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!  

Freetown:First Impressions and Lots of Comparisons

Hello everyone!  Or should I say, Una Kusheh!  I feel like I have been out of touch for a long, long time, which is partly true (if you count five days as a long time) and has mostly been a good thing, at least so far.  Not being connected for the first days here was actually great because nobody could sit around talking to people online, and instead we spent all day, every day out and about Freetown, getting to know our new home.  However, I must warn you, I think this may actually be the longest blog post I have ever written, due to the fact that we have been so busy the last few days and because there is so much amazing stuff here to talk about.  Also, for those of you (like my father) who get confused about where in the world I am or what I’m doing here or who I am with (as I myself sometimes also get confused), I am in Freetown, Sierra Leone with Tim, Alie, and Kelly, who are all fellow IPCR graduate students, and we are here to intern with Heifer International for the next six weeks.  Also, I do plan on going through and adding pictures to this (so that you will be more enticed to read it, or at least look at it), but none of my cameras are working, so I have to wait to take Kelly’s pictures from her (the good news is she has an awesome camera and is a really talented photographer, so the pictures will be good).  Okay, ready?  Here we go…

Let me first say how happy I am to be here, to finally have gotten a little bit of rest, and to have some Internet access (although it is quite slow and temperamental).  I had a pretty hectic week leading up to this trip, which included staying awake for up to fifty consecutive hours (more than once), and a three hour flight delay that left us literally running to make our connecting flight to Freetown.  All things considered, I made it to Freetown safely, if not entirely soundly, around nine o’clock at night on Friday.  The first thing that hit me when I stepped out onto the tarmac was the humidity.  I was used to the heat, coming from Tanzania, but I was not prepared for the thickness of the air.  My hair immediately started curling and getting bigger right before my eyes (which was to be expected).  The heat wasn’t unbearable at all, but it was certainly warm and tropical feeling. 

My first impression of Sierra Leone was that I loved it, and it happened in somewhat of an unconventional way.  We took a quick shuttle ride from the tarmac to the arrivals “terminal” (more like small area), and I was dreading that long, exhausting customs line you have to go through.  However, that is not the case in the Freetown airport – they hustle you through (they kindly hustle you through), and you get your stamp and form collected almost immediately, while being smiled at and politely talked to.  Not the norm for airports, and I know, as I have sat through many a customs line in this past year alone.  It was great, incredibly quick, and maybe somewhat efficient.  I thoroughly enjoyed my brief time spent in the arrivals terminal.  Side note: right where we came through, UNICEF has a little booth set up with polio shots and I think other vaccinations that people need in the country, which I found to be a very good idea, and had I needed any shots, I totally would have gotten one there – high five to their public health initiative!

The next step in the airport was baggage claim, which was the part I was most worried about.  I think we all felt the fear that our bags would never arrive, or would arrive empty (which is a legitimate fear, not one that is unprecedented, and we had been warned by more than a few people to beware of this).  Luckily, Kelly and I got our bags right away, which immediately assuaged our fear of six weeks spent in the same outfit.  Unfortunately, the same did not ring true for Alie, and two of his three bags that were checked did not make it (update: he is currently on his way back to the airport because, after four days, his bags finally made it). 

Freetown’s airport is on the edge of a peninsula, so rather than driving around the long way, people utilize other means of transportation to get the six miles into town.  We took a ferry (although you can also take a helicopter, which I might do on my way out of here in December…), and were lucky enough to have one of Alie’s best friends, Foday, pick us up (in a sweet Mercedes SUV).  We got some of our first glimpses of life in Sierra Leone on the fifteen-minute drive to the ferry, and the most noticeable aspect is definitely how dark it is, even darker than Arusha.  Lots of people were outside hanging out in their tiny tin and wood shacks (I don’t want to use the word shacks, but that really is what they are), many of which were lit up with bright candle flames (in most parts of the country, the government turns the power off after six thirty every night).  It looked really friendly and peaceful.  We made our way to the ferry entrance, and here’s where I learned an important Sierra Leonean lesson: connections will get you everywhere, and it’s all about who you know.  We were in an incredibly long line for the ferry, and then all of the sudden completely bypassed the line, because Alie’s mother’s brother works for the ferry.  After negotiating a price (and we got a better price, again, because of the connection), we got in line for the ferry itself, which was also long, and we could see that the boat was essentially full.  We all kind of assumed we would be sitting for well over an hour (while we waited for the ferry to take its full load across and then make its way back), but low and behold, we literally watched cars back off of the ferry and we somehow made our way onto it.  The people who worked for the ferry and (hilariously) helped direct cars on and off of it, were extremely funny and nice, told a lot of jokes and laughed a lot, and welcomed us onto the ferry by bouncing our car up and down for a nice laugh.  We were wondering how long we would have to wait for the ferry to leave, but when we asked, the guys laughed because we had already been moving for about ten minutes (we thought we hadn’t left yet because the back of the boat was completely open, and we had thought that maybe they would close up the back, but clearly not).  Anyway, we got out of the car and went upstairs to the front of the ferry to enjoy the rest of the ride, which was lovely and smooth.  We looked out over Freetown, which looked really cool; it is right on the water, and the moonlight was bouncing off the water, and much of Freetown (the nicer parts, actually) are up on a big hill (that actually has power), so the houses were twinkling and lit up. 

