Holiday happenings

Sorry it's been awhile. Merry (happy) Christmas and a happy new year!
I'll try to just catch up chronologically..
The term ended and then we gave exams for the last week. In order to reduce corruption with teachers taking bribes for grades, we don't 'invigilate' (proctor) our own exams. Each teacher gets a class and we give them all of the exams for their classes. I've got SSS4 which is a small class, so it was really easy.
Only one of my exams has been taken so far. The first week of second term is going to be another exam week. The logic here is that having finals the first week of the new term will get them to actually show up when they are supposed to. The problem is that all of these exams are probably going to be failed because the students will have forgotten everything over the three week break. My exam for SSS4 over organic chemistry should be fun.
I haven't graded the physics test yet, but looking at it I am a little bit disappointed. I basically made it too difficult for them. Next term I have some things I want to change. I am going to use more disciplinary measures, set solid classroom rules, and have more assignments. I am going to have to slow things down a bit, probably, since I think only a few of the bright students are actually getting anything I am saying.
So yeah, after exams were given, all of my peace corps group had to go to Makeni, big city, for our in-service training (IST). It was sort of like pre-service training but only about 10 days (thankfully). We stayed at this nice catholic mission for boys and girls that had electricity most of the time, and running water, most of the time. It was luxury! Our sleeping situation was not too great though, since we all just had to stay in this big room together. I have some weird skin infection in a couple places, but I think it will go away. Shrug.
Makeni is a really cool place. I like it much more than I did Bo. It seems to be rapidly developing. They have an electrical grid that is mostly reliable, solar lighting over lots of nice paved roads with good water management and even trash cans (I know, crazy). It is really dangerous to walk around in, but it's neat. It is just a crazy developing african city.
The training involved teaching practices, some discussion about grants, youth development, and our counterparts, mostly teachers, came the last couple days. It was pretty productive and I think interesting for the Sierra Leonean counterparts. A lot of people rarely ever travel and many have never been outside of their district despite being like 30. There were a couple educated and intelligent Sierra Leonean women that were there, and I think just their presence and input may have been one of the biggest benefits of the conference. Most men here are incredibly chauvenistic because they never see intelligent women because girl's education here sucks because of all of the barriers to education they face.
It was nice to see the whole group of us together again (37 now), but I am pretty happy to be back to my village. I get pretty exhausted from the whole group dynamic and lack of independence. I can't believe I went through 10 weeks of it during PST! Now, there isn't really another long training. We have MST at the 1 year point, but it is only a few days long.
We spent all of our off time just going around Makeni. There wasn't really much to do at the center we were staying at besides play ping pong (we had two tournaments). I didn't bring my laptop and forgot to bring any shirts. I have an explanation though. I bought a new lock for my house before leaving site, and locked it the day I was leaving and then came back in order to get the rest of my things packed and leave, but the lock wouldn't open. It was the best lock I could buy, but it was still from china and low quality. But yeah, it caused me to have to break into my own house.
Luckily I had a key to a back room. The room isn't connected to the main house, though. My ceilings are at least 10 ft high. I tried to put a bicycle on top of a plastic chair to make a ladder, but I ended up breaking a leg on my nice plastic chair. The ceiling there wouldn't bang through. I climbed up a window and had to shimmy across to the corner that I could get into my room from, and had to bang in a ceiling panel there, pull myself up into the ceiling, then bang in the ceiling panel in my room while holding myself up, and hop over the wall without impaling my hand on the nails sticking through the boards. I managed to hang from the wall and drop into my bedroom with only a single scratch on my hand from a nail. It was a total mess, but I had to just change, wash really quick, and leave. Luckily the way I broke in is still from a place only I have the key to.. I don't want to have to do that again.
Back to Makeni. We went out to the nightclubs a few times. One night, I was dancing, and some guy danced right in front of me. I was having the habit of checking my pockets every once in awhile to make sure my few items were still there. I checked, and my wallet was gone. I knew it was the guy that had just gone in front of me though, so I turned around towards him and felt down his arms going for his pockets. He had my wallet in his left hand. I'm really happy I didn't lose my ID or money! A couple other people on another night were successfully 'tiefed'. One  had her money purse cut with a razor blade, and somebody else had his smart phone stolen from out of his hand. Apparently Makeni is nice but there are a lot of thiefs! Nobody was hurt, luckily.
I bought two more gallons of paint in Makeni and managed to get them back to my house safely. That was quite the dangerous task! But I'm still alive and now my bedroom is nice and green. Shebora painted some weird thing that looks like a robot.
My counterpart told me that Christmas at my village would be 'fantastic' so I decided to come back and spent it here rather than go to the beach like most everybody else was planning on doing. It has indeed been fantastic! My village has this tradition of making these 'devils' and having somebody wear them and walk around town. Different parts of the village make their own devil. The one I ended up supporting was named 'Salone Money' from Ropollo (area of town) that Shebora's family made. This thing looks ridiculous. It is like the tackiest thing you've ever seen. It's pretty cool though and everybody says we are going to win the competition for best devil because they had the white man supporting it.
This thing is pretty huge. People from all over the country came for the festivities, even from the city. When I got there, the thing was about to start, and somebody handed me the stick in order to defend our devil. So I was one of the people holding people back from the devil dancing around, which was pretty cool! I don't know if I was protecting the devil from the crazy drunk people or the people from the devil. At one point some drunk dude fell down near the devil and the devil fell over him. I should have gotten the guy out of the way!
This whole thing was pretty intense. There are two devils that dance at a time. There were two yesterday, and will be two later today. But each devil has its group of supporters, so we were afraid that there could be violence. So, we had the police around. I'm pretty sure they were drunk, though. I'll put up pictures sometime. I was really happy to see this, since I rarely ever see genuine Salone culture. Unfortunately I think a lot of it died in the war..
In a couple days I'll be meeting the rest of the people from Kambia (my district, the Kambia Family Crew) and going down to the beach near Freetown for New Years. We are taking the boat all the way to Freetown, which should be great! It's going to take like 12 hours apparently.
I'm reading War and Peace. It's really long and boring, but starting to pick up.
So, I'm doing pretty well. I am not really looking forward to school starting back but there is still a little while to go and some intensive relaxation and surfing still to come.
I hope everyone has had a nice Christmas and stays safe on New Years!

