It's Official!!!

It’s been a long time since I’ve written.  Things have been really crazy.  The biggest news is that I finished training!!!  I am now sitting in my own house in my own town.  The end of training was hard, it was really hard to say good bye to our host families.  It was also intimidating knowing that we were all about to go off on our own and really not see that much of each other.  Over the 10 weeks of training and seeing everyone every day I have become really good friends with people here.  I don’t think I have ever become so close with so many people so quickly.  We have been in Sierra Leone for 3 months now and unfortunately we‘ve already had 3 volunteers decide to go home, very sad. 

Anyway, yes it was hard to leave Bo.  From Bo we all went to Freetown for the swearing in ceremony.  It was kind of strange, most of us were staying in the same hostel that we stayed in when we first arrived in country, the difference between us then and now was obvious.  We got to see the Peace Corps compound and that is a really cool place.  It has a med building, volunteers tend to need that a lot, it has a couple of admin and programing buildings, and it also has a hostel for the volunteers to use when they have work to do in Freetown.  The whole compound is beautiful and sits on top of a tall hill overlooking Freetown and the ocean. 

The swearing in ceremony was exciting.  We were all dressed in traditional Africana gara.  A lot of the Salone 3 volunteers who had helped train us came too so it was great.  The American Ambassador was the one who swore us in.  I think they said it was the same oath that all appointed positions of government must take, except Obama, but his is similar just with more added on ha ha.  Anyway from there we went to the beach.  Finally.  It was a great, great day.  We swam and ate and drank and had fun together all day, after working our asses off for the last 2 and a half months.  That ceremony was in a way the culmination of years of effort to become Peace Corps Volunteers for many of us.  It was an awesome day.  At the end of the night though things did get a little sad.  We were all going to our own sites in the morning and I had to say good bye to my best friend here and that sucked.  She was placed in the South of the country, which is not super easy to get too.  Sad.

The next morning saying goodbye to all the people I care about was really hard.  I’m very lucky to have made such good friends here, but it made saying good bye that much harder.  I left Freetown around 9 in the morning with 2 of my site mates and another volunteer who lives near our town.  On top of our car were our 4 huge metal trunks, 4 mountain bikes and a mattress covered with a tarp because it was pouring rain.  It was about 3 ½ hour drive, not too bad.  Then we got to my house, unpacked my stuff and I was alone in my new home. Wow.

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

Magburaka!!!

I got my site placement!!!  In 6 weeks I will be moving to Magburaka! Ok, back up, here’s what’s been going on.

A few weeks ago we had interviews for site placement, it was to help the important people here decide where they should put us.  They try to match us with sites that coincide with what projects we might be good at, preferences we might have for our site and some other factors.  I asked for Mountains, small village, no site mates and most importantly a site with a need/opportunity for girls’ education projects.  On Tuesday of this week we got our sites!  They made a big map of Sierra Leone on the floor and gave us clues in the local tribal language we will be learning.  I Found my site, and here’s  what I’ve found out about it since; I have 3 site mates in the town and 2 other volunteers extremely close, it is a large town, it is not in the mountains.  Now for the awesome part, I am going to be working in an all-girls JSS school most likely teaching JSS 1 & 2.  JSS is Junior Secondary School, kinda like middle schools back home.  Teaching such a low level will probably mean it will all be very basic learning to read and write and the ages vary a lot here so I’ll have to tell you more when school starts.   OK, best parts, I have a female principle (super rare here), and it is a very small school, only 15-25 kids in classes  (most schools here are more like 50-100 kids in a class).  I will be living in a really safe house on the compound of my principle. 

 

The town sounds like it is good sized, it has internet cafes so I’ll be in better contact than I expected to be.  I am not in the mountains, and yes to all you Utah people, there are mountains here, small, small jungle mountains.  Even though I don’t have the mountains, I do have a massive forest preserve on one side of town and an ANIMAL SANCTUARY on the other side of town.  I think I’ll be just fine J.  In the last few weeks I have come to care a lot about the other volunteers, I didn’t think it mattered if I was close  to anyone before, but I am so excited now to have some of my favorite people live close enough to see.  Also Magburaka is a district capitol in the center of the country, this means I have great roads (by Salone standards) going in and out of my town.  This makes it much easier, and cheaper, to travel and for people to come see me. 

I spoke with the Salone 2 volunteer that I am replacing, she’s leaving Monday after finishing her 2 years. She sounds awesome, and she told me all about my new home.  Sounds amazing.  She said the principle is great, the school is great, I’ll be able to get fruits and veggies.  She said the town and where I’m living still feels like a village so that made me feel a lot better.  FRIUTS AND VEGGIES!!! I can’t even tell you how excited I am for that part of not living with a host family anymore.  The food here is full of oil, and I haven’t had almost any fruits or veggies since I’ve been here.  It is a strange concept to live in a place where things grow so well but they aren’t available because of seasons.  I know it sounds obvious, but the produce section of a grocery store is starting to sounds like a seriously magical place with an endless supply of deliciousness.  

