse.  The Banana Island costs the equivalent of about 35 US dollars per night, and Dalton cost about $2.50.  (How can you turn down an opportunity to stay overnight at the beach for less than three dollars?)  Kelly had looked the place up on Lonely Planet and Trip Advisor, so we knew that the place was “rustic” and wasn’t going to have too many amenities, but we were looking forward to having a real deserted beach experience, and we certainly got one.  Dalton’s is run by a Greek guy, Gregory, who has been running the place for about five years, and has another five or six local young guys that live and work there.  I’ll put up pictures rather than describe it in too much detail, but it was very awesome and had a big (I don’t know how to describe it exactly) tree house fort to lay on, thatched hut rooms, and was right on the beach.  We were only there for a weekend, but it is actually very freeing to spend some time living without electricity for a few days.  Also, we had the best meals we have eaten so far here in Sierra Leone.  It is actually a paradise for vegetarians, because there is no meat served, and instead we had tons of good pasta (I think since Gregory is Greek he makes sure there is olive oil), as well as fresh humus, fullah, and warm, freshly grilled bread.  For breakfast you get fresh eggs (that come directly from all the chickens running around) as well as potatoes and fried plantains.  Dinner was the best meal, because Gregory goes out every day and catches fish for dinner, so dinner is always the fresh catch of the day.  There were three kinds of fish we had, one of grouper, mackerel, and something else I can’t remember, and they were served with rice, couscous, pasta, olive oil, more hummus, and maybe some other things that I can’t remember but were absolutely delectable.  The best part of all of this is that at the end of the weekend they tally up your bill (because you pay for each meal), but our total, which was for the room, the boat ride to get to the beach, and all of our meals, was about $25.00.  This simply can’t be beat.  

The beaches there were also really beautiful.  The guesthouse is right on the water, and then there is a five minute trail through the woods that leads to another, slightly more beautiful, beach down the way.  The water is perfect – not cold at all, but not too warm, so it is always refreshing, and the water is completely clear.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again every time I go to a beach here, but this place is the unsung hero of beaches.  They are absolutely beautiful and nobody knows about them or comes here.  I’ll throw up some pictures when I can.  It’s hard to get the pictures up, so it might be a few weeks of writing and then I’ll go back and add photos and videos.

This week we are in the field again, but the district is the Western Rural district, which is where Freetown is located, so we will just be commuting every day about twenty minutes away to the rural district.  We’re really excited for another week of fieldwork, and to start comparing the different districts around Sierra Leone.  

Also, let me just throw out a preemptive HAPPY THANKSGIVING, in case I don’t get any Internet the rest of the week.  I am incredibly sad to be missing out one of my favorite days of the year (and the official kickoff to Christmas, even though I like to kickoff for Christmas around Labor Day), and I would like to throw out there that in light of everything I’ve done the past few months, and really the whole past year, and really just generally in life, I am very thankful for all of the wonderful things in my life.  I certainly have a lot to be thankful for, so that’s my thanks for the year!

Have a great week, everyone!

Port Loko: Apohto is the New Mzungo

For our first week of fieldwork, we were sent to the Port Loko district, which is only about two hours north of Freetown (correction: it is two hours north of Freetown after you spent an hour and a half getting out of the city itself because there is so much traffic).  We were really excited to get into the field and get some hands-on experience, and were also anticipating some rough accommodations.  You cannot imagine our surprise when the guesthouse we arrived at provided us with rooms that had wireless Internet, hot running water, flat screen TVs, and air conditioning.  I noticed this in Tanzania, and am now noticing it here, but African countries are places of paradox.  We are in one of the most rural, poor districts in one of the least developed countries in the world, but are enjoying amenities that we don’t even have on our mansion in Freetown.  Does any of it make sense?  Absolutely not, but I am greatly appreciative of a hot shower (taking a week off from the bucket is nice).  Port Loko is much hotter than Freetown (it has been around a hundred degrees and we are in the sun all day), so air conditioning is the single greatest thing that could have possibly happened to us.  (Side note: the power at the guesthouse is shut off from 7:00am through 5:00pm, so this is the only way the massive use of power is allowed during the other hours).  It has also been nice to watch a little TV; we have been watching all the international friendly soccer games, and get to watch the news (which, I have to admit, I had no idea what the hell has been going on in the world – Occupy?  NBA?  Syria?  So much stuff I have been missing out on but now I feel mostly caught up).