Thanksgiving and ranting

Here I am again!
Last weekend all of the Salone 4's went to a town where 4 of us are stationed in the center of the country to celebrate Thanksgiving together. It took me about 6 hours to get there, for whatever reason. I think it was because for the whole time I was in lorries that I felt like should break down at any moment. Some of these vehicles people use here must be 40 years old.
I mean, there isn't a whole lot to say. I didn't really take any pictures, unfortunately, but I imagine a bunch are going to be on facebook soon if you want to see them. We drank lots of palm wine and ate lots of delicious thanksgiving food. We were all pretty impressed with what we (a few of us, and not so much me) were able to produce. It was nice to see everyone again, but I find that I get burnt out on white people pretty quickly these days. By the way, happy Thanksgiving!
We have this week long training coming up in a couple weeks, so with leaving we just said k see you all soon. I'm not really looking forward to it. I almost have nightmares about training. Good thing it is only a week long and not ten like the PST. There are countless times when I am wanting to say "I'm an introvert, for god's sake!" But yeah, I'm striving on and learning patience. I can deal with anything, but I can't promise I'll feel like talking.
I know my community likes me a lot. I feel like I am doing the job well. Luckily that is what I came here for. I am focusing on learning Themne, which is progressively coming along. I'm just impatient to make it go faster. Yesterday I finally met the guy that teaches Themne to the primary school kids in town, so that sort of made my day. I feel like so long as I put a lot of effort into learning their language, people are going to love me. I think knowing this language is going to be a huge asset to me. I think it is cool that I'll end up being probably fluent in this language that just a few million Africans speak. I really like the language - it's logical in a lot of ways, sounds nice, has interesting features, etc. I still can hardly understand what most people are saying. They all speak it really fast of course, and some people, especially the children, are just impossible to understand.
I have been wanting to say that I am astounded by how much these people are just that, people. I have been mostly talking about the differences but to be honest I am being more surprised at the sameness of humanity. I have been wondering whether I have been seeing so much similarity between these Africans and Europeans because they are a little bit westernized from their history and the whole spread of western culture in general, beacuse of the kinds of people I'm around, or because I am integrated enough to be seeing through the cultural layer and to the basic things that makes everyone human beings. I know everyone thinks this racist thought even if they don't acknowledge it, including Africans: Africans are somehow fundamentally different from the whites.
From my perspective, I am not seeing it. People here seem to me to behave pretty much in the same manner as people in the States. They have as much depth, personality, strength, likes and dislikes,and capabilities. I meet plenty of wise people here. But, this place is impoverished and violent and most of Europe and America has a huge surplus of wealth and is relatively civil. Why?
In prehistory I'd say Africa got the short stick as far as available resources for development like domesticable plants and animals. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel. Then, Africa was exploited not only by its own people, but later by Europeans. This all created a long lasting instability that still seems to be at work. Many African states were colonized and then later clumsily gained independence. After Sierra Leone gained its independence, things became much worse. The British just sort of up and left. During the colonial ages, I doubt education of the natives was a priority for the masters. Their leaving opened the country up to exploitation by the rich and powerful.
Eventually people were fed up with starving because rich people were taking everything and there was a stupid war that reset development yet again. It's a classic story of the rich and powerful exploiting the rest of the population. This is happening everywhere. I see nothing innate in Africans that has caused these problems. I see how this can happen anywhere there is not an educated population, there is resource scarcity that promotes corruption, and the system is so easy to work outside of. I am afraid of politicians the most. They'll steal everything and let everybody else starve if you don't have a system in place to prevent it. It's unfortunate they are sort of necessary.
Things are going pretty well. The term is ending. I've written a couple really difficult finals for my two classes. I hope not all of them fail, but I mean if they do, it's their own fault. I told them in the beginning my classes would be difficult.
I am focusing on a lot of things. I have some more designs I want to paint on my walls and outside doors. I am reading some good books and almost done with a couple. I really recommend Sophie's World: A novel about the history of philosophy. It's a weird premise that the author really pulls off well. I'll have to wait to see how it ends. I know this two years is going to be short (it's flying, really) so I'm trying to milk the 'free time' for all it's worth in self improvement and learning. Doing PC is probably one of the best things I've chosen to do just because it's this great stretch of time that forces you to do all of these things you never have the chance to do in the US. I'm going to come back to the states with an education that you don't get at a university. I spend a lot of time thinking about how I'll be young still when I get back. All of this is a huge asset for me.

Updates, telling it how it is

I can't connect to the internet as I am typing this, but I figure I should probably make an update of sorts since it's been awhile. Airtel has been disappointing lately.

I went and visited my friend Chris this past weekend. It was a fun trip down the river to his village. We stayed out till 2 in the morning doing urban exploration. We climbed all the way to the top of an abandoned water tower! It was really nice to talk to someone about the mutual experiences we are having. He asked me whether I was "telling it how it really is" on my blog. Well, I am trying.

So yeah, the Peace Corps came for their site visit. It went well; my boss seemed satisfied. The most exciting part of it was that they brought the package my parents sent me. Thanks, parents! Getting packages full of things from America is totally great. Now I have a nice hammock in my parlor, lots of protein, things to make rice taste good, and some neat books like the reprinted 1st edition of the CRC full of old science.

