Sierra Leone: round 2

This entry includes our day-trip to River Number 2, and River number 2 Beach. River Number 2 has a lovely waterfall that we hiked to, and the beach is positively pristine. The local community runs a tourist resort there--food, lodging, etc--and all the proceeds go to running the community school. Its great, but part of the attraction was that it was so secluded and quiet. I’ve got to say that irresponsible tourism would totally ruin it. Maybe Gambian beaches were once so quiet and perfect as well.

This is us walking along the road, trying to find River Number 2. I just enjoy the redness of the soil.



This is the river and the falls (more like a gently trickling creek, pooling into a lagoon, but it was still great).



Here are some beach pics. It was lovely. The little boy just came out of nowhere and sat with us on the beach. He was super cute, and quiet. We figured either his mother sent him to beg from us, or he is just so used to white people coming to the beach, and probably doing fun things and eating good food that he is totally comfortable with them. Either way, he just sat and chilled.







fishing boats




and that was a day at the beach.

Sierra Leone:round 1!

Hey all! It’s been awhile! The month of December flew by, I was busy…..doing awesome stuff….and not much in the mood to mass-communicate. So there. What did I do?

I went to Sierra Leone! If you have the chance to visit West Africa, I would highly recommend Sierra Leone. My friend Olga and I did our traveling together, because we decided to go rather spontaneously, the trip was not very clearly planned out. This only added to the adventure. ;-)

All the forthcoming updates are about that trip, you should try to read them in order. Most are pretty touristy-sounding (“and then we did THIS! And saw THIS! It was great!”) but allow me a minute to talk about the trip from a development point of view. Sierra Leone is doing so much better than Gambia. They had a huge bloody WAR and they seem to be doing better in a lot of ways. Education rates are higher, more people speak English. Their infrastructure is more present--buses THAT RUN ON SCHEDULE, paved roads WITH LITTLE LINES PAINTED ON THEM. My question is, given all that Sierra Leone has been through, why? Of course there is still poverty there, but why do they have their ducks in a row so much more than The Gam? Gambia is pretty peaceful. Gambia receives a metric shit-ton of European aid. Is it that religion plays a different role in people’s life in Sierra Leone than it does in Gambia (from what I could tell)? It must matter somewhat that back in the colonial days, the colonial seat of West Africa was in Sierra Leone, and not the Gam, hence the favoritism with better schools and roads and such, but why have they not caught up since then? It really was a frustrating thing to ponder while I was there. No answers, only questions. Anyway, on with the adventure!


We arrived outside of Freetown in the evening of Dec 6, and stayed with a friend of a friend. What struck me most was the terrain. Sierra Leone has mountains! Our plan from there was to find the Peace Corps office, and try to stay with volunteers. Some PC The Gambia staff had made it seem as if PC was currently active in Sierra Leone, and I would certainly put up a fellow volunteer for a few nights, so I thought we were set. As it turns out, PC is only in the process of becoming active in the country. Currently they have only their country director there, no other staff, no office, no volunteers. Ooops. Luckily, the new country director took pity on us , and allowed us to stay in some vacant apartments in the same building.


The following pictures are from around Freetown. There is the historic Cotton Tree. In itself, not all that exciting, they used to sell slaves underneath it. But THERE ARE BATS LIVING IN IT. Right out in the daylight in downtown Freetown. Heck Yeah.





This pic is of the historic Krio houses, built by slaves freed and returned from Britain. Note that they are built in an English style, rather than the indigenous style.