Okay, enough about our sweet accommodations.  Let me get into the fieldwork, because it has been extremely interesting and rewarding work.  We have to play more of an observatory role, simply because 1) we don’t speak the language and 2) it would not be appreciated for a bunch of white people to show up out of nowhere and start telling people what they’re doing wrong, which I would never want to do.  So we get a much more satisfactory role of being welcomed guests where people proudly show off their homes, their families, and their Heifer gifts (when someone gets an animal or rice or anything from Heifer, it is referred to as the Heifer gift).  I actually need to explain something here: Heifer International gives out all sorts of gifts (cows, goats, pigs, chickens, wells, seeds, all sorts of stuff), but the Sierra Leone operation is different and new, and only gives out goats and sheep, as well as seed and rice).  One thing we learned is that Sierra Leoneans historically and culturally do not consume goat milk (kind of like how Americans don’t either, although that is starting to change), so the goats they receive are only used for meat.  Upon hearing this, there was a big part of me that grew almost frustrated, because goat milk can be extremely nutritious, and it seems like the people who receive the goats have this huge opportunity for sustenance that they waste, but you have to reconcile what you know could be more helpful with being culturally sensitive to the people.  So anyway, the goats given out, at least right now, are raised for meat, but they are trying to introduce the idea of using goat milk. 

The first day we spent hours and hours visiting each of the sheds.  The Pork Loko district is like a county, so within the county there are a bunch of villages to see, and it takes a while to get to each one since many of the roads are bumpy and unpaved.  Each time we arrived at a new village, we had such a warm reception, that it literally felt like I was a C-list celebrity.  Definitely not Justin Beiber status, but we got enough crowds that gathered around the cars and handshakes and pictures and waves that I felt at least as popular as one of the less popular Baldwins.  Do you remember how in Tanzania, the Swahili word for white person was ‘mzungo’?  Well here, in Timne the word is ‘apohto’.  So at each village, we hear crowds of children (and women) yelling “apohto apohto apohto” and waving at us.  None of this is done in a negative way; in fact, people are extremely interested in seeing us and getting to touch us and talk to us, because it’s a place where they really don’t see any white people at all.  Since we are in the provinces, people don’t even really speak Krio; they speak their local tribal language, which here in the North is Timne.  We have been getting pretty good at understanding Krio and speaking some phrases, but now have to start all over again with Time.  So far, we know how to say hello and how are you and thank you and goodbye.  People love when you speak Timne to them; they usually laugh hysterically at us, but greatly appreciate it and enjoy communicating with us in any way they can.  I have found this in every country I’ve been to where I don’t speak the language, but you realize how much you can communicate and how much you are able to understand simply by body language, hand gestures, and voice inflection.  I have seen this in so many countries, but every time I am still a little amazed and floored by it.

We have had a lot of funny experiences with the people in the field.   The thing that is most amusing to me is that the young kids are genuinely a little scared of us.  I have never experienced a child being terrified of me (although it makes sense).  The older kids aren’t scared at all, and are mostly interesting in playing with us, but the really young children are very fearful of us.  I had to pull out all of my best tricks and games, and sometimes even then they didn’t work and the child would remain screaming in front of me.  The mothers are particularly funny, because they love taking their little babies and thrusting them at you, and then when the babies scream and cry (and by babies, I mean 1-3 year olds) they laugh kindly at them and make you take their picture.  I always enjoy when parents laugh at their kids and aren’t psychotically protective of them, and I really enjoyed all of the mothers I met this past week.