One interesting thing was the behavior of my boss out of Freetown towards the village folk. He's a Sierra Leonean. He obviously has a superiority complex and treated my neighbors as being below himself. My neighbor climbed a palm tree and got some coconuts for us. It was really nice. My boss gave my neighbor a 1000 saying buy some cigarettes. But he treated him like dirt the whole time. The hierarchy here is very apparent. It's silly. Everyone wants to have power over others. The people from the city feel they are higher up on the hierarchy than everyone from 'the provinces'. Most of the time people from Freetown are more educated, but it gives them no reason to be treating people living in the villages as animals. This hierarchy is dumb.

This week I started running (again) and this time I intend to keep it up. Running is just really inconvenient at any time. I might run for 20 min and then sweat profusely for at least an hour afterwards. I absolutely need to wash after running. If I woke up early and ran I think I would be sweating still when I had to go to school. Doing anything physical here unless you have the time to sweat and relax enough to stop drenching your clothes is just really uncomfortable. Even when I just need to ride 10 min to get to school I am soaking my clothes by the time I get there.

Shebora (the boy I hang out with) and I went to this other village today in order to see a bunch of cows. He rides on the back of the bike. I'll upload pictures of the cows sometime. Seeing cows here is pretty weird, but it was really cool to walk around in the bush with these big animals with sharp horns.

After three hours of exhausting bike trip in the intense sun and heat (probably almost 100F) I dropped Shebora off at his house and went home and washed. I started reading and relaxing but then Shebora came even though it was clear I wanted to just relax alone. Then a gang of little girls (Shebora's age) came into my backyard and started bothering me. I don't even know what they wanted. They asked for money. I ignored this but they wouldn't go away. I need to get a gate.

Seeing all these girls hanging out in my back attracted a bunch of other people who I just didn't want to be there. I was exhausted and just wanted to be left alone. This is occasionally the typical thing. This adult woman with a child came, and started walking up onto my back porch. Of course she just wanted money. But yeah, she said her child wasn't well. He looked perfectly fine to me. But apparently he hadn't been able to sleep, had a cough, fever, etc. She wanted medicine or to go to the clinic in order to get some medicine.

I am really not sure what to tell people when they say they need to go to the clinic, or worse yet that they need to take their kid to the clinic. I don't know if they are lying or not. I don't even know if this should matter to me. I don't know if I have an obligation to help people that legitimately would get help from a clinc. The thing is is that people have a belief that anything is solved with medicine. A lot of things medicine can help, but a lot of things can't be helped. If I get sick, I will go to a doctor only in extreme cases. I take medicine to relieve symptoms, but I know the medicine isn't actually helping much to get me over the sickness. It is just making it less miserable. So I guess I am saying that these people ought to suffer it out.

Anyway, the woman was asking me for medicine. I said I didn't have anything, sorry. She had an attitude about it though. She was trying to guilt me the entire time. She was showing me her perfectly superficially well child. Here I am trying to relax on my back porch. This woman wouldn't go away unless I gave her something. If I didn't give her something I'm a terrible person. I absolutely don't want to give people money except in specific cases. I didn't come here to give people money; I came to teach di pikin-dem. When people that I have never met ask me for money I automatically don't feel like being friends with them.

I'm just a little bit bitter. It feels like everyone is trying to suck my blood. Even Shebora asks me for things, like shoes (the ones I bought for him are now spoiled) and toothpaste (I told him a couple days ago he needs to take care of his teeth or else he'll have dental problems like everyone else here when he gets older).

I ended up giving the woman a pack of 4 cough drops, since that is what she said she was going to go buy anyway. I told her to give her infant half of a tablet, but I forgot to say that he needs to not swallow them. People here chew pills you are supposed to swallow and probably swallow tablets you are supposed to suck on. I just hope the kid doesn't choke.

The women here that are around my age are starting to harass me a bit. I think they know that I am mostly unreachable, though. I plan to stay that way for them. I've thought a lot about the idea of dating somebody living in my village, but it's basically just a bad idea for lots of reasons. There are a few benefits, including things like learning language, but I'm pretty sure any benefit wouldn't actually be there in the realistic case. Women are scary (especially these ones who come from a totally different culture) and I don't have enough time or patience for at least a local one right now. Luckily it is pretty easy here to brush them off when they show interest. I just tell them I don't want them. They say look, I have a nice butt and will cook for you! I say I like to cook for myself and they lose most of their argument. Besides, the idea of relationship here is so totally different. That is the main thing: there wouldn't be any understanding. I'm supposed to be being all cross cultural, but when it comes to this I don't think I want to give or take anything. I once argued with a friend of mine for why you should date somebody for awhile before you get married to them. He was arguing that you can just meet somebody and then marry them without actually knowing them, like he did and I think most people here do. I think he was thinking people in the west who might spend years looking for 'the one' are ridiculous and overly serious about things. He seemed to think that dating simply involved being promiscuous.

Beyond physical attractiveness, most of the women here don't have much going for them. For most, the lack of education is a real killer. Unfortunately female education here is still much lower than it is for males, and it is very apparent. Plus I'm here in a very peculiar position. I'm the only white person in town, I'm a teacher, and I'm working for the US government. I've got a lot of image to uphold, and I would prefer to not have a scandal. If there is one thing Sierra Leoneans (and Peace Corps volunteers) love to do, it's gossip.

Language is going well, I think. Themne is annoyingly complicated and seemingly arbitrary, but I think that is true of any language until you know it. I see language as being the biggest factor to success and happiness, really, so I am putting a lot of time and energy into it. People love when I speak Themne. It is hard sometimes, but I figure banging my head against it every day will eventually make me fluent. It is getting easier to learn as I go along, too, since I can now form lots of sentences even though it's all simple stuff. I am still really struggling to understand people when they talk. I don't know why but this aspect hasn't been clicking too well. They just speak too fast. But yeah, it will come, inevitably. I'm happy with my progress in the little time I have been here. I think by 6 months I should be having simple but full conversations and by 2 years I should be fluent. I don't think Themne is realistically all that complicated.

