Leaving Planet Africa.

Yet again. Getting in a car, then a ferry, then a plane, then another plane, then a train, then a bus, back to little Sheffield. Sending in a re-re-re-revised version of the baseline report this morning and hoping it is good enough to be THE final edition.

There are many things I will not miss saying goodbye to here; cockroaches easily top that list, followed by late-night dog fights, stifling humidity, sweating through a t-shirt at 7am, mouldy everything, the impossibility to ever get anything dry in the middle of the dank rainy season. I have missed things and people (one in particular) back home much more on this trip than others before, which has made it harder than usual to adjust to the inevitable discomforts of a third world country.

I WILL miss.... doing laundry and feeling that it’s the greatest physical accomplishment of my week.
I will miss cooking dinner and having the sounds of all the neighbours cooking filter in through the broken kitchen windows, and feeling that I am part of a loud and warm community.
I will miss the indescribable joy a perfectly ripe mango can bring, for a mere 25 cents.
I will miss the office banter that happens when the internet quits working and people are bored.
I will miss the kids in the street who grin up at you when you raise your eyebrows at them.
I will miss the women who carry unthinkably large loads on their heads so effortlessly.
I will even miss the men who holler ‘white girl’ at you as if urgently informing you of your skin colour and gender.
I will miss Monday night runs through little villages, big rivers, and rocky garbage dumps with the Freetown running club.
I will miss the indescribable privilege of sitting with young people giving up a valuable hours of work in their fields to share their thoughts about private and sensitive topics with me so honestly.
I miss all of you. Looking forward to being close[r] to you soon.

Last Days in Freetown.

Sunday was, appropriately, sunny, after days on end of rain and humidity. It was also the beginning of Ramadan, and as I’ve quickly discovered, no one really does much when they’re fasting all day. It was also the day our cooking hob tank ran out of gas AGAIN. Made me realize how much my life revolves around the kitchen here, not just making meals and snacks and food for the week, but boiling drinking water, water for tea, water to wash veggies in. I made fruit salad and read ½ a book out on the balcony for most of the day.. not a terrible way to spend a Sunday, though it felt mildly anticlimactic for the last weekend in Sierra Leone. That night we helped our landlord and his family break their fast with a massive Lebanese dinner. I have not eaten such a big and delicious meal in a very long time.

Some thoughts I’ve had since being here.

The more countries I visit in Africa, the more the continent feels like one big country. There are subtle differences but they are swallowed up in the sea of similarities between regions and tribes and languages and diets and traditions. This is oddly comforting; each new country feels familiar enough that it’s kind of like visiting friends of friends. There are the inevitable negative similarities like corruption and gender inequality, but in a way even those are somewhat welcome familiarities – at least you know what you’re up against.

Three things I’ve found to be very unique about Sierra Leone.
One: it is a religiously mixed country, roughly 70% Muslim and 30% Christian.
Two: it has only two major tribes: the Mende and the Temne.
Three: There has never been conflict in Sierra Leone around these issues. These religious and tribal factors have spelled continual conflict and chaos in so many African countries, but the level of peace I’ve seen between tribes and Muslims and Christians here is amazing. It could teach the U.S. a few things, really. (I’ve even heard a few people claim to be Muslim Christians, which is another issue in itself..) Yes, there’s been political and rebel conflict, which I don’t want to downplay as it’s some of the most horrific and evil violence I’ve ever been exposed to. But I don’t think that violence from the past should overshadow the impressive solidarity Sierra Leone has been able to accomplish in the meantime, or perhaps has had all along. 

Foo Foo and Other Things.

One week left in the land of the mountain lion! Busy working on the final draft of Restless Development's 2012 Baseline Report. In true African fashion, it's being turned in a week late due to several unforeseen dilemmas and having to learn how to use totally foreign computer programmes in the span of an hour or two... but all great work experience to pile onto the resume! A few photos from recently..

This is Foo Foo.
The Salone eat it with piles of brown fish stew on top.
I tried them plain... they taste like doughboys soaked in vinegar.
My intestines are still recovering. 

Those two on the left look bad.
The one on the right just looks like he's having a bad hair day.

A fantastic mural we pass on the way to work everyday. 

Just found out Blue Star is a Sexual Healthcare Network.
Not entirely sure what their motto is supposed to mean, in light of this..

"Ideal para qualquier momento del dia."
Yes, that's Spanish for "ideal for whichever moment of the day".
Not sure how this billboard ended up in Sierra Leone.

A construction project on the main road, complete
with totally sketchy scaffolding.

Catchy slogans
+
sticker of Madonna blowing  kisses
=
epitome of a classy truck around here.

Missing everyone and am greatly looking forward to crisp, clear Skype conversations with most of you very soon..

Church, Etc.