I never had much time to really think about was Freetown was going to be like, or what to expect from it.  Here’s what I did know: it was a post-conflict country whose civil war had ended less than a decade ago, and on the Human Development Index, Sierra Leone ranks eighth from the bottom.  This would be the poorest, most underdeveloped country that I had ever been to.  Given that, I was really bracing myself for the hardships that I thought I was going to encounter, but never really thought about how wonderful it could potentially be, until that moment on the top of the ferry.  After only having had been in the country for about an hour, I was filled with so much excitement and happiness to be there; I wasn’t thinking about Human Development Indexes or poverty or safe drinking water or polio, but for the first time started thinking about Freetown on a personal level about the people I would be meeting and how great the city would be.  I felt like I was in exactly the right place, and that I was about to have an absolutely incredible experience.  We docked, got off the ferry, and drove through Freetown as we made our way to our residence.  I loved that we came in at night, and came in on a Friday night, and got to see lots of people who were out and about in Freetown; it was a warm night and everyone out seemed to be in a great mood, there was good music in the background, and it made us even more excited to be there.  Even though we were just driving through and were incredibly jet-lagged and exhausted, I got a great feeling and you could tell the city has an awesome vibe and lots of character and flavor. 

We were taken to our residence, which is in the lavish Hill Station neighborhood (this is the neighborhood where the President lives, as well as many high-level government officials, ambassadors, and basically anyone who is wealthy), and is the home of Alie’s uncle (also named Alie), who is the former Ambassador to Ghana and is a major power player in Sierra Leoneans politics (none of which I understand yet).  He is actually the leader of the current opposition party (but I will get into SL politics at another time) and is incredibly well known.  (We actually haven’t met him yet, because he has been away, but we will be meeting him tonight.)  Hill Station is up on the hill that I saw on the ferry in to town, so we meandered our way up the winding slopes and eventually turned into his neighborhood.  There were signs that we saw on the way with arrows that said ‘Mabereh’ house, and after a few minutes we realized that the signs were pointing to our house (this guy is, apparently, renowned enough that his house has signs pointing to it, which we couldn’t believe, but I decided when I get back to Eldersburg, I’m planting signs around town with arrows that point to ‘Chiaramonte place’).  We got to the house, which is really more of a mansion, and saw five cars in the driveway, two of which are silver Mercedes SUVs.  Freaking crazy.  The house was really awesome (even though it was nighttime so we didn’t see too much), and we went around the back to our set of rooms.  There are four of us, but only three rooms, so Kelly and I are sharing the largest bedroom.  Coming off of the tiniest bedroom in Arusha, I thought my room was a palace (which it isn’t, but it certainly is large and the bed is huge).  It felt incredibly nice to stretch out and get some much, much needed sleep.  I barely remember unpacking or even falling asleep, but luckily I was tired enough to pass out, because it was hot.  (Side note about how awesome the house is: the next day, we ran errands all day, and came back and a bunch of people were outside in the front of the house; we found out that they were a bunch of actors and actresses filming a movie and they use Mabereh house to film.)