I'm doing fairly well, but the loneliness is starting to catch up to me. I have people around all the time, but like I have mentioned, it's hard to feel close to people here when many people are just wanting something out of you. Shebora and the teachers come the closest to being good friends. There is still a significant disconnect though. Some of these people, even the educated ones, have hardly been out of this district. It is hard to connect with someone with such a view of the world. It's not really their fault, of course. It's expensive to travel and most people have no reason to.

I don't have anymore bats in my ceiling since my cat figured out how to climb up there! I feel bad that she has slaughtered a whole community of bats, but it's nice to not have poop coming out of the ceiling.

This coming weekend I am traveling to one of the bigger towns with most of the rest of my group to celebrate Thanksgiving. It should be nice to get out of town for a bit and talk with people that actually relate! Coming here you realize that Americans have more alike than you might think having never exited the bubble.

Some commentary

So I guess it has been an interesting last couple days. Yesterday some of the students (not sure what group) taped a letter to the principal's door. It is a very nasty letter talking about how the students don't like a few of the new teachers, and even one of the senior teachers. One teacher in particular was targeted. They talked about him using drugs, how he needs to stop flogging them, him being too close to the female students, etc. I can see where the students are coming from, but the letter was entirely disrespectful. I'm happy they are expressing themselves, but it was not done very civilly. They even threatened violence against one teacher, saying if they didn't get what they wanted they were going to kill him. The students are ridiculous, and you can't really just brush off threats.

Apparently in another town, at one of the schools another one of my group is teaching at I think, some student stabbed another student and killed him. This stuff seems to happen fairly regularly here. The students have a violent side because they haven't been sensitized to it like children in America. There is violence everywhere. Children are flogged all the time to discipline them for sometimes really stupid things the teachers feel they have done. I initially was ignoring it but it's starting to bother me just because it is so dumb and damaging. It is entirely obvious to me that the teachers just do it to feel power over the students. They feel that it is okay to treat the students like animals. This comes out of the whole hierarchy thing. The students should respect teachers simply because they are older and in a position of power over them. I don't think this is the right way to see things. The students should respect us because we are respectable and allowing them the privilege of becoming educated. I depend on the students liking me and finding my lessons instructive, not on them being afraid that I'm going to beat them.

So today the teacher that was the main target (the letter began Dear Mr. stupid ....) was all pissed and taking his anger out on the students, prowling around them with a length of rubber. Students that aren't dressed properly get sent to kneel on the grass behind the rest of the assembly. Today there were 30 or so students upset for being punished for mostly no reason besides this guy power tripping. This guy is going to get eaten alive, and maybe even have violence against him. I am sure he is going to leave the school on his own, if the students don't make him. He thinks he should be respected when he is not behaving respectably. The other day he brought a kid out of assembly to kneel and said "You are a goat!" and the student talked back "no, I'm a human being". I think this guy's need to feel power over the students is his main problem.

Flogging is a problem here, still. I tell them that Americans recently used to flog and then we realized that it was ineffective, damaging to the students, and there were better ways to do things. I feel like flogging ruins the happy learning environment that a school needs to have successful students, makes the students angry rather than pensive about what they have done wrong, is just a power trip for a teacher, promotes a culture of violence, and just feels to me to be a primitive and unthought out means of getting a message across. Discipline should not be about the punishment as much as showing the student what they have done wrong in such a way that they themselves choose to not do it again. Flogging is just a means to make students afraid to do it again, but it lays no foundation of character.

Other ways of disciplining students are better. One punishment is having them kneel outside or in front of the class. Another is having them 'brush' or cut the grass around the campus with a cutlass, after school. Sometimes students are suspended. Other times they have to fetch water for the teachers lounge. I feel like all of these punishments are pretty good, at least compared with flogging. In any case, I just don't feel like disciplining students. It's not in my character to find pleasure in expressing power over my students in this way. I haven't disciplined a single student. Students talk in my class, but it hasn't bothered me too much really. Most of them seem to listen when I am talking (typically loudly at first). If it gets really bad, I'll send them out of the class or have them kneel. I figure so long as I am well liked, I'll not have any significant disrespect. The students like me because I treat them like human beings and have interesting things to say, so I hope it stays that way. I can see how if the students aren't on your good side, you can have a very miserable time.

Other things:
I am having a padded chair made with a stool so that I will actually have a bit of luxury inside of my house. I can't wait to be able to read in a comfortable chair.
I am finally getting my hands on some country rice, which they grow here. It's delicious and filling. All I have been eating and been able to buy is this stupid imported rice, which doesn't make sense to me since the main occupation here is growing the country rice. My friend Mr. Mansaray has a farm and has been harvesting, so he is going to mill a bag of it for me. It's really expensive, but the bag should last me close to the whole two years.
This project of building and operating a seed bank is moving along. We are finding a place to build the store. I still need to talk with NGOs to try to find a little bit of funding so we can buy the starting seed. Once the store is built and the seed put away, we can organize a way to run it sustainably in a way that won't allow people to be corrupt, so that it can grow and benefit the larger community.
There is this scholarship student exchange program called the Kennedy Lugar Youth Exchange and Study that will allow a student from here to go live with an American family and go to an American high school for a year. I'm confident some of these students are really smart. So, I have been doing a selection process for one boy and one girl. I had them write essays and now I have picked the two. I am really hoping we can get at least one of these students into this life changing program.

