I'm Meeeeeelting.

Happy Tuesday from hot and humid Freetown. The above is our view from the balcony as a very welcome thunderstorm rolls in. Pre-thunderstorm, it is So. Flipping. Hot. I thought my skin might literally melt off my face yesterday. The power has been out for the 6^th day in a row meaning no fans and very unreliable use of the fridge, so food is going bad fast. We are learning to get either non-perishables or buy enough food for only the next 24 hours.

Saturday our lovely Lebanese landlord took us on a drive down the peninsula. We passed through the very African towns of York and Kent (there is also an Aberdeen, Waterloo, and Leicester Square here), crossed over Big Whale River, and passed beaches named Black Johnson, Bo Bo, John Obey, and River Number 2. We stopped at Tokeh beach which was so beautiful; deserted except for a few fishing nets and boats. We drove another hour to Bureh beach, which was just as stunning. There was a little stream flowing into the ocean, and Saturday must be washing day because there was a group of darling naked little kids in it, about 5 or 6 years old, soaping up their clothes, spreading them out on the rocks, and hitting them with long wooden paddles. They were all chatting and splashing around and totally ignoring us, and It was one of the most fantastic things I think I’ve ever seen. I wanted to take a photo but felt like it would ruin something. There were a few white people surfing at that beach, with tents pitched up in the sand. Talk about a phenomenal camping trip..

We are 9-5ers at the office during the week. Last week we were in charge of revamping a 20-page national questionnaire used to establish baselines for country programmes. No big deal. At one point this involved staying up until 10pm going over pages with a flashlight and deleting and replacing various sections on a laptop. Mercifully, Restless Development staff were happy with it, and this week we’ll be training young data collectors to administer the surveys in 10 rural communities around Sierra Leone. We’ll help oversee surveying in 3 communities, and stay a bit longer to do qualitative interviews for dissertation research. It is great to be getting this experience with an organization like RD; last week won a funding grant of 1.5 million pounds from DFID (Department for International Development in the UK), and seem to be really respected in the community.

The staff at RD said our American names are too difficult and gave us Krio names. Actually, they re-named Barrett Lahie, and my name has changed 3 times, from Musu to Kadee to Jebbe. Krio is such a bizarre language. It is basically really grammatically incorrect English with a Jamaican accent. ‘How are you?’ is ‘how dee bodi?’ ‘I’m fine’ is ‘dee bodi fine’. But there’s also some French thrown in, e.g. ‘thank you very much’ in Krio is ‘i tell you beaucoup beaucoup tenki’. I wish this meant it was really easy to understand people, and sometimes you can pick up on the gist of a conversation, but probably the biggest benefit is that Sierra Leoneans have a pretty good idea what you’re saying when you speak plain old English to them.

Getting sleep here is an interesting challenge. Since the power’s been off, most peoples’ generators are running loudly when you go to bed. The other night I woke up and the generators were off, but there was an equivalently deafening noise that turned out to be torrential rain, making it feel like I’d fallen asleep in a chopper and woken up under a waterfall. Also, every night, one of the neighbourhood dogs will start howling, and every other dog in the area (easily about 60 of them) will join in, and there will be howling for 3 minutes straight. And of course, in true third-world style, you cannot sleep past 5am here without a squeaky, demented-sounding rooster crowing repeatedly. The combination of generators, rain, dogs, and roosters, along with an occasional cat fight, is I think, gradually and miraculously turning me into a heavy sleeper.

Missing normalcy and you all.