Exercise, Food, and Water.

On Monday night I went with our landlord, Mike, to run with a local group of Sierra Leonans and ex-pats. Turns out this group is about 70 people big, half white, half black, mostly men in their 30’s. Sierra Leone’s Minister of Defense led us in a pre-run chant, and we took off up one of Freetown’s endless hills. The trail was marked every ½ mile with arrows made of shredded paper, meaning we stopped at least 4 or 5 times to backtrack and reroute. I have never sweat so much in my life; it was 6pm and easily 85 degrees with 90% humidity. We ran through little villages, up hills, down hills, through fields, along roads with amazing views of the ocean. We finished and I got ready to head home, only to realize the group is more of a socializing/drinking club that occasionally goes running. The beer was brought out, announcements were made, those returning from abroad were welcomed back, and then came the initiation ceremony for running club ‘virgins’. Myself and 2 other unlucky girls were pushed into the middle of the circle and told to share our names, where we were from,  what we did, who brought us to the club,  and, according to the announcer: “the most important question of all: ARE... YOU... AVAILABLE?” It was cringe-worthy. Everyone toasted us and sang the club chant again, and we had to chug a glass of beer (or Coke). Then we joined the circle again and everyone sang Swing Low Sweet Chariot, complete with hand motions, which the Minister of Defence acted out in the middle. One of the more bizarre experiences of my life.

A few things I like about Sierra Leone thus far:

Mangoes, obviously.

     Women can dress appropriately given the heat. In other African countries I’ve been to, knees and shoulders should always be covered; if you expose either, you’re a loose woman. Mercifully and miraculously, you can wear a tank top and a short-ish skirt here still be considered morally upstanding. This is a nice surprise in a country where the majority of the population is Muslim.


      There seems to be a nice balance in relation to white people. In other places I’ve either been bombarded with lots of unwanted attention, or given cold and indifferent treatment. Here, people have seen whites before so you are not a total novelty, but there are few enough of them (especially that don’t ride around in big white aid SUVs) that kids still stare at us and say “hello?” when we’re walking to work. I also like that you don’t get mistaken for a rich tourist. Sierra Leone could easily be a stunning vacation destination, but thanks to the war, most white people here are working with NGOs, and the locals know this, so people begging or trying to sell you overpriced souvenirs doesn’t happen much.

Something I am really getting tired of is the price of food. I’ve been able to find a store that sells things dirt cheap everywhere I’ve been in Africa... not here. EVERYTHING in Freetown is imported. All three of the grocery stores we’ve found have primarily American and English products, double or quadruple their normal price. Case in point: this garlic salt, which still had a 99 cent sticker from the US on it but cost almost 10,000 leones ($2.30). I spotted a bag of muesli for 139,000 leones... roughly $32. Opted for a bag of spicy cream-of-wheat-esque cereal from Ghana for $3, which you could easily get in Ghana for about 70 cents. This is apparently also a result of the war: Sierra Leone was producing nothing, and various countries offered to import their products in. Sierra Leone accepted, and the prices of these imports have gradually risen, while simultaneously preventing Sierra Leonans from being able to sell and even export their own products, like rice and fish. 

Having said that, the other day we needed an avocado for dinner and when I discovered the one in our muggy disgusting fridge was covered in mold, I ran 2 blocks down the street and bought a gigantic fresh one for 25 cents from the mama on the corner. At least most fruit and veg remain the same – cheap and amazing. Oh, and we found a Lebanese bakery on the way to work that sells decent chocolate croissants, which have become the highlight of the morning.

We are taking off tomorrow for a week of research in 3 northern communities in Port Loko and Kambia. Probably won’t be posting till we’re back. Prayers for safety and insanely productive data collection would be much appreciated.. we’ve got 7 days to oversee 100 questionnaires, conduct 18 semi-structured interviews, and organize 4 focus groups. 

I leave you with some photos of an insane downpour yesterday that lasted at least 3 hours and turned the roads outside the office into literal rivers, confirming that we are indeed in the thick of the rainy season.

Love to you all! 

Start of the downpour.. view from the office window. 

10 minutes later..

  

2 hours later.

  

Another carb-loaded meal in the sun, post-downpour.

This only took 1.5 hours to upload!

Flying over the Sahara.

Indeed. 

Sunset from the balcony. 

Unfinished houses on the peninsula. 

This is a view I could live with ooooooh forever..

Beachside homes gutted by the war. 

Driving through rivers. 

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. 

Yello from Freetown!

Here, and alive. The trip getting here was quite the adventure. Monday morning I got up at 4, met my classmate Barrett at the train station at 6, we were at the Manchester Airport by 8, and caught our flight to Brussels at 10. We landed in Brussels only to discover the airport was closed...because it was raining. No torrential downpour or thunder or lightening, just a light drizzle that caused everyone in Brussels to stop what they were doing for 30 minutes. When life finally resumed, we made it to our Sierra Leone flight just in time... to sit in the plane and wait an hour for takeoff. During this time, a rather large drunk man in our row fell asleep and was snoring more loudly and vigorously than I thought was humanly possible. Everyone chuckled at him, and then the majority of people sitting nearby migrated towards empty seats elsewhere in the plane.