So next week I am going on my site visit.  All of the principals, who are our supervisors, will be coming for a conference Monday and Tuesday.  Then Wednesday morning I will be traveling to Magburaka to stay for 4 nights by myself!  They have a site visit so that we can get a feel for the place we will be living in.  I still think it’s crazy that the first time I really live in a house by myself will be in post-conflict West Africa.  Ha ha after this getting an apartment by myself back home should be a piece of cake.  During the site visit I should be staying in the house where I’ll be living in 6 weeks.  I will get to see the school, meet the people in my community, see the market, and just really get a feel for the place.  I am so excited.

Other than all of that, things have been great here.  We just finished a ridiculously long week of training.  I still love where I live and my host family.  The other PCTs (Peace Corps trainees) are awesome, I love them all.  I am having some Africana made at the tailor shop down the street right now.  Tailors are a big things here.  You can either go to the market to look for the second hand clothes that make their way here from America and other Western countries OR get things made at the tailor.  We’ll see how it goes, it’s cool that it is made specifically for you.  I’ll try to remember to let you know if it works out.  I got up early today to go for a quick hike up a nearby hill, it was gorgeous, a little misty from the rain, but you could see so far.  The landscapes here is SO unique.  I’m going to go explore the big market today with a friend, we call looking for the second hand clothes and jewelry, junking.  You can get things for about 1000 Leones or 20 cents for us.  Should be an adventure.  Then the trainees are playing soccer against the local trainers later today.  Finally, tonight we’re celebrating someone’s birthday.  My days here are always so busy, maybe that’s why it feels like time’s flying, but also like I’ve been here for much longer than I really have been.  

Keep your fingers crossed for my site visit!!!  Hope things are great for everyone at home!

xoxo

Still in Sierra Leone

OK, so I am going to try to take advantage of having the Internet so close as much as I can while I am in Bo, so I'll post as much as I can for the next couple months. 

I'm freaking out right now because I am finding out what village I will be living in next week!!! My placement will be a huge factor in how  my life will be for the next 2 years.  It will decide if I am in a town or a small village, if I have another Peace Corps volunteer at my site, how close I am to another volunteer, how often I will be able to get to the Internet, if I will have any cell coverage close to my house, how my house will be, what level of school I will be teaching, the type of classes I will be teaching, what tribal language I will be learning in addition to Krio, ect.  I'm not going to lie I am a little anxious to know where I will be and who I'll be near.  All of the volunteers here have become very close, very fast and it's strange to think we wont be seeing each other all the time after training. Wherever I end up will be my home soon and I really just want to love it as much as I have everything else so far. 

I love this place so much I can't really make you understand so I'm going to keep describing daily things to help paint a picture.  Alright so life in Bo, it is slower than I can really explain.  Everything here takes SO much time, it really makes you appreciate the convenience of the US.  Here we have a huge plastic bin in the bathroom that has to be kept full of water to use for flushing the toilet, and for the OOOH so luxurious and glamorous bucket bathes.  To keep this full requires many trips to the water well. Trips to the well are also necessary for brooking (washing clothes in buckets), cooking, washing dishes, and cleaning the house.  To iron clothes you use an iron the is made of heavy metal and hollow and the inside is filled with hot coals - I know this had nothing to do with the well but I think it's awesome.

Then comes cooking.  The main foods here are different spicy soups/curryish stuff over rice.  The soups, for lack of a better term, consist mostly of large amounts different leafy plants.  To Make these dishes you go through large plastic bags of stems of potato leaves, casava leaves, whatever leaves, and pick each individual leaf off and through away the steams.  Not a quick process, especially if you are a pumoi.  When the leaves are picked off they are finely cut with a knife,  while holding them in your hand (scary for people like me who struggle with knifes).  Once the leaves are cut they are mixed with other ingredients then ground up in a gigantic mortar.  I'm serious, it's huge the grinding stick is probably 5ft tall.  Then you have to go to the outdoor kitchen and start a fire.  The kitchen is outside because it is too hot to cook inside.  The building has 4 walls with a doorway in one wall and small slits for airflow.  On the floor there are small walls less than a foot tall and a piece of rebar that together contain the fire.  Fires are started using coals and small pieces of wood, then when it is hot the pot with the food is placed over it, balancing on the walls and rebar.  Oh yeah you also have to make the rice, and no it's not a quick process either.  Throughout it all the kitchen is full of smoke, I have a hard time being in there with the fire because it's so smokey.  