This is a view of the city from Signal Hill

Hey all,

Lately I’ve been feeling a little unfocused. There could be a variety of reasons for this. It could be that our Health and Community Development project plan for The Gambia is really vague. It could be that the training I received focused much more on the needs of the rural villages, and didn’t take into account the needs and work opportunities in a more urban setting. People around me don’t need to be encouraged to bring their children to the health clinic, they already go. They don’t want to make mud stoves, they want gas stoves like their more affluent peers have and like they see on TV. They keep business records. They know how to garden. Girls, by and large, attend school. I also wasn’t attached directly to a person or organization, I was more or less plunked down and told to find something to do(This is a mixed blessing though. Some of my friends who were attached to someone, found it was a bad connection for one reason or another, and had to awkwardly back out.).
I’m not mad about it. I love my family. I love my neighbors. I’ve found work that is meaningful to me, though no one work item has been constant throughout. My priority and focus changes according to what is going on at the time, and who is most interested in working at the time. I enjoy my work with the highschoolers most. Lately a primary school whom I had been working with but stopped because they weren’t serious, recently became reinspired and wanted me to come back and tackle some new issues with them.
This chicken project so far has come to naught. We were approved for the grant, but then some investigation happened, and no further funds have been dispensed. There is reason to believe that we still may receive funding, but the longer it delays, the more I want to just give it back if it did come. The group’s president is honest and hardworking, as are a small faction of the club’s general population. But a larger portion of the club is actively against putting any work into the club, and just want immediate benefits for themselves. In my American way of thinking, I think they can just leave the club if they don’t want to do what is expected of them to be a member, but that’s not how everyone else sees it. Also, I have a fear that some might actually sabotage any improvements, out of jealousy(I’ve seen it happen in other clubs. My friend’s club had some rabbits. Someone was jealous of the rabbits, but rather than stealing them, or getting their own, they just poisoned the rabbits. Awesome). I’ve been trying to urge the chicken group along, but most of the members feel that they have done enough now, and that they would rather sit back and wait for profits to come. Well, I’m not bringing in $15, 000 to that atmosphere. I’m worried that if I tell them that though, they will put on a happy face to please me, then still not properly maintain the project, and it will still be wasted in the end.
Ugh. Donor money is a sticky situation. There is still so much need….but so much has been spent irresponsibly.
Unrelatedly, a friend of mine at the school wants to write a grant to have internet installed at the school. He is the computer teacher there, and runs an IT club for students. The principal suggested the same when I first arrived, though he wanted it to be an internet café as an income-earner for the school, open to the general public. While earning income for the school is good, of course, my opinion (that I did not express at the time), was that the young men in the neighborhood do not need another method of doing nothing available to them. Many of them do nothing perfectly well already, and if they want to go to town, internet is there. That opinion still stands. However, this new suggestion is to install internet at the school computer lab, for use in teaching, and to give students access to the web. This makes sense, internet is in the school syllabus, yet they don’t have access. You can’t teach search engines, etc, hypothetically, you need hands-on learning. Also, the IT club is half girls (!), and they more than boys need to get comfortable with computers and internet access to stay competitive in the job market. I’d even like to set aside a few hours every week in the lab for girls only, like in the US at the gym when sometimes they have women’s hours only so that women get proper access to the machines and don’t feel shy to ask for help.
My friend the computer teacher has worked with a number of PCVs in the past, and understands sustainability, etc. His plan is to write a grant to buy the equipment and pay for the first month of web access, then charge students 5 dalasi($.25, pocket change) per hour to browse outside of class hours. With over 1500 students at the school, it should easily earn enough to pay the monthly internet bill. What still needs to be worked out, is if/how the school should benefit(it’s a slippery slope, you need the principal’s support to make anything work, but I don’t want him to expect any kickback). If all goes well, we may write a grant through Peace Corps that is funded by friends and family back at home. More on that later.
Wow, so speaking of unfocused, that was one long stream of conscious. I guess when I write it out, it sounds like I have a lot going on. But it doesn’t feel that way in the day to day.
Happy holidays.

Manlafi

Well here’s something I’d heard of, but never saw until this morning.

Sometimes, when a woman has had a child die in the past, when she has a new child, it is tradition to try to trick God into thinking that she doesn’t want it, and hopefully God won‘t take it. This can be done by naming it “Manlafi” which translates to “Don’t Want” or “Don’t Like.” Or, the family can bring the baby to the bush or the trash heap and leave it there. They then return to deliberate whether or not they want it, then sometimes leave it again, then in the end they take it home.
This morning I was at the neighbor’s house, attending a naming ceremony. They had shaved the baby girl’s head, named her Fatumata, and then we had all eaten porridge. Then, a bunch of older women put the baby in a bucket. She was swaddled and padded with lots of shawls, but she was still in a bucket. Women gathered around and sang and danced to the baby, then an old woman put the bucket on her head and announced that she was going to the market to sell the baby(for how much?, I asked. 100 dalasi. Roughly 4 USD). A crowd of women all went with her. Along the road they would occasionally put the baby bucket down, deliberate whether they wanted to sell it, then they would decide they did, and would continue down the road. I did notice, though this woman had doubtlessly been carrying things on her head her whole life, and could carry whole jugs of water, pans overflowing with cassava, and piles of firewood all with no hands, she kept a hand on the baby bucket on her head at all times. All the while, the people at the party kept assuring me that the baby would be back, they wouldn’t sell it, it was just tradition, etc. In the end, yes indeed, the baby did return.
I also thought this was funny, because when children piss me off, I threaten to sell them all the time. But I usually start with the low price of ten dalasi. You don’t ask too much for a stubborn child.

Manoo

pronounced "Mah-NOH"

Rice harvest time. Lots of work! Per usual, I was hanging out with the neighbors, but not allowed to help, because ultimately I would mess up the rhythm of the pounding (true enough, I'm terrible at pounding), but the ladies said "Faatu! go get your camera! Tell the American people about rice farming!"

Well, people of America, here it is. Rice was planted at the beginning of the rainy season, and now is ready for harvest. The ladies go and chop the tops of the stalks off, then pound them to get the kernels off. Then, all the kernels are pounded with a mortar and pestle to remove the hull. it's lots of work, and it amazed me how little rice resulted. rice is a staple food in the gambia, but really, most of it is imported. the family across the street eats three 50 Kilo bags of rice a month, and there is no way they planted and harvested enough to last them. despite some really creative land uses, people plant in tiny little unusable areas AND big rice fields, there is not enough land, and not enough people willing to cultivate in order to be fully sustainable for the amount of people in the country. its a scary problem.

Whoa! One Year!