I’m not an avid lover of church services, but I feel like going to church in a new country gives you a different perspective of the culture. And in Africa, the musical aspect is hard [for me] to pass up. So on Sunday, in another torrential downpour, I hopped in a soggy taxi and went with my co-worker Jestina to one of the biggest churches in Freetown – Winners (yes, the name pretty much says it all). We arrived at a huge building exploding with noise and a giant stage in the middle covered with artificial flowers, surrounded by rows and rows of red velvet chairs. We found seats and started singing along with the choir. Next thing I know, a female usher is shaking my shoulder and yelling something at me. Thanks to the giant speaker nearly vibrating off the wall with noise 3 feet away, I couldn’t hear a thing and shouted “excuse me???” as loud as I could. She said something like “Your dress is dirty!!! You must cover it with your jacket!!!” and proceeded to grab my raincoat and tie it around my waist. (Totally fashionable for church.) When she finished, I looked up and realized there were 4 large TV screens on the walls above the stage, and that MY FACE was on all 4 of them. Turns out Winners church has jumbo-tron type cameras (like at a sports game) in all 4 corners of the church that zoom in on various congregation members whenever the pastor gets boring. So that was fun.

The sermon was about listening to God and not others, not having sex with young girls because you’ll get HIV, and a story about the pastor miraculously escaping a rebel attack in Kono during the war (and consequently deserting his church plant there). The offering was taken in small garbage pails, which were then emptied into literal full-size garbage bins in the front of the church. We took communion, and as I went back to my seat, the left side of my face was suddenly doused with cold water. I looked up to see a middle-aged man with a bucket, smirking at me. He continued to the person behind me, took a handful of water from the bucket, and threw it at their face. I asked Jestina about this and she said it is ‘blessed water’ that you can’t leave without being immersed in. Blessed water my foot. All I know is that I’d just finished drying off from the downpour outside, and was soaked again even before I could leave the church. When we left it was still down pouring and there was a car with its entire back half hanging in a small ravine in the parking lot, and 4 men trying to physically lift it out. That was entertaining/odd.

And that sums up my Sierra Leonan church experience. 

Oh, and when I got home, I checked out the back of my dress and did indeed have a very large orangey-brown stain thanks to the wet, dirty taxi seat on the way over. I'm going to assume everyone at church realized it was mud, but it looked very convincingly like the a particularly horrific explosive diarrhea incident. 

Odds & Ends.

Decent internet = some extra photos from the last few weeks. Happy weekend, everyone. 

Diet Yoghurt. Because that's what everyone needs in Africa.
Oh well, at least Marvelous Marvic Loves Me. 

A poster at a youth education centre in the northern provinces. 

  

Trees overrun with bird nests. 

We found the Taliban Base!
Oh wait, it's aTalaband Base. That was done by MLK.

Kooky flowers.

River, rice fields, rain. 

This makes me so happy. Best possible way to start a morning.

The rather mangled power line out my window. The last 2 mornings,
I've woken up to very loud, bright explosions coming from it.
It must realize I was missing 4th of July fireworks.. how sweet. 

Being uncharacteristically patriotic by dressing in US colours for the 4th.
Appropriately, I also found these VERY PATRIOTIC KNIVES
 in our kitchen that day.  

Yet another great sunset from the porch. 

Finally... an afternoon at the beach for staff team-building exercises. 

Haunted House.

I wanted to share these pictures of a house in the community of Tawya. We needed a place to do interviews, and the chief took us over to this expansive, empty house, where we spoke with several young people  on the huge front porch. After finishing my interviews, I took a walk through the house. It apparently belonged to a fairly wealthy doctor and his family, and was overtaken by rebels during the war. The holes in the ceiling are from bayonets, and the marks by the front door are bullet holes.

Graves in the backyard from the 1940's. 

Probably the eeriest room for me was the bathroom. It’s clear from the water heater that the family was well off, but the rotating chair in the bath meant that an elderly family member had also lived there. It’s been 10 years since the war and the house is still empty, apart from a young man without parents who lives in a small room off the back of the house. It was the first time the reality of the conflict hit home for me. I expected to see much more evidence of it than I have; in our whole time here I’ve seen maybe 4 or 5 people missing hands or feet -- a trademark symbol of violence from the war. In this particular village, we found out 4 boys were taken during the conflict  and never heard from again. It’s bizarre and shocking and extremely sad. The people here seem to realize that Sierra Leone is known for the war; they acknowledge that but most choose not to dwell on it. Yet again, their resilience amazes me. Some of the most horrific acts of violence happened during that war, but people have picked up and carried on, realizing that dwelling on it does no good, and it’s only in looking forward that things will improve.

Mama and her baby in their garden, in Tawya. 

Plus Photos.

A few more photos from data collection week.

Kiddos. 

Bathroom of Luxury. 

Saying goodbye to our amazing translators. 

Palm oil for sale. 

Little Scarcies River. 

White Bread & MommyDaddy Business.

 Yes, that is a tipped-over train.
Never seen one of those before. 