I have to say though there is something so peaceful and awesome about this way of life.  EVERYTHING has a purpose and there is no need to worry about anything really because everything simply is what it is.  The only way to handle all of these differences is to have a sense of humor about it all and accept it all as is.  I am allowed to do more around the house now.   I was even allowed to clean my room all by myself this week ha ha.  I am hoping to upload pics either with this blog or if not then soon.  Once you see what I'm working with you'll understand why it's not so easy to sweep dirt :)

I am getting better and better at speaking Krio.  I am hoping to get it down better before I start learning whatever my tribal language ends up being.  There is a very real tribal culture here.  I am currently in Mende land, but there are many different tribes throughout the country, mostly staying in their districts.  The tribal culture I mentioned is really obvious when it comes to religion and belief systems.  The main religions here are christian and Muslim, but they are both heavily mixed with very old tribal belief systems.  An example of this is the belief in witchcraft.  There is something called a witch gun that people all over the country are very scared of.   As far as I can tell a witch goes in to the bush and does a ritual involving fire, a type of seed on the fire and some way of targeting a specific person.  When the seed gets hot enough something inside shoots out and it is supposed to shoot the person targeted.  If you have been shot by a witch gun then you get very sick.  If you don't get help for it quickly you could die.  I was told that my Grandma here way shot by a witch gun and that is why she gets sick every few months, it weakened her.  Witchcraft is not a belief only held by people who don't know any better, it is an ingrained idea and is as real to them as medicines is to us.  Educated people here, including doctors, believe in it's existence.  Many of the people here ave small small line scars on different parts of their bodies.  These are for protection against many things, but mostly witch guns, poison and snake bites as far as I have seen.  A man, like a medicine man, makes cuts in your arm with a razor blade and then rubs the different ingredients and ash in the wound.  When the wound heals you have small, black line scars and are protected.  Basically awesome.
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I wish there was a way I could share more of what I'm experiencing with you all so that you could understand how amazing this place and these people are.   Ok, there is still so much more to say, but I can't handle anymore tonight.  I will try to get to the Internet cafe to post this tomorrow and fingers crossed for come pictures!
Keep your fingers crossed for a good site placement for me next week!!!
xoxo

Craziness

Wow.   This morning has been crazy.  We are finishing our second week of training, and the sessions are getting more difficult as well as more intense.  I'm sure that most of you are aware that Sierra Leone had a civil war that lasted for 10 years, and only ended 11 years ago.  This morning our trainers, who are natives of Sierra Leone, talked with us about the war.  They tried to explain why it started, how things were during the war, and what impacts the war has had on the country.  In 1980, when their economy failed, the currency in Sierra Leone was worth more than the American dollar.  The country had an economic collapse which lead to making the country susceptible to the war that came in the early 90s.  That blew my mind. I guess after only hearing about one part of a devastating and confusing war I hadn't thought about the other aspects.  I can't tell you how strange it is to be in a room talking to people who have been touched by something so terrible, in the place where it happened.  It's hard to even imagine the things that were done during that war, and it's even more difficult to accept that it happened to people you now care so much about.

Today I found out that Sierra Leone is the second poorest country in the world, for some reason this was shocking to me.  I think we have all heard the horror stories from the war, but no one seems to know about the terrible affects the war had on this country as a whole.  Aside from all of the death, amputations, mental and physical injuries affecting people all over the country, the war all but destroyed Sierra Leone. Infrastructure was destroyed throughout the country, including schools and many other public buildings.  The majority of the population was displaced inside and outside the borders.  Finally education, possibly the most dangerous issue remaining, was crippled.  During those 10 years many, many people could not go to school. The war lasted for so long that there is now a generation of uneducated people, who are not able to join the workforce.   Now there are not enough schools, resources or trained teachers to meet the needs of the youth population. The country is doing really well for now, considering where they are coming from, but the uneducated youth population will be a huge problem for the country in the not too distant future.

Here's a  crazy thought, the teenagers I meet around town, it is safe to assume, were born and spent their early childhood in the bush.  People everywhere, my host family included, had to abandon their homes and run for their lives in to the bush (jungle) where they had to find a way to survive.  My host sister, for example, is 18.  Chances are the first 8 years of her life were spent scared and struggling to survive. They have really gone through hell here, and the rebuilding process sounds depressingly complex and difficult.  The people here do not talk about the war though and it is not something I can ask about without being extremely insensitive.

Here's the craziest part of all.  These people are OK.  They are happy.  They have forgiven each other, really forgiven.  They have moved on.  The people here do not want to talk about the war, not in a repressed way, they say that it is in the past so bringing it up does no good.  The people here aren't stupid, they haven't forgotten what happened or the loved ones they lost.  They have simply decided not to put energy in to remembering the bad, instead they want to help the country recover.  They are very aware of the countries shortcomings as a result of the war, and they want to work on fixing it rather than placing blame.   I don't think there is any way I can adequately explain this kind of forgiveness to people back home, or ever really understand how it's possible myself.  Something very special and inexplicable exists in this culture and these people that our own culture just doesn't posses.

Today was a very intense reminder of why I am here and how much work there is to do.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intimidated by how big my new job seems.  More importantly today was a very intense reminder of how lucky and happy I am to be here, and have the chance to help these people in whatever way I can. 
xoxo