Ten things I like and dislike about Salone

10 Personal Things I don't Like About Salone (in no particular order)

1. There are no trash cans. Seriously. I've seen maybe a few the whole time I've been here. I can't help but think that a waste management system that helps to disguise the fact that we are destroying the Earth with every non-decomposable piece of plastic we eat our biscuits from is a direct determinate of development. Granted, the waste produced here by most people is a small small fraction of what we produce in the US.
2. It's hot and humid all the time. My European blood is not well suited to being comfortable and conserving water in the tropics. The main discomfort, though, is the difficulty of staying clean. Because of the sweat, clothes here get smelly/dirty after a single use most of the time. My bed sheet and pillow are totally gross because I sweat on them all night. 
3. There are no washing machines or dryers. So, when my clothes and bed sheets are gross, they stay gross until the weekend when either I or some woman has the time to brook them. Brooking (handwashing fabrics) is pretty difficult, especially if you actually want your things to be clean. A Salone woman can do it pretty well, but it takes a lot of work and I generally feel bad about giving my neighbor a huge bag of laundry with too many socks that probably take like four hours to go through. Socks are the worst. Most people here don't wear socks (sandals, they call slippers) besides to wear shoes to look nice at school and work. So meaning I wear socks every day even though I'd rather be wearing slippers. Socks get dirty in a single day, if I consider there are fungal spores all over them.
4. Lots of things are itchy. Between mosquitos, ants, and fungus, probably at least part of my body is itching at any given time. Hydrocortisone may relieve insect itch, but it does nothing for the fungus on my feet! Itchiness is just something I'm getting used to.
5. People think I'm rich because I can afford to buy a couple loaves of bread (1000 Leone, ~25 cents) and maybe a packet of biscuits (another 1000 Leone) almost every day. I'm sure they also see my being able to essentially buy anything I want or need, including expensive construction materials. They also see me giving people money for rabies shots (that woman with the boy that was bit by my dog took my 50k leone and didn't go back to the clinc after the first shot). But anyway, it has been a challenge to not appear rich because of affording what an American sees as being small things.
6. I feel like I have slaves because people are wanting to get something out of me. Yesterday, they finally put up this fence in my backyard. My neighbor, Mr. Bangura, helped the guys that were contracted for the job for free. I guess he helped them all day. So, I was appreciative and was intending to give him something for the job. When I got home from school, I went and talked with him and he was going on about how much work he did and everything, hinting that he wanted something for it. I mean, that's fine, but people all the time do work for me because they want me to give them something for the work. I can't not give them something. So, I gave Mr. Bangura some money. I feel okay giving money for a job, typically. This morning, Mr. Bangura was in my backyard with a pickaxe, shovel, and his terrible smokers cough. He was digging me another trash pit. So now, I feel like I need to give him something else for the work. Today I think he is going to get some coconuts for me from this tree in the back of our houses. So, maybe I'll throw in some extra or something. This is how people get money out of me in an honest way. It's much better than stealing from me.
7. The internet connection is slow, expensive, and hardly worth using. But I feel like it's a miracle I have the internet at all.
8. I have to sleep 9+ hours to be able to feel rested. I don't really know why. I think it's again that I'm just not well adapted to the climate. Or maybe it's the diet. Or maybe I'm fighting off lots of disease all the time.
9. The food available doesn't really constitute a balanced diet. The /only/ significant sources of protein are meat and granat (peanuts). Chicken is pretty good, but it's rare and expensive, and the fish typically sucks and makes me feel like I'm going to die of an infection in my throat after being impaled by a fish bone. So, generally I have been being a vegetarian and trying to eat a lot of granat. But when I buy a lot of granat, people judge me and say things like "you like granat a lot!". I need to make more sauces like cassava, since it has protein, but it's annoying to have to go to the market and then cook after school. I have lately just been eating rice with palm oil and this seasoning mix I make from the seasonings they sell here. I have become a pro at cooking rice. It's pretty tasty, but it's just a bunch of carbs and some fat. That is most of the food here. There are fried balls of dough, yams, rice, sweet potato (not the same as in the States), granat, cassava, and a few other things. It is all the things they are able to grow well here in the tropics. I just wish there was more protein.
10. Most people don't seem to have been raised with any sense of ethics or values. This is a big one, and a big claim to make, but I am seeing this more and more. The system operates more so with the qualities of give and take and of needing to feed yourself and your family by any means necessary. Basically when doing something, people think only about what they or their family can gain from doing the thing. They don't think about the value of the work, the long term consequences, the aesthetics, the immediate harm being done to somebody else, or anything like that. I guess it's all very utilitarian. Of course this is just a general judgment mostly about the average village person. I meet plenty of people here that are commendable in their values. I'm thinking mostly of my fellow teachers that are mostly coming out of Freetown.

In summary: Poverty blows and reduces the human character to its base needs. The tropics are uncomfortable.