Another thing in the field is that everyone wants to get their picture taken.  They say “Apohto, snap me!” over and over again until they get their photo taken.  Luckily Kelly is here and is well equipped to snap away (sometimes I yell over at Kelly and say “Hey Apohto, snap me!” so I can feel like a local).  The best part of the whole process is that Kelly always shows them the picture after she takes it, and everyone gathers around the camera and when they see the photo appear on the screen, they go crazy and yell and laugh and cheer.  It’s so funny.  And it happened about 100 times in each village.  It’s crazy to think that people have literally never had their photo taken, and how amazed they must be when they see their faces on the screen, captured permanently.     

Something I never expected to have happen on this trip was to fall in love.  With goats.  And to learn more about them than I ever could have imagined.  First of all, I think goats are the cutest things ever.  They are really soft, and sweet, and the baby ones are snuggly.  So I decided I want to have one as a pet.  However, there is a dark side of goat life in SL, and I need to tell you about the sex addiction, rape, abortions, and prostitution that is heavily prevalent among goats here.  (The radical Christian right could have a freaking field day here.)  I hope you don’t think I’m joking, and I will take you through the cycle of sex addiction-rape-abortions-and prostitution that goats deal with here.  Okay, first let’s talk sex addiction.  Apparently for every one male goat, he needs to mate with fifty females to be sexually satisfied.  Fifty?  Really, goats?  That’s a little selfish, but that’s the way it is I guess.  What happens when they don’t get their sex on with fifty females is that they go crazy with the females they do have access to, and they end up literally repeatedly having sex with them.  Now, if the females they have access to are pregnant, then the repeated goat sex actually causes them to lose the baby.  The solution to this?  Male goat owners lend their goats out to have sex with other females, to keep them sexually satisfied and to keep the females safe, effectively pimping out the males.  So there you have it, a vicious cycle.  Luckily it’s all part of nature and it’s happening to goats and not people, but it’s a more dramatic life than you could have imagined!  On a more serious note, not that any of this wasn’t serious, there are legitimate problems with seemingly healthy goats that drop dead all of the sudden, and it’s because of PPR, a virus that gets passed around and contaminates all the livestock.  It’s really unfortunate when the Heifer participants lose goats, because the entire system is dependent upon raising goats and breeding them and passing off their offspring to other families.  Getting access to medicine, vaccinations, and veterinarians is extremely difficult here, and Heifer works hard to try to keep the animals as healthy as possible as often as possible.  That’s why they visit the sheds, which we did on Tuesday, every two weeks.  They inspect the sheds to make sure they are clean, dry, and raised off the ground, and make sure there is enough clean food for the animals.    So that was the bulk of what we did in the field on Tuesday. 