I woke up the next morning feeling really excited to see Freetown in the daytime.  I also woke up still completely wiped out and exhausted.  I honestly had never really put a lot of stock in jetlag; I usually get enough sleep somewhere along the way to catch up, but the amount of traveling I did in the span of five days really took its toll on me, more than I have ever experienced.  When I woke up in the morning my legs were actually completely swollen, my back was killing me, and if I had the ability to sleep for another twelve hours, I would have done it in a second.  I was also starving.  The BMI flight the night before from London didn’t give us dinner, and it had been a long time since the last time I ate.  Luckily, going out for a breakfast was our first priority.  We drove into town and went to grab a bite to eat.  I loved that it was a Saturday, and the city was really energetic and filled with people.  We went to eat at a restaurant that is owned by the president’s sister.  It was a nice place, but when I say nice place, by Sierra Leonean standards that means it has a room air conditioner upstairs where we ate.  The food was good; we had the (somewhat usual) practice where the price of our bill was double what the price on the menu said (this happens frequently, I’ve noticed), and then continued around town running errands.  I could get into many, many details of running errands around town, which I won’t because you probably think my errand running is mundane, but it was actually the coolest, most interesting day.  We got to pound the pavement a little bit (while also being driven around in our Mercedes SUV), walk through some of the markets (every street is a market, filled with tons of people, and everything is sold there), and mingle with some people (Alie knows people everywhere, so people were frequently stopping us to say hello).  Everyone is incredibly nice, welcoming (everyone here tells you that Sierra Leoneans love strangers), and even though it is fairly congested, it is completely safe (minus petty theft).  It was also freaking hot outside – it is in the eighties during the days, but the sun is so strong, and it is so humid, and you are sweating so much and it feels significantly hotter.  On our way back home, we stopped at a supermarket in our neighborhood.  It is so ridiculous how crazy the prices are in the market – Kelly wanted to get an electric tea kettle, which was about 12 dollars in town, but was more like 50 dollars in the market.  If you want a can of Pringles, it’s seven dollars.  Crazy prices for the rich folk.  We picked up a few essentials (soap and toilet paper) and headed back to the house to relax and rest.

That night, we went to a birthday party for Alie’s cousin’s wife at her house.  It was very funny getting there, because Alie drove separately from us, and we drove with his friend (and our new friend) Foday, and his wife Rashida.  Foday had no idea where this party was or where he was going, and we stopped at least fifteen times on the way there for directions.  We would stop, ask for directions, follow the first direction, but then stop again and ask someone new.  I’m not sure if that is because people don’t trust directions, or if they need constant affirmation, but it actually was very funny, and Foday and Rashida have a very comical driving dynamic.  We finally made it to the party, which was really fun and, of course, filled with friendly and hospitable people.  I wish I was more of an active participant in the party, but I was more of a quiet observer on the side.  It was a mix of family and friends, and everyone was outside either sitting around chatting or dancing to the loud music blasting from the speakers outside.  I love hearing new music, and figuring out what the most popular song is (you can tell because everyone starts cheering and getting up to dance when it comes on), and I really like the way people dance here – they don’t take themselves seriously, and they have a lot of fun.  It’s a really friendly atmosphere.  After the party, we decided to try one of the Freetown nightclubs.  The story takes a somewhat dramatic turn here, but let me just say in a nutshell that we paid to get into a club that wasn’t actually a club, and when Alie asked for our money back they refused to give it to us, which would have been fine, but then there was some arguing.  However, we somehow secured ourselves a spot of the VIP list for when the club does actually open (which is this Friday), but who knows if we will actually go back.

We (thankfully!) slept in on Sunday, and had a much-needed relaxing day to unpack, get organized, and collect ourselves.  One of the houses in our neighborhood was having a party all day, and it was actually nice to have the sounds of their music in the background while we hung out all day (funny thing: there is one song right now that is the new, most popular jam, and they played it on a loop for eight hours.  Every twenty minutes or so, they would put on one different song, but then go back to old faithful.  I now know all the words).  Since I didn’t do much that day, now seems like a good time to throw out some random things I have been noticing or thinking about regarding living here in Freetown.  First, I know I said we live in one of the nicest houses in the entire city, and it definitely is, but even the nicest houses here have tons of problems.  We lose power sometimes (thankfully not usually longer than twenty minutes), we don’t have sheets on our bed so we just sleep on top of the one comforter on it, there are bugs (giant spiders, cockroaches, and other things that have been biting me) and we more than frequently run out of water.  Water is a huge issue in this country.  Our house has three big tanks, but it goes pretty quickly, and even when we have running water, the pressure is so weak in the shower that I just take bucket showers all the time.  The first bucket shower was a little tough – willingly dumping giant buckets of cold water on yourself is not the easiest – but subsequent bucket showers have been much easier to get through, and I have actually come to appreciate them.  The thing about all of this that I want to stress the most is that none of this bothers me, which is surprising.  I actually really think it enhances the experience here and when I sit there taking my bucket shower, I feel like this is part of what I signed up for.  In Arusha, we were pretty spoiled and almost always had a regular shower, and usually they were warm, or even hot, and it kind of builds up your sense of entitlement to such niceties.  I definitely don’t have that at all here, and I’m really happy about that.  Two other great things about the house – we have a kitten and a puppy!  We actually have two kittens, but only one of them likes us and hangs out with us, and we have two really cute, tiny, cuddly little creatures to hang out with when we’re sitting around. 