That extra bright green stuff is rice -- lots of it. 

Focus Grouping. 

Birthday downpour.
We had to pull over and wait it out. 

On the way out to the community #1. 

We got back from the whirlwind trip on Thursday night with bug bites, sunburns, and backed up gastrointestinal systems. But it was a good week! We left on my birthday; the only thing that felt mildly birthday-ish about it was a very sugary piece of cake Barrett very nicely got me from the Lebanese bakery. It was wonderful getting everyone’s messages and e.mails – thank you for that. We stayed in Port Loko and Kambia (right next to Guinea) at night, worked in the communities of Makarankay, Tawya, and Maseimera during the day, and in the evenings waited for the power to come on so we could transcribe our recordings.

Surveys went pretty well and we managed to get the number of interviews we’d hoped for. This turned out to be a bigger challenge than expected because although most people in Sierra Leone speak Krio, many in the rural communities only speak the tribal language, which our translators didn’t know. I attempted to work around this with one older woman, asking my translator in English, “does the conflict that happened during the war affect peoples’  relationships today?”, having her ask a ‘middle woman’ in Krio, and having her ask the old woman in the tribal language. The response was: “Before the war, during the war, she was married. She doesn’t know what is wrong with young people that are still single.” I think we can chalk that one up to lost in translation.

Apart from that, I had some fantastic male and female focus groups, and interviews with youth who were surprisingly open about sex, considering they are usually punished for bringing it up with an adult. I found out there is a traditional birth control called The Rope, which women tie around their waists and as long as they’re wearing it, they won’t get preggers. One girl told me you can suck on a lime if you don’t want to get pregnant – personally, my favourite method. Abstinence is respected for a girl but considered physically impossible for a male, although they admit that since the Koran encourages it, it must be somewhat possible. In one community, someone who didn’t have sex was thought to have an evil spirit. Knowledge about HIV was limited, and someone who had it was usually considered a prostitute. The Krio words for sexual health terms are pretty wild – sex is ‘mommydaddy business’, children are ‘picking’, modernized birth control is ‘white man/English medicine’, traditional healing is ‘country medicine’, and pregnancy is ‘getting belly’. I love it. As one of my friends pointed out, can you imagine how awkward it would be seducing someone with the term ‘mommydaddy business’? I wonder if the US would have lower teenage pregnancy rates if everyone called it that.

Driving through the rural areas, kids would shout ‘apoto!’ (white person) and we felt like people in a parade float, waving at everyone. In most of the communities, we were the first white people many had ever seen. Nothing like realizing you are the sole impression someone is getting of the entire Caucasian race. A lot of mothers thought it was hilarious to pull their screaming, petrified babies as close to us as possible. In the Mesimera community, Barrett and I were both mobbed by hundreds of kids, who stared at us for a while, and began rubbing the skin on our arms, then rubbing their faces, as if our colouring was paint they could put on themselves. For lack of any better ideas, I tried teaching them how to do the see-saw finger trick, which they were completely transfixed by. Standing in a field in the sun with 100 kids around me, the heat rising off their dark little heads, the temperature by my own head was easily 120 degrees. 

Food on the trip was rather dismal. The people of Makarankay served us an amazing pineapple the first day of research, and for the next 6 days we ate nothing but PB&J on white bread. When an ant infestation cleaned out our remaining loaf of bread, we bought white baguettes from the street stands, which is about all any of them were selling. We walked through a town’s ‘market’ one afternoon in a torrential downpour looking for ANYthing besides white bread, and after much searching, came up with 2 bags of stale popcorn. The place we stayed sold expensive dinners, and we splurged on groundnut soup once or twice. The last time, I found part of a snail in mine. Our driver, Abdul, was determined that we try Sierra Leone’s notorious palm wine, so we assumed we’d get some at a bar one night. Oh no. One day driving back from research, we passed 2 old men leaning on a motorcycle on the side of the road, chugging from big old dirty plastic bottles filled with milky-looking liquid. Abdul put on the brakes, reversed, and hollered at them in Krio that we hadn’t had palm wine yet, would they mind? They happily handed over a half-empty bottle. It was one of those moments where being culturally sensitive felt more important than contracting herpes or typhoid or dysentery... palm wine tastes kind of like coconut milk gone bad, or vinegar mixed with a lot of sugar.

We’re now back in Freetown with wonderful things like functioning shower spigots, semi-constant electricity, overpriced yogurt, and beautiful, beautiful vegetables. Oh also, Barrett found (expired) Snicker bars at the grocery yesterday for 1,000 Le. This is like 25 cents, which is unthinkable – an imported American product sold BELOW normal price!? We may be living off of those for a while. Trying to get transcribing finished this weekend (76 pages and counting) so we can start entering the data from all 300 questionnaires with the volunteers on Monday. Should be a learning experience..

Miss you all very much.
Sending lots of love.