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.