Ins and Outs, Ups and Downs and All Arounds.

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