10 Personal Things I like about Salone (not necessarily true for others)

1. I like my house. I might complain that it is too big, but now that I have somebody living in a couple of the spare rooms, I don't feel so bad. Basically I have this massive house that is made of actual concrete instead of mud bricks like most of the other houses. I have made it really nice by painting it, decorating it, making a garden, and basically improving it in most every way I easily can. People praise me all the time on how it's a nice place and I have done a lot with it.
2. I like my school. The school compound is a very nice place. We have most all of the facilities we could realistically hope for even though some of them are currently not functioning. The only reason I am typing this right now and about to put it on the internet is because we have a solar panel that supplies all of the electricity we need. It's a bit far away from my house, but I don't mind it too much since I have a nice bike. The school is interesting too because it's full of remnants of Germans. There are tons of cabinets with things from 20+ years ago. 
3. I like my students. This is saying a lot, since when I last saw the other pcvs they were all complaining and upset with me saying positive things. I have the upper level science students, so I have a lot of good students. They seem to be happy with my teaching, which I'm happy about. They seem to want to learn the stuff I am teaching them even though it's probably just because they want to do well on the WASSCE, the standardized test that decides whether they are going to be able to spend tons of money to go to college and then once they get their degree probably have to farm and be a teacher for bit, or just have to go farm and make a family and somehow manage to make a living. Anyway.. 
4. I like my bike. It is definitely the nicest bike in town, and everybody is constantly telling me to give it to them. Most of the bikes here seem like they are from the 80s and I have noticed that nobody actually knows how to repair them, for whatever reason. So as a result, most don't have working brakes or gears. I don't think the repair places have oil, or something, so the bicycles tend to just be old and in disrepair. I take good care of mine and have paint to cover the scratches so they don't rust. Everything here rusts really fast. My bike is one of the most important things to keep nice.
5. I like my cat a lot. Her name is Nisatay, meaning afraid of things, and she is a great cat. She kills everything in my house besides me and cockroaches, which for some reason she just follows and lets get away. I think they probably don't taste very good like spiders.
6. I like my town. Everybody is very nice to me and seems to like me. I'm starting to get really tired of being a celebrity, but I think it's just something I have to deal with. Being a celebrity makes it hard to not look like an asshole as I smile, wave, and move onto the next person. I think everybody likes me and thinks I am a nice, smart person that is doing something for the community. It's taken a lot to overcome the positive opinion of Issa Kabba, and I am still working on having people actually call me Shebura instead of Issa. I have had lots of mostly positive publicity and most everybody knows me. The town has character and cool places. It's really nice, in my opinion, and I am always telling people they need to come visit me even though it's difficult to get here.
7. I have lots of time to read, work on things, and think. I have been reading lots of books (just finished Candide, reading Dune, think now I'll read The Prince) and trying to refresh and learn new things in all sorts of subjects. I've been learning about world history, calculus, organic chemistry, quantum mechanics, etc. I have the time now to just sit down and learn things I want to learn. I feel like I am expanding myself. I had a bit of an artistic streak with my house, even. I have had this design on my back door I am working on that is taking forever but I'll get to it soon. I got a bit exhausted from painting so much.
8. Salone is an interesting place. For the people that live here, lots of things are normal, but for an outsider, many things are just strange or humorous. Children playing with condom balloons (thankfully unused), chickens tied up and tossed in bags at your feet in transport, goats wandering around with rope and wooden pegs dragging behind them, little kids wearing really explicit t-shirts (I've got your stimulus package right here! with an arrow), random Asians contracted for development jobs, 'checkpoints' on the road where police with ak47s stop you and ask for money before you can pass, etc etc.  A lot of things probably come out of poverty. A lot of things feel post-apocalyptic. There are old uncompleted buildings, particularly in Freetown; old broken equipment, like the diesel generator at my school; old abandoned places that have been stripped of everything besides the walls. All of this is really depressing to me, because it all indicates industry and development that was abruptly abandoned because some drugged up youths with automatic weapons and cutlasses following aimless leaders decided that they wanted to destroy everything and kill people in brutal ways. All of the adults here have these terrible stories of abandoning their homes, running for their lives, and seeing terrible things. You don't hear them too often, though. 
9. Kids typically like me a lot, automatically. Whenever I pass a group of kids they all yell Shebura Kabba! in unison. Babies either like me a lot or start crying when they see me. This is funny but a little bit uncomfortable. Mothers always point at me and say look, the white man Shebura Kabba! and laugh because their child is terrified of me.
10. I have the opportunity to make a positive impression on lots of people that could help them to live a better life. This is harder than it sounds, so I am hoping that I am inspiring just based on how I live my own life and conduct myself. I try to make things, fix things, learn new skills, etc. It has been a bit difficult going from a life of privacy to a life where most things I do people know about. But again, I have a little bit of time to maybe make a good impression on students in how they ought to approach their studies. I guess that's what I'm here to do. I guess I can make an impact by just being a positive public character and teaching. I am afraid I'm more just inspiring the notion that kids need to get out of here and go to the west if they want to at all be successful by western standards, which they value here. That's how most of the successful people here are thinking.

In summary: I am in a special position because I was randomly born white and in the West. That's an annoying reality that I'm dealing with. I have things well off, generally, and I'm lucky to have this opportunity to see a unique part of the world at a unique time in its history.

Life and (human decreed) death in Africa

So I went to the clinic and talked to some random man that decided to help me out by giving me the number of the doctor that was gone at the time. I called the man and asked him if there was a drug I could inject the dog with to make him die peacefully, and he said "well, no. So, you need to go get a rope.." So I said okay, yeah.

I don't know how much detail I'll put into the account because I'm pretty tired of dwelling on it, already. I also don't know how appropriate this story is to tell on this public account. Sorry for the recently dark posts!

So then I went home, and the dog had escaped by breaking the chain. Luckily, he came back a few minutes later because he was a dumb dog that loved me. I-Tal's boy came by and we started walking through the bush out to the river. I-Tal eventually came even though I think he was sick or something.

A bunch of little boys came along for the entertainment because they knew we were going out to drown the dog I had on a chain. We all walked along the bed of this tributary that was starting to fill up with the high tide coming in. The mud on the shore goes up to your knees. The dog was obviously terrified because of his vacation on the other side of the river a couple weeks ago. But yeah, our plans were worse this time.

I-Tal found a big rock and tied some string to it. I slipped off the dog's collar and chain and slipped on the rope. We threw the dog and the rock into the middle of the shallow tributary at the same time. At this point I'm already upset because this obviously isn't going to work. The dog is well above water. The children are pelting him with rocks (actually mud, mostly), and the dog is terrified, pissed off, and suffering. I don't really understand why the children thought throwing rocks at his face was doing anything. This was the most upsetting part of the whole thing. His face was all bloody and it was horrible. I told the children to stop, a few times, but they would just start again. This obviously wasn't going to kill the dog.

