Hello to everyone from my new home Sierra Leone!!! I can't put in to words how happy I am to be here or how amazing this place really is. It's hard to believe how easy it has been adjusting to this life that should seem so foreign. I am currently in Bo, it is the second to largest city in the country. I am staying with a wonderful and loving host family right now and will be for the next 10 weeks. OK one thing at a time.
After 2 full days of travel from Philly to NYC to Brussels to Senegal , we arrived in Sierra Leone. Flying over Africa was mind blowing. I have wanted to be here for at least 20 years now and I finally was doing it! When we arrived we spent 3 days in Freetown, the capitol. All of the volunteers, there are 43 of us, got to now each other pretty well in this time. While we were there, we received a ton of shots, started training and oh yeah...MET THE PRESIDENT! I am a huge fan of this man so it was awesome, it was also awesome because that is something that just doesn't happen. We also had a dinner and danced with the ministers of education, the people who run the countries education system. Awesome. Peace Corps is so loved and desired in this country it really gave me a sense of responsibility. The President described the country as sitting on a time bomb, there are more young people than old right now, and they are extremely under/not educated.
Finally we left the capitol and moved to our training city, Bo, where we received our host families at an adoption ceremony. My host family is made up of my host mama Janet Williams, who gave me my African name Jeneba after her grandmother. She is a nurse in a nearby town and single mother putting her daughter through university right now. Her daughter lives in Freetown and is going to school to be a lawyer. My host Grandmother live on our compound as well. Even though her husband lives in town she lives with us to help take care of the house since my mama is so busy. My host uncle and cousin also live on our compound. My cousin is a 10 year old boy named Jeffery, he is awesome.
OK, here is a day in the life of Jeneba. In the morning I wake up around 7 and take my, oh so luxurious, bucket bath. Ok it's not that luxurious, it's me and a bucket of water over a drain. I love this part of the day because the well water and the rain water is nice and cool, it might be the only time in the day that I'm not hot. I have a breakfast made up of a number of random things and then I leave for school which starts at 8:30. I have about a 10-15 minute walk to training every day, This is so much fun. Here it is very important to greet people. This means stopping and asking how they are, how they slept, how their family members are ect. Depending on if you know the person this can take a while. As I walk I am followed by children yelling pumoi pumoi. In Krio this means white person, some of them have learned my name and now follow me screaming Jeneba Jeneba!
Training consists of 4 hours of language class and classes of everything from security to eduction systems to lesson planing until I go home around 6. Dinner here is so different, but delicious. It is kinda like curry on rice, but with bush meat (whatever animal was killed in the bush (wilderness) recently, monkey, cat, rat...) My family has very little faith in my ability to function in Africa. They insist on my using a spoon to eat for now because eating with your hands is hard, it really is I tried, it's an art. They also won't let me help too much around the house because they say I am not African strong ha ha, it sounds funny but it's SO true. I learned a few chores today, to the amusement of my family. I apparently can't even sweep dirt well, again harder than you think. I learned to get water from the well I could do it for a bit, but my 10 year old brother is WAY faster at it than I am so he took over.
I'd love to tell you guys about cooking over an open flame camping style, and all those fun details but I am running out of time. Hope everyone is doing well!
ps I am feeling too lazy to edit this, sorry for the spelling and grammar issues I'm sure exist.
xoxo
