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!
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