Here are two of the first image results when you Google 'Sierra Leone':
I know, right? What a contrast: one of my favourite things in the world, and one of my least favourite. Well, I should clarify: love the kid, hate the gun. Not a big fan of national conflict or civil wars. But I am pretty interested in the way that conflict affects a country, especially in relation to it's general health and HIV/AIDS prevalence. So when we had to give our top choices for places to carry out dissertation research this summer, I said Democratic Republic of Congo, or Sudan. My professor quickly said no, and no. The university will not be liable for transporting your corpse back to the U.S. A week later a classmate and I got a call to come to her office. When we sat down with her, she explained that one of the organizations neither of us had been particularly interested in had just decided to offer 2 placements in Sierra Leone, were we interested?
Six months later, I have a completed research proposal and tickets to fly to Sierra Leone in 28 days. Coordinating things with the organization (called Restless Development) has been a bit of a challenge at times, but I think things will go well once we are on the ground and working face to face with them. (They are a 'youth-led development agency', which may explain why it's been slightly hit and miss communicating with them..) My classmate, Barrett, is an International Development major and will be looking at civic participation and the reintegration of child soldiers into society. I'll be looking at youth sexual and reproductive health and knowledge about HIV/AIDS. I am STOKED. This is one of those things I've always wanted to do -- walk into a community and sit down with a bunch of young men and women and ask them what they think about abstinence, condoms, abortion, STIs, faithfulness, relationships -- but of course you can't do that... unless it's 'research'. So I get to wear the hallowed 'researcher' label and collect all sorts of opinions and thoughts and insight from these young people with so much wisdom about their culture and it's problems, and how to best go about solving those problems.
I'm also stoked to be in West Africa, since my travels thus far have only been in the South and East. Also, the dominant language in Sierra Leone is Creole, which is fantastic because it has a lot of French influence (et je sais un peu du Francais), and it's also spoken in Haiti, where I'd really love to work someday. Also, as you will see if you Google 'Freetown', the capital city where we're based, it is surrounded on 3 sides by BEACH. Really beautiful beach, too.
So that is what's happening. Summer in Sierra Leone: 11 June - 27 July. And no, there is not a war going on there, it ended 10 years ago. And Ben tells me it is one of the countries in Africa you are least likely to be kidnapped in. So there we go!