Wednesday was a really cool day, and we went to just one village for the Participatory Self Review and Planning meeting, which happens every quarter, and is essentially the group’s way of assessing where it stands and coming up with any necessary plans of action and ways to move forward most productively.  Some groups are more contentious, but this group was very cohesive and mostly on the same page, so we didn’t get to do much conflict resolution-ing.  However, it was nice to see such a united group of men, women, and children.  One of Heifer’s cornerstones is that they don’t give gifts to a person, but to a family who collectively nurtures the gift.  It is also about building the capacity of the whole community, and this group has really managed to do these things well.  When we pulled up, we were greeted with a song, and the men and women sang to us while we made our way to the meeting area, and then the children all ran over, joined in, and then sang us their own welcome song.  It was really nice.  The meeting started with two prayers; one was a Muslim prayer, and one was the Our Father. I liked it because it demonstrated the open-mindedness and appreciation of both the Muslim and Christian religions, and it’s something that has consistently impressed me in this country.   Anyway, the meeting got underway, and after introductions and welcomes, people voted.  I like the voting system here.  In true democratic form, each person gets one vote (for each of the areas on which they vote, and there are many), and they cast their vote simply going into a room one at a time and placing their stone into one of three boxes.  Essentially, for each topic area, they vote to say whether or not that area has been unfulfilled, almost fulfilled, or fulfilled.  It takes a long time to do, but is worth it because each vote is counted, and even if the vote is 26-1, the 1 vote gets a discussion, so essentially, everyone’s voice is heard and discussed.  At the end of the voting on each topic, people get to raise any general grievances that they have, and a few people explained that many of the animals they received had died, which obviously effects everyone there.  Their problems were heard, discussed, and an action plan to quarantine the animals and send a veterinarian out was implemented, as well as the next meeting time.  During the course of the meeting, we sat and observed, and I noticed that we don’t really need much translation of the Krio anymore (the Krio was also translated into Timne, which we obviously don’t understand at all), but Krio, once you realize how similar it is to English, is actually quite easy to understand.  There are certain nuances and words I can’t pick up, but I didn’t need a translation for the majority of it, which was pretty cool.  Also during the course of the meeting, the kids would come running over, so from time to time I would get up to play with them.  People also came up when they got up to vote to either say hi, or, sometimes, to hand me their baby.  Typical. 

Our last day in the field was the least exciting, but probably our greatest contribution to Heifer.  We spent the whole day in the office and generated Excel spreadsheets to organize data that Heifer collects from its groups.  In some ways it was tedious, but we actually enjoyed looking at the data collected and getting a better idea, on paper, of how much (or really, how little) the people in Port Loko have.  Many households have at least 10 people (we saw households with up to 30), men have multiple wives, there are usually a few children not going to school, and when we put the data across spread sheets, you find that most people are eating very little other than rice.  There is also a level of frustration that comes from taking packets of information and needing to transpose them onto spreadsheets; there is a definite lack of cohesion in responses, none of the data complements each other or points to any clear trends.  It is definitely frustrating, but we are hoping that we helped out a lot in organizing records for Heifer. 

I wrote a lot again, and I want to post this before I lose Internet, so I’m ending it here.  We head back to Freetown tomorrow, but are only spending one night and then heading to the BANANA ISLANDS for the weekend before going back to the field on Monday.

Have a good weekend, everyone, I'll leave you with some videos of the kids we met this week. 

                                           

                                           

Some History, Some Politics, and Heifer International

Warning: this post only contains information, and no photos.  If you are uninterested in context and background, feel more than free to revert back to the previous post, which I have made dense with photos.

We started our internship with Heifer, and are currently in the midst of our first week of field work (which has given me a ton to talk about), but before I put up what I can only imagine will be an extremely long blog post about our week in the Port Loko district, I feel the need to provide you with a little historical and political background and context, because that helped me appreciate Heifer’s role in the development process here.  Also, let me preemptively say that I actually find all this stuff incredibly interesting, because it is, but I fear that I will depict it in such a boring way that you will not think it’s interesting at all.  Also, the facts and details I am about to provide you with are all things I have heard from people here or quick little fact sheets I have gathered here, and in no way should be considered to be academic research.  Alrighty then, here we go. 

History: The Portuguese were the first Europeans to explore Sierra Leone (and named it), but Freetown was given to the British in 1787, which they used as a home for blacks discharged from the British armed forces and also for runaway slaves who had found asylum in London.  In 1808, the entire coastal area of Sierra Leone became a British colony, and in 1896 the rest of the country became a British protectorate.  Sierra Leone gained its independence from Britain in 1961 (so we have seen tons of signs and banners up around Freetown celebrating 50 years of independence).  Also, a fun fact about diamond smuggling in Sierra Leone - It was only after achieving independence that diamond smuggling because a huge political and economic problem, and is partly what triggered the civil war. 