Yeah, I was just pissed off. This was turning out to be the worst way to kill him. I wish we would have just taken a boat out and dropped him somewhere deep, but I didn't think about that until the dog with attached stone were already in this stupid shallow tributary. This obviously wasn't going to work. The tide was coming up, and I-Tal said oh, just leave him, he'll drown eventually. But that was horrible, to me. I doubt it would have worked, anyway. The dog would have mustered up any amount of strength to save its life. So eventually I said somebody needs to just go down there and hold him under. They all said no, don't do it, the dog is wild now! But when I went down, he didn't want to bite me, he was just hoping his owner would save him.

Eventually I was the one to have to finalize things, and I was disgusted mostly because I had allowed a bunch of kids to torture him for some time before taking action. I knew what had to be done to minimize this animal's suffering and yet accomplish what I knew had to be done. It /had/ to be done. I promise you, I tried and tried to save this dog and I fought against the standards of things here. If there would have been any other course of action available to me, I would be regretting things right now, and I'm not. I only regret not having jumped in sooner or else have thought about it more to make it quick and decent.

After it was done with, I was just pissed off at the children and how little ability they obviously have for considering any experience outside of their own. It feels to me like this culture has this dark center in some ways. I wish they would teach their children to know that the world doesn't just revolve around them and other things are in fact experiencing and suffering like themselves. They treat other living things as objects to use or play with. Dogs are the animals here with the most capacity for emotion next to us. They seem to treat them the worst despite seeing obvious pain in their faces.

It sucked, a lot, but I am doing fine.

More of life in Africa!

So, the dog came back after 6 days. That is the current thing happening in my life. Let me lead up to that though. I'm eating jago biscuits and having to listen to loud reggae music at the typing class.

Some dutch man with his family came to my town to get married to this Salone woman that is one of the offspring of that gigantic family that Shebura is part of. Shebura told me that they were Americans, but he lied. I think he was just misinformed. Everyone thinks they are related to me or at the very least friends, since they are white. But yeah, the family had given the family here a bunch of money to build this really nice luxurious home. So, the dutch people have been staying there. I watched the place get built. It's the nicest home I've seen here, really. Sinks, toilets, cushy couches, tiled floor, glass windows that aren't broken, a deep freeze, and even maybe eventually a solar panel to power the lights. Right now they are using a loud, annoying generator like everyone else.

I was invited to their wedding. It was interesting, to say the least. They tried to do a cultural fusion thing but I think it was probably unsatisfying for both groups. Weddings here are apparently very loud and joyous and not amazingly ceremonial like western weddings. A lot of the people I've heard talk about it were disappointed that there wasn't more dancing and stuff. The ceremony was done in Themne and translated to English. It was outside, and there was just a huge circle of Africans gazing at these *ahem* well-fed Dutch people. There were people with things on their heads to sell and people with boxes set up right in front of the people getting married. One little boy walking by with granat yelled out his wares in the middle of the whole thing and people laughed. A crowd represents a good place to sell stuff. But yeah, I listened to the older man, I guess the groom's father, talk about their connection to the place.

I guess they were just baptist missionaries, the parents, and for one reason or another had brought this salone woman back to their home in Amsterdam with them. She learned Dutch and the culture and is now doing nursing. So, you can guess somewhere along the way, their son fell for this woman and now they are married. Everyone here is pretty happy about it.

I only spent a couple times with them. It was nice to talk with Europeans, and it made me realize how much culture we share. They ended up giving me a bunch of delicious drink mixes and fruit cookies from Europe because they didn't want to take the things back with them and I was very grateful!

        I went to this beach called Bureh beach this past weekend. I didn't get there until almost night time on Friday but I managed! This place is super nice, and probably the most stereotypical paradise setting I've ever been to. The water is shallow and blue. There are forest covered mountains all around. It's sort of out of the way and not very many people go there. It took me about 4 hours to get to, so I'll probably be going often. There is a surf club on the beach that rents rooms and allows you to pitch a tent on the sand. There are a few places to get absolutely delicious sea food from. I ate clams, crazy looking lobsters people went and caught for us, and delicious fish. I surfed for a lot of Saturday and plan on doing a lot more - I'll be able to learn to surf here and I'm totally stoked about that!

I left Sunday morning again traveling by myself, but this time feeling sick and terrible. I think I probably ate something bad because I ended up being sick until Tuesday. Transportation back was horrible. I was exhausted, sunburned (unavoidable with this white skin..), upset, sick, dehydrated, etc. I just wanted to get home. At one point I puked out the window of a taxi and then apparently instantly passed out. I woke up disoriented to a bunch of concerned looking Africans wanting to sell things to me at a place we were stopped at. I bought a coconut and kept going. Dehydration here sucks a lot and can be pretty scary!

Then I got home, and my dog was on the porch waiting for me. He was excited, I was not. He looked like he hadn't eaten for 6 days. I said I would deal with it later and went in and tried to feel less horrible. I didn't go to school the next day and just relaxed. Next day the nausea was still there a bit, and I was still exhausted so I ended up staying home again and slept. But yeah, I'm fine now. I'll try better next time to not get sick, sunburned, and dehydrated.

I'm tired of the dog problem. I thought he was gone and living a new life and I felt good about it. I told everyone last time that I would drown him if he came back, but I just haven't really felt like it.

