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!