We thought we had to start work on Monday, but found out the day before that it was a holiday, and everyone was off.  Sixty percent of Sierra Leone is Muslim, and Monday was Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice (actually, the holiday was on Sunday, but since it fell on a Sunday everyone gets Monday off).  It was unexpected to have a free day, and we drove into town where people were celebrating with a lot of outdoor parties, food, music, and parades.  Roads don’t close at all, however, and it is crowded driving through town; however, it is freaking awesome at the same time.  We have some really cool pictures of people parading all around us, stopping by the car to say hello, take pictures, or sometimes yell things happily that we didn’t understand.  We actually did drive to an area that is significantly more dangerous, which is the eastern part of Freetown, and people told us to roll up all of our windows for safety purposes (this part of the parade got a little more aggressive, but was still incredibly interesting to see).  After a few hours, we drove over to Lumley Beach, which is right in town.  Because it is right in town, it is terribly crowded, so it’s not the kind of beach you visit to lay out and relax all day, but it was really cool to walk around the area.  There were tons of people on the beach, all very friendly and nice, and the sand was quite soft and the water, though warm, was still refreshingly cool.  There are more desolate beaches if you drive a little further away, but it’s wonderful to know we can get to a beach that is fifteen minutes away to go have dinner after work. 

                                       

A few more random things before I try to wrap this up, because I know this blog is getting pretty long.  I cannot stress enough how wonderful the Sierra Leonean people are.  I am really impressed with the character of the people, and continue to learn more about them.  There are many great things, like their friendliness and hospitality, but one of the best things is how secular they are.  The country is 60% Muslim and 30% Christian, but nobody cares about or is concerned with anybody else’s religion.  There is no animosity between groups, and people are extremely respectful and tolerant of each other and their differences.  Given this, more than a few people have mentioned how odd it is that Sierra Leone ever found itself in a civil war, because it is so uncharacteristic of the people here, so I am setting out to learn much more about that (from what I hear, one crazy man basically created an army of mostly children around twelve years old, cut holes in the sides of their heads, filled them with crack, and raised his army that way, which is incredibly troublesome).  I will probably be getting more into this in subsequent posts.  

Let me wrap this up with the only (hopefully) time I will be comparing Freetown to Arusha.  At first, I thought I would be missing Arusha terribly, because everyone told me that West Africa is so underdeveloped compared to East Africa, and that I would miss how easy life was there.  On one level, that is probably true (the showers, running water, and things like that did make life easy in Arusha for sure).  However, I am finding that I prefer everything about Freetown right now, which I feel is a little unfair to Arusha, but it is also true and I really cannot help it.  The people here are friendlier, it is much safer, there isn’t an elitist white expat population that drives me crazy, and in terms of the vibe or the character and vibe of the city, Freetown has it all over Arusha.  I have to stop comparing the two, and to be fair there are things I miss about Tanzania (I miss the people I lived with terribly, and I miss the familiarity of the streets and knowing some Swahili), and from now on I’m going to shelve that trip and take on Freetown as being completely independent from Tanzania.  That being said, even if I had never gone to Arusha, I would completely love Freetown – it is exactly my kind of place, it’s green and lush and warm and friendly, and it really reminds me a lot of Central America (which is obviously one of my favorite places to live). 

Okay, for real now, I’m signing off.  Sorry this was so long, and I appreciate anyone who cares enough to take the time to read it!  I will try to put pictures up since they are always the best part, and even though I started my internship today and have a lot to say about it, I will have that for my next post.

Bye Bye!