The civil war started in March 1991 (after two decades of political and socio-economic mismanagement), and lasted for 11 years (2002, for you non-math majors, like myself).  Comparatively, this is fairly recent when you think that the war ended less than ten years ago.  Over the course of the war, half of the population was displaced, 75,000 people were killed, and there was a massive depletion of social, human, physical, financial, natural, and political assets.  The armed militia (the RUF) ended up occupying about 2/3 of the country, which caused a lot of urban migration to the city (so the population of Freetown tripled), and it still has not recovered from this, because people never went back to the rural areas. 

The war was (obviously) bad, but thankfully ended with the help of ECOMOG (which was largely made up of Nigerians troops) and a tiny bit of help from the British (they helped in one military operation, but that operation is considered the most successful British military operation in modern British history, and is called Operation Barras, but I think everyone knows that I don’t think too highly of the British and I don’t want to give them any praise or credit).  Anyway, immediately after the war Sierra Leone had a really successful disarmament program and started holding democratic elections.  Post-conflict reconstruction and development is a long process, and Sierra Leone only started to undergo this process in 2002.   

Current Context: Sierra Leone faces many problems today.  Here are some stats that are really demonstrative of where the country is: 60% of the economy is donor dependant.  Of a population of about 4,950,000 people, 70% live below poverty level, 53% are without safe drinking water, only 69% attend primary school, there is a 29% adult literacy rate, and only 45.5% of the population has access to medical services.  There are incredibly high levels of maternal and infant mortality rates (Kelly actually looked into this and told me that Sierra Leone doesn’t perform C-sections, which is a big contributor to this problem).  A (slightly) good statistic is that only 1.7% of adults are infected with HIV/AIDS, however many other diseases are more prevalent (including malaria, TB, and a recent surge in polio).  In terms of employment, 58.8% of jobs come from crop farming and 20% come from retail and service.  There are also significant inequalities in income distribution, as well as poor economic and social infrastructure. 

The biggest challenge today is that growth levels are weak; but even more significantly, the types of things that trigger growth (economy, infrastructure, etc.) are not even in place to take off.  Another challenge is that Human Development Indicators are too low and human capacity is very weak.  The Government has an initiative called “Agenda for Change” and has been working to encourage growth by developing a more enabling environment for both private and public sector activity.  Its priorities include enhancing national electricity, developing a national transportation network, enhancing production in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, and sustaining all of these areas for the future with a strong emphasis on human development and basic service delivery.  Alie told us that the biggest noticeable change regarding development that the government has promoted has been the construction of many more paved roads all over the country; this can be good, but the detriment to this is that there are a lot more car accidents now that are killing a lot of people.    

Heifer’s Role in All This:  Let me give you some history of Heifer, since I work for them now and I want to stump for them, I guess.  Dan West, who was actually a Christian missionary, started it in 1944.  (Time for a side piece, which I hope doesn’t turn too much into a rant.  I have nothing against religion, or against missionaries, but generally I do have some issues with religiously based development initiatives, and the attitudes behind them that poor black people in Africa need to accept Jesus into their lives before they deserve anything that actually benefits them, like medicine or quality education or capacity building.  I get especially frustrated when I hear all-too-often of many Christian-based development organizations that cut programs or funding if people demand ridiculous things like condoms to stop them from getting HIV and AIDS.  Sorry for the rant, but the reason I’m thinking about it is that I would purposefully never work for a religiously based development organization.  I don’t think that their work is bad, but I strongly believe in a separation of church and development, so at first I was a little worried about Heifer, but that is not the case at all.  Heifer does consider itself to be a faith-based organization, but it is extremely secular and operates based on the needs of the people and not their religions, nor does it push any kind of religious agenda, which I appreciate.)  Sorry for that aside, but continuing on with Dan West, he was a Christian missionary working in refugee camps after World War II, and his job was to hand out glasses of milk to families every day.  One day he had the idea that instead of giving people a glass of milk every day, they should give the families a cow, so that they can produce milk for themselves and maintain a level of independence and self-worth.  It is capacity building at its simplest, and the idea was a good one.  Since then, Heifer now operates in 128 countries, has helped 13.6 million people, and Sierra Leone is its youngest country to date. 

