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

PUMOI PUMOI

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

32 days

Hi, to whoever is reading this!  I feel I should warn you that I have never had or followed blogs before.  That being said, this might be really painful to read, but I will do my best.  I decided to do a blog because I am leaving for Peace Corps in Sierra Leone in 32 days!  I thought this would be a good way to periodically let people know how I am doing and that I'm still alive.  I have been told that I will rarely have access to internet so this seemed like the best way to let interested people know what's going on.

More than anything else I have received this question, "why are  you doing this?".   OK, so Peace Corps, here's how it started.  I have been interested in doing this ever since I got home from Argentina in 2006, and I have been seriously dedicated to trying to get in for the last 3 years.  It seemed like the most exciting, challenging way I could pursue a humanitarian career.  In February 2012 I submitted my application.   In the year that followed I gave Peace Corps what felt like EVERY piece of information about myself and my life.  When I received my nomination for Central or South America last summer it was amazing.  I was a little disappointed that it wasn't Africa, but stoked to have gotten through the first part of the process.

Finally after filling out many, many more forms on January 9th I woke up and, as usual, checked my email for news from Peace Corps.  It was there, my invitation to serve as a volunteer in Sierra Leone!!!  I was in shock, not only did I get in, I got Africa!!!  The feedback I got from family and friends varied from person to person,  but I am lucky to say that I had everyone's support.  The more I have looked into Sierra Leone, also known as Salone, the more sure I am that there is no better place for me to go in the world.  Recently Sierra Leone adopted a pubic education system, which is very impressive for a less developed country in Africa.  This means that the classes I will teach, which should have no more than 30 kids, could have anywhere from 60-100.  They also have started trying to get more girls in school, again, extremely impressive for any country no matter what part of the word.  Since I hope to one day have a career working towards the education of women and girls in less developed countries, I couldn't be more thrilled to be a part of this effort. The other volunteers and I will be the fourth group to go to Sierra  Leone since the end of the civil war.  I honestly feel that I am going to the perfect place for me, and a place where I might be able to make a real difference.

Since my invitation I have had numerous vaccinations and purchased many surprising things to prepare for this experience.  I booked my flight to staging in Philadelphia today, I leave Utah at 9am on June 16th.  After staging, a one day preparation event, I will be flying to Sierra Leone with the other volunteers on June 18th.  Between now and when I leave I will be having as many good times as possible with the people in my life.  I am very lucky to be having so much family coming out to see me before I leave.  I would like to say thank you so much to those people and the rest of the family who have shown me their support in so many ways.  Doing big things is so much easier when you have such an amazing group of people cheering you on.

Hope that wasn't too bad... I'll write again when something worth writing about happens.