The last 2 weeks have been full of so many great things, but
also some not so great things. First the
ups. I got Mende marks! I’m going to go
out on a limb here and guess that none of you know what that means. They are small black marks given to you by an
“herbalist”, kinda witchdoctor stuff. He
makes small cuts in your skin with a razor (don’t worry I bought a new one)
then rubs herbs and ash in to the cut.
It’s been about 2 weeks and they have healed completely in to small
black lines in sets of 5. I love them. The ones I have are meant to protect me from
snake bites, witch-guns and poisoned food.
Literally meaning that according to people here if a snake sees me he
will freeze and not be able to move, my arms will start shaking if I’m holding
poisoned food and my body is now impervious to bullets, especially those coming
from the witch-guns I have talked about before.
I think it was the only obvious thing to do, I mean really who wouldn’t
want to be safe from all those things…
I had site visit the week before last. Magburaka is awesome. I really wasn’t sure about it at first, it’s
a bigger town and I had been picturing a tiny village, now I wouldn’t trade for
anywhere. The town is about a 10 minute
walk from my house, can’t tell you how happy I am that I’m not in the downtown
area. The town feels much smaller than I
expected, big plus, and I love the market area.
The market has a ton of food and it feels more clean and functional than
some of the markets I’ve been to. Every
Friday there is a big weekly market about a 20 minute walk from my house, this
market is more for things than food though.
The PVC (Peace Corps Volunteer) from Salone 2 (Sierra Leone group 2) that I’m replacing was
already gone when I got there for a visit, BUT Peter, one of my site mates,
still had his guy there. He showed us
around and it was awesome. He showed us
a swimming spot in a big river for the dry season, too dangerous in the rainy
season, it’s only like a 20 minute walk from my house! Awesome.
Also awesome is Teddy.
Teddy is a poyo tapper that the Salone 2 volunteers found in the bush
about 6 months ago. From my house it’ s
a 30 minute walk through some seriously beautiful jungle until you reach his
little A-frame shelter made of sticks and palm fronds. This is where Teddy stays during the day
while farming his land and tapping his palm trees. Basically you show up and drink a few gallons
of poyo with him and leave however much you think you should. I left just over $1 in Leones of all of
us. Poyo is a drink that you get from a
palm tree by climbing to the top and tapping the liquid inside the tree. It ferments inside the tree and continues to
ferment after being tapped. It’s not too
strong, something like a beer I would guess, but it gets stronger throughout
the day so you want to ask for the fresh poyo or it will taste nasty. Drinking it straight from the tree is best,
it’s called from God to man, but a lot of poyo tappers mix it with water and
this can make you sick or give you giardia.
Teddy gives us the poyo from God to man, so that makes it even better. I don’t think we could have found a more
stereotypically, awesomely authentic thing than meeting up with Teddy.
My principal and my school are awesome! I don’t want to repeat myself too much. My school was only made a JS school a few
years ago, and it is still a women’s vocational school. They learn gara dying, cloth weaving,
catering, tailoring and hair dressing.
The JSS part is smaller than most schools. Each of the 3 forms have about 50 girls and
each form has been split in 2. This
means that I will be teaching 2 classes of Form 1 each 4 times/week, and 2
classes of form 2 each 4 times/week.
Each class will have between 15-25 girls. This is so great I can’t even tell you. Most of the volunteers I came with will be
teaching classes of 50-100. Small
classes means I have a better chance of getting through to them and making an
impact. The school is really nice, it is
in a closed compound run in part my nuns who live in a convent on the property. The property is beautiful and all around the
compound is beautiful jungle. I hope I
will be able to upload some pictures today when I go in town to upload
this. The Principal is very awesome and
unique. First of all she is a she, she
is really focused on the teachers being in school all day, every day. This is not normal in this country, the
school system is terrible here, I can’t even get into the issues now it’s too
much, but her making the effort is commendable.
She is also unique because she is taking a strong stand in her school
against male teachers taking advantage of their students, I wish I could say
this wasn’t a rare thing here, but…
OK. My. House.
Is. Awesome. I am living in the same African style
compound with my principal. The compound
is super safe and surrounded by a bamboo wall.
I have to myself 2 verandas, on in the front looking out on the small
street and a school across the way, and one in the back which opens on to he
shared space I have with the principal’s family. I have 2 bedrooms, a large parlor, an indoor
kitchen this really means an indoor place to keep food and pots and pans since
I’ll cook outside), and an indoor bathroom and indoor shower space. I have a pour flush toilet, not a pit
latrine, and it is cool to have to privacy to take bucket baths inside my
house. I have plenty of room for
visitors (HINT HINT), the other peace corps volunteers and my host family will
be visiting if my American people won’t…(HINT HINT).
The time at site really affected me. It was a nice reminder that I am here to do a
job, and I am so excited to get there and get started. Training can feel like a mix of summer school
and summer camp sometimes. They have
almost every hour scheduled 6 day a week and then we’re supposed to be learning
how to cook and clean from our host families while trying to study not 1, but 2
new languages. It was nice to be on my
own for a few days and feel like an adult again. Like I said though it really hit me for the
first time since I’ve been here that I moved to Africa, and I’m going to live
here, in that house for the next 2 years.
There is a big difference between the thought process of I’m going to
live somewhere in the country for 2
years and sitting in your house, knowing the school, talking with people and
acknowledging that I will be living HERE for the next 2 years. It also made me very aware of how much I have
to do, and how real my job here is. It
was a great site visit.
When we got back to do it was great talking to the other
volunteers about their sites and realizing how much we missed seeing each other
for that small amount of time. Now for
the downs. Sunday night I received some
very sad news from home. I was told that
my Uncle Jerry had liver cancer, and about 2 months to live. I had a hard time with this. My good friends here helped me out for the
next couple days. Then yesterday I woke
up around 4:30 to a text saying that he had passed away the day before. A few hours later I found out that the host
mother of the other trainees died in her sleep.
He was the one to check her pulse and find a car to take her to the
hospital. I can’t even imagine
this. She was a single mother of 2 plus
taking care of him. I’m not sure what
will happen now, but I spent a couple hours yesterday with him and some other
volunteers this house where people were gathering. It reminded me a lot of a wake back
home. People came and went grieving
together. It was different than back
home though because of the raw emotion they were showing it was like nothing
most of us have ever seen. After I had
been there for a while my parents called and I needless to say had a little bit
of a break down. Luckily I was near my
friend’s house and he stayed with me while I was on the phone.
For the rest of the day my other Peace Corps people were so
amazingly nice to me and took care of me.
It sounds so strange but yesterday was by far my worst day, but thanks
to my people here I also felt better than I have since I have been here. I definitely lucked out on the people I get
to spend the next 2 years with. Super
corny I know, sorry.
I would like to just say really quickly, my uncle Jerry was
a truly great person. He was a genuinely
kind and generous person who you could always count on to be totally
honest. I was so lucky to have him in my
life. He has supported me so much on all
my adventures. He and his wife Bernie
made the trip out to say good bye and wish me luck when I left for Argentina,
and again he came out to do the same when I left to come out here. We didn’t know he was sick, I saw him about 2
months ago and he seemed perfectly healthy.
He was an amazing person to have in my life, and I am so lucky to have
had him in my family. It is extremely
difficult for me right now to not be home to help my mom and be there for the
rest of my family. Any of you reading
this I love you all very much and hope to talk soon. I’m thinking about you all constantly. I guess this is one of the hard things about
Peace Corps.
That’s about it for my life right now. This week has made me miss some people back
home more than usual. Love you all.
xoxo