Heifer actually had a presence in SL back in the 1980s, but had to pull out when the war erupted in 1991.  The current Heifer SL operations are still fairly recent, and only began again in 2008.  Now, Heifer aims to improve the livelihoods of people in rural areas, and to do it in a sustainable way.  SL lost a lot of human, social, natural, physical, and financial capital during the war that will take a long time to regain.  I could get into each of Heifer’s specific projects and programs, but I feel like I will probably do that more once we actually get into the field.  

A Little Bit of Work, A Little Bit of Beaches

Hello all!  I apologize for the length of my last blog, and I’m going to try to compensate for that by attempting to keep this post (relatively) short.

Our first week was wonderful – I actually feel like I’ve been here for a month already, but it has only been a week.  Much like in Tanzania, each day feels extremely long, but then the weeks are actually flying by.  We started our internship with Heifer International.  For the first week, we had orientation at the office in Freetown, but every week from now on we will be sent to a different district in the field (which is awesome, because we get to see the entire country, and not just the Freetown area).  The Heifer office is really nice - it was a big house that has since been turned into offices, and actually has … air conditioning!  It was the most pleasant surprise to get to experience some crisp, cool air.  I am really happy to be interning with Heifer - I felt really inspired my first few days when we were introduced to Heifer's work, and I am really appreciative of the opportunity to work for such a credible NGO.  The people at Heifer are extremely nice and welcoming (like most Sierra Leoneans), and for the first week we also had access to their driver, so it was a big help in running our errands after work or during lunch.  Speaking of lunch, we have found some really good places to eat around Freetown.  There is a large Lebanese population here, and that means we get a lot of humus, shwarama, and falafel when we aren’t in the mood for traditional African food (which is also good here, but it’s nice to have a mix).  I will put up some pictures of us working diligently around the office. :-)

                                       

Aside from Heifer, we kept trying to just get to know Freetown.  One of the best things to do in Freetown is actually just drive or walk around.  So far, we mostly drive around looking.  Driving around is the best way to get snacks, because people come right up to your car with corn on the cob, ginger biscuits, nuts, grilled or fried plantains, sweet popcorn, and a bunch of other snacks that I’m forgetting right now, but it’s like a better version of a drive-thru, lie an authentic African food drive-up.  Great stuff.  Also, on Friday, our Heifer driver, Tamba, took us around the city, and we got to see the college, the natural history museum, and Parliament (where we sat and talked to Alie's uncle, who is an MP there).  

We also spent a lot of nights down at Lumley beach.  That is the beach that is closest to us (it's only about a fifteen minute drive to get there), and there are great places to eat right on the water, so we did tried a few of those places out during the week.  We went out on Friday night to Lagoonda (back to the place where we had a bit of an altercation the week before), and as promised were put on the VIP guest list (which was ironic, considering I was probably the worst-dressed person there, with the worst hair), and had a great time.  There were a lot of people there, and we met a lot of Sierra Leoneans who had spent time, or lived, in the US and were either visiting family back home or coming back to work in Freetown.  So I have to tell this story, even though I know that I have constantly been saying how nice and friendly everyone here is, which they are, but obviously not every person in an entire country can be the nicest, and things get exacerbated at clubs.  So it was the end of the night, probably almost four in the morning, and we were leaving the club, and as we were walking out, there was an argument with some people that turned into a fight (apparently it was over a girl), which turned into a brawl that not only involved the bouncers, but somehow managed to pin the bouncers against each other and it was so complicated, but hilarious to me, because it was extremely disorganized.  We followed the fight upstairs and outside (not because we wanted to watch the fight, but mostly because we wanted to go to our car), and people ended up freaking out and throwing bottles, so glass was flying around.  Alie ran away, I hid behind a pillar, Tim ran inside looking for Alie, and Kelly was standing on the steps outside.  It was, in a hilarious way, quite dramatic, and I’m not sure why I’m telling the story, but probably because it made me feel really good about Freetown, because they keep it real.  Alie doesn’t like seeing fights like that and gets a little worried, but I told him that if it was Baltimore, half of those people would be knifed and shot, and in Sierra Leone, the people who get in fights like that will be best friends the next day.  Moral of the story?  There is none, just wanted to tell it.