This coming November 6 marks my one-year anniversary in The Gambia. How about that? In some ways I feel like I just got here, and others it feels like I’ve been here much longer. What I guess is strange is that instead of counting up, now things may feel like a count down. Scary! But otherwise this anniversary is cause for celebration. Out of the 25 volunteers in our training group, 22 remain. Quite an accomplishment, I think.
What else have I accomplished? This is always a difficult thing to assess, and can either be depressing or comforting, depending on my mood. My motivation for joining Peace Corps was mainly for personal development, and to be helpful and friendly in any way I could to the community into which I was placed. With such vague goals, how could one help but to be successful? Honestly, I’m proud of what I’ve done. I’ve lived in a culture very different from my own, and adapted myself to it. I’ve become functional in a foreign language, though sadly I think I will always be able to hear and understand far more than I can express in response. I’ve made many friends and valuable relationships. I think I’ve been helpful in working through the grant-writing process with a community group, and I think they could do it on their own in the future. I hope I’ve been helpful in encouraging young people to make healthy choices, and to think critically. I hope I’ve been a good example of a friendly American, who knows how to do hard work. I hope I’ve been able to provide alternate perspective in conversations. Hell, I hope I’ve been able to share with people as much as they have shared with me.
Some personal qualities that I’ve found here, and value, is that I find my capacity for joy is much greater, or perhaps my threshold for it is just lower, but either way I can find happiness and reasons to laugh in the smallest of situations. Small things, like cold watermelon, can make me immensely incurably deliriously happy(The reverse can also be true, unfortunately. Huge variations in mood, even throughout the course of a day isn’t instability. Its just Peace Corps, and from my research, we all go through it). That said, I find I have more patience here, even when things are rough, and have been better able to focus on the things that I have control over, and accept the things in life over which I have no control, thereby letting them go. This has lead to a lot less stress. I hope these are skills I can retain when I return home.
What do I miss most? Anonymity, hands down. I miss being able to leave my house and blend into the crowd. I miss sitting on a street and people-watching without being stared at or approached. But I suppose there is plenty of time for that later.
I don’t feel like making this some big heart-searching moment, and if I did I don’t really want to post it on the internet. But hey, 12 months down, 15 more to go.

Oh man though, I’ve never had a pedicure in my life, but I think I could go for one when I get home. Because seriously, someone has got to turn these hooves back into feet. ;-)

Workin'

Work has been busy busy lately, which has been nice. Other than discussing the inculcation of ideas to my chicken group members (see previous entry), my work with the Peer Health Club at the local high school has really taken off.
After sitting in on their meetings last year, trying to get a handle on their premise (“Learn and educate others”), watching them bicker amongst themselves, and seeing them not show up to events or do any outreach, I decided to arrange a Health and Lifeskills curriculum for them, deciding that writing skits is really not my strong suit, especially for people who don’t want to perform them. But if I gave them the correct information, they could do with it what they wanted. They could organize their own skits and spread the word formally, or they could chat with their friends and know that they had the right info. Well, the group that loves to point fingers and evade responsibility has been surprisingly willing to come to my activity sessions. They are even getting used to me wanting things to be interactive. Every other Friday, I ask them to meet for an hour after school, we do a health-related activity, have some juice, and go home. They’ve liked it. They even went so far as to use the info to write a skit and perform it for the school. Good on you, guys!
Last week we were invited to compete in a Drama and Quiz competition on the topic of HIV/AIDS. It was pretty typical notice….two days notice before the event was to occur, the invitation did not include the venue or starting hour, nor any information on how many were to participate, or how long the drama could be. Nonetheless, my group stepped up. I was proud of them. They wrote their own drama, and rehearsed it. We went over HIV/AIDS facts, discussed modes of transmission, prevention, etc.
On the day of the event, they all showed up “on time” (9 AM sharp=11:30ish), and did very well. We answered all our quiz questions correctly. * They performed with gusto. The drama itself didn’t make sense…and I offered that feedback. They performed it well, and I was thrilled that they included song, but the premise didn’t make sense(who is ever going to make the conscious choice to get HIV? No one, the choice is never that cut and dried), and honestly it spread a strong message of fear, which is counter-productive. Nonetheless, they did it all themselves, and after I said my peace about how it spread the wrong message, I felt it was best to just support them and be the best geeked-out, soccer mom supporter ever.
*this is something that I’m wondering. They can memorize facts and repeat them incredibly well, its just something they’re used to as a part of their schooling, but I’m not convinced that they actually believe them. For example, ask them if you can be infected by sharing a food bowl with someone who is infected, and they all will answer no, and explain why using all the right terms. But when push comes to shove, I’m not sure they would eat with someone who is positive. The requisite behavior change is not there, even though they “know” all the right facts. Is it that they have memorized the right words, but don’t know their meaning? Is it just that they don’t believe the books (and me)? Not sure, but while I am proud of their sudden burst of activity, my work in this area is not done.

All in all, we qualified to proceed to the finals, which will be held next Friday. We have to present a new play, so hopefully this one will focus on treatment and sensitivity to those infected. Wish us luck.