Six hours later, we touched down at the Lungi Airport. Walking down the stairs of the plane, we stepped straight into a wall of humidity. Then we stepped into Sierra Leone’s international airport, which is a large crumbling room with 4 passport stalls and a luggage carousel. After passing through immigration, I was asked for my yellow fever vaccination certificate, which I didn’t bring. I was shuffled over to a folding table with lots of papers and some packaged syringes on it. Four men, one wearing a white lab coat, proceeded to tell me I needed to buy a yellow fever certificate for $10. I asked when I was going to need it again apart from going through immigration, which I’d just done. They were all rather sheepish and quiet, and I walked away. Barrett and I grabbed our bags and were told to go through customs, which consisted of a bored man behind a counter waving everyone past. 

Once outside, we were bombarded with men yelling and pushing us to various water taxi and ferry services, (required to get to the mainland). A man told us the ferry was only $17, while the water taxi was $40, so we headed to the ferry booth to buy tickets. We were about to step up to the counter when a comment my Dad made last week about paying a little more for something that’ll get you to point B  in one piece went through my head. At the same moment, Barrett turned around and said, “Do you mind if we go with the water taxi? I just have a better feeling about that.” We went with the water taxi. We took a van down to the water with various businessmen and aid workers from our flight. The first boatload of people left, taking my bag with them. Half an hour later, we were told to board, which involved walking down a rickety dock in the dark and onto this bizarre slippery plastic raft leading to the boat, with waves crashing around on either side. I think it was the only time I was relieved to have an African man grab me and loan me his arm for a while. Only after making it onto the boat did I realize the surprising amount of elderly men heading to Freetown – surprising considering the ‘hazing’ process you go through to get from your plane to wherever you’re sleeping that night. An aid worker on the boat told us he brought a middle-aged friend last year who was blind, which I found amazing. Or maybe not being able to see the danger you’re actually in would make everything much easier..

We reached Freetown and I was miraculously reunited with my bag. We also found our driver and a Restless Development worker, who had been waiting for ages and graciously took us to our flat. Throughout this entire experience, it was probably 95 degrees out with mind-boggling humidity. We took a walk through the house and met our roommates, the Cockroaches, who are large and twitchy and quiet and generally hang out in the kitchen. The exhaustion of the day helped us sleep through a cat fight, dog fight, thunderstorm, and the first hour of roosters crowing right outside the windows. It also made us forget we hadn’t had dinner, which was harder to ignore in the morning when we had 4 Fig Newtons between the two of us for breakfast.

We spent most of our first day at the office, which is a sign of things to come and means that we will be learning a lot and working hard. They order lunch for us though, which is great, except that I mistakenly agreed to rice and fish, and forgot that fish in Africa is typically served in its original form, staring hauntingly at you from its bed of rice with a toothy frown. Yummm. 

We returned home last night with an overpriced box of imported mac and cheese to make for dinner, only to discover the gas tank for the cooking hob is empty. After eating cornflakes and peanut butter and jelly, we sat down to watch some Arab tv, only to discover the tv isn’t working. So we sat down with our laptops, only to have the power go out 5 minutes later. Oh Africa. I have missed you. 

It was so surreal flying in over northern Sierra Leone at dusk, seeing familiar red dirt roads and green palm trees and tin shack roofs, and reminding myself I was in a different country, on a different coast of the continent, than what I’ve experienced before. And it is an altogether different universe from the one I exist in at home and in the UK. One that i love but nonetheless requires adjustment.

 I have photos but I can already hear the internet connection I am working with laughing uproariously at the thought of trying to upload them in less than 7 hours. 

You all feel very far away right now, but know that i miss you and am so thankful for your thoughts and prayers and notes. Sending lots of West African love!

Off.. Like a Herd of Turtles.

I'm really not sure I have ever been this ready to go somewhere. Since my last exam on Wednesday, I've felt completely useless, having nothing to frantically study or write or edit or hand in. And just 10 hours before departure, I am completely packed. Bizarre.

Today on my morning run, I headed up a hill towards a nearby primary school. There was a rather burly young man lying on the side of the road with blood all over his face. I thought he was unconscious, but then a guy living nearby came over to check him and he slowly stood up and teetered around, very, very drunk. He said something about his blankity blank sister and the blankity blank police, and I asked if maybe he wanted to sit down so his nose wouldn't be bleeding so much. He ignored me, stumbled across the road, and leaned up against a fence. I left him with the other man and finished my run.

Did I mention I am extremely ready to leave Sheffield? My frustration surrounding things here is giving way to sadness, that people think they deserve to live like this, and subject themselves to it so regularly. It's sad, that's all it is.

The forecast in Freetown, Sierra Leone is for 85 degrees, "feeling like 92 degrees", and the weather icon for every single day in June is this:



At least there is a sun somewhere in there..

Love to all of you.. see you in Africa!