I wanted to keep this kind of short for you, so I’m going to move right along into the best part of the weekend, which was checking out some of Sierra Leone’s fantastic beaches.  Here’s where the idea of hindsight came in – I could probably write a bunch of hilarious antidotes from the day, which mostly included us leaving 5 hours after we wanted to, spending 2 hours getting out of the city only to turn around and go back through the city to get to the beaches, or showing up at beaches with no place to stay and then having to stay in the creepiest place ever, but I don’t have that kind of time.  I will really briefly tell you that the only time I have legitimately been worried here or felt slightly unsafe was Saturday night, when we needed a place to stay and the place where we wanted to stay was booked, so the people there called this other place that was on a different beach and told them we were coming, so we went.  We got there at night, so it was dark, and picked up the guy who runs the place on the side of the road. I was asleep when we picked him up, and was sleeping with my head against the door, but woke right up when he opened the door to get into the car and I went flying down (luckily I caught my gigantic head before it sent me tumbling out of the car).  Anyway, he takes us to our “hotel” which was completely dark, in the middle of nowhere, and pulling up on these unpaved, rocky roads, I thought that this was it: this was the way people rob you, by brining you somewhere where you can’t drive away, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere and take all our shit.  Luckily, it didn’t turn out that way at all, and the guy was really nice.  But the place he took us was not even opened yet, and they had to literally unlock it and turn on the power just for us because nobody else was staying there.  We were too scared to stay in separate rooms, so all four of us stayed together in one room, with no running water, a tiny light, a small window, no air conditioning, and the fans in the room didn’t work because we lost power all night.  It was the most uncomfortable, stifling room I have ever stayed in.  The funny part, though, is that we all slept until ten.  We woke up around eight, and were hot and miserable, but all fell back asleep.  I am slowly becoming impervious to my surroundings, and am finding that I can sleep anywhere, which is certainly helpful in Africa.  In the morning, with the light of day, we realized that we weren’t actually in the Sierra Leone version of the Blair Witch Project, and actually were at the most beautiful, secluded beach I had ever seen.  Lessons learned?  Book ahead, research places to stay (even though Kelly did and still somehow this happened), and if a place is booked, you can rent a mat and sleep on the beach for a dollar, which would have been better than the place we stayed.  But then we wouldn’t have gotten to see the amazing beach (which is called Bureh, by the way), so really the lesson learned is that hindsight or not, wherever you are, there you are, and you can probably find something awesome, which we did.

 River No. 2 beach

This is the creepy shack we stayed in, but woke up to the beautiful Bureh beach. 

These ones are from Tokeh beach

I really could write about them for pages and pages, but will spare you and let you look at pictures.  Although the pictures do not do them justice.  Let me just say this:  Sierra Leone is the most underrated, unsung hero of beach countries.  The beaches are soft, white sand, clean beaches with no people on them (actually, one of the beaches, River No. 2, is more popular and crowded, but even the "crowded" beach only has about 20 people on it).  It’s like having a private island, except it costs about five dollars to experience it.  Again, I could say more, and one day I will post an entire blog about the beaches here, but for now, just know that they are the most incredible, tropical, lush, fun beaches, and we will going to them hopefully every weekend when we come back from the field. I'm going to post some videos (which I hope turn out okay) and get some pictures going! 

Okay, this is all for now.  Not quite as long as the last one, but not quite as short as it could have been.  Next week we are in the field so I will hopefully have a lot of good stuff to talk about!