Yesterday I was riding my bike somewhere in town and the dog was running with me like he likes to do. Whenever he sees children or bikes he chases them and nips at people. Same old dog. He wants me to forgive him but he still sucks a lot. Going home, I was stopped by a man that told me he was going to make a complaint to the police because my dog had chased him on his bike twice just now and he was pissed about it. I live by the police station, so I went home and saw the man going there to complain. I sat down and talked with the man, exasperated by this stupid dog. Then, some other guy on a bike comes and stops and is angry because my dog had bit his leg and drawn a bit of blood. At this point I just said okay, I'm going to drown the dog tomorrow.

So yeah, that's what I'm going to go do after this. I'm going to the clinic to find some injection I might be able to give him. But if they don't have anything I'll go drown him. I have given him many chances and done all that I can to keep him alive without too badly sacrificing the opinions the town has about me. He's a nuisance and a danger. I don't see another solution really. I was thinking to castrate him, but at this point I feel that if he is around at all people are going to look negatively on me for it. I don't blame them. He is a terrible dog, anyway. He doesn't even do his job. All he does is run around town bothering people, being a terrible dog, a danger to children, and occasionally costing me a lot of money and annoyance. I don't feel as bad now about it as I have before because I feel there is no other way to deal with the problem.

I'll try to get around to carving a pumpkin tonight. I miss the fall atmosphere.

It just started raining so maybe the dog will live another day.

Ungtin fi-ay

So, to say the least, I was a little bit horrified and emotionally disturbed at the thought of killing my dog by drowning with a big rock or hanging from a tree. I knew I would regret it. Look at this pathetic American empathizing with another living thing with emotions.

I figured there were two options: either kill him or give him to my friend in the neighboring town with the possibility to train him, but the higher possibility of just causing more problems. I would have rather done the latter, but I thought of a third option. I live on this massive, wide river that nothing besides the fish around here know how to swim well in, for whatever reason, including dogs (I hope). Mr. Mansaray has a boat which I figured we could use to ferry the dog to the other side with, and leave him there. He said that people sometimes did this with trouble dogs, giving the other side of the river their problems.

Before we did this, I went over to the home of that small boy that was nipped on the butt by my dog yesterday. I sat around for a good while while the boy was found, and then I had to talk to this woman that was apparently his mother even though some other woman went with us to the clinic yesterday whom I thought was his mother. This woman clearly didn't understand me too well, but I tried to explain slowly that the 50,000 Leone I was giving her was for the shots and all the transportation costs. I think she was just happy to be being handed 50,000 Leone. I'll probably go ask the clinic tomorrow whether it was actually used properly.

I then went home, and gave the dog a nice last meal of rice. I figured he would need it to start his new life on the other side. Then, Muhammed (I'm going to start calling him I-Tal, since that is his nickname, tall, which he really is) and I took the dog down to the fishing neighborhood. On the way, the dog went for a couple kids, further telling us that he definitely needs to go no matter what. The dog is just scaring them, but occasionally goes too far, obviously.

On the way, when I-Tal told people what we were doing with the dog, they all laughed at me and basically told me I just need to get a big rock, tie it to him with a chain, and toss him in the river. Other people suggested I take the chain with a padlock and lock him on a tree on the other side. My option was comical, essentially. Nobody was understanding why I wasn't just drowning him. I had to say over and over that it was cruel and I wanted to give him a second chance at life. They couldn't understand that it was at least worth trying; there was no harm in it. Everyone is so stuck in tradition here. I think it is difficult to think outside the box. I eventually told them straight that I have a different ethical system. Gibberish. Everyone said he was going to swim back. They figured when he got back he'd go on a rampage. I told them dogs aren't vengeful. I told them that if he does swim back, we'll kill him like they want. Let's hope he doesn't. I could easily mistake the behavior for blood lust. It's hard to find empathy here.

I had to basically put my foot down. Everyone thought I was being ridiculous, because what they do here is tie a big rock to the dog and toss them in the river. They thought that since he was obviously going to swim back across this ridiculously huge river, you might as well take care of it once and for all. Anyway, we eventually got in a medium sized boat and started going across. The dog was obviously terrified, shaking, nuzzling up to me. He was scared of the water. Everyone was laughing. We got to the other side, and I went over into the knee deep mud, pulled him over, and tossed him up the shore. He sunk in pretty deep, and tried to come back. I got back in, and we left, and the dog was terrified. Luckily, he didn't try to swim, but he looked pretty desperate. He cried, and I felt pretty bad. We watched him eventually crawl up onto the shore. I hope he is getting along over there.

I'm happy, basically. I feel like I have done the right thing, and a burden has been lifted from me because I don't have to worry about him biting somebody else. I feel like I have stood on an ethical high ground and represented a more empathetic and emotionally mature way to behave towards other animals. But, there are plenty of sides of the problem to consider. I just know I would have felt horrible if I would have just drowned him. I am sure if he finds his way out of the rice farms, he'll probably be fine. I just hope he doesn't come back. It is a big river to cross.

More dog problems

As I sort of predicted from the last time but didn't want to fully admit, my dog bit another child. It wasn't a bad bite, just a bit of a scratch on the boy's behind from my dog's teeth, but of course it necessitates a rabies shot. I was enjoying my day, going about my errands of producing some mashed granat (a long process), when some woman and a crying little boy walked up to me. I thought oh great, and went to get first aid supplies. I came back, did the first aid, and then later the mother of the boy came to my door saying something like "this is no sorry business, look, it's swollen, he's going to need 24 rabies injections!" and basically was upset about it. Of course she had pulled my bandage with the antibiotic off. I seriously doubt my dog has rabies, but I completely understand and decided I'd basically do whatever she wanted me to do. I don't feel that my dog is in the right in any way. The whole affair was pretty upsetting. We went to the clinic and I've paid for absolutely everything because I'm sorry that it happened. I'm not mad, I'm just sad about it.

      Now, everyone wants my dog gone, and for good reason, honestly. I fully agree that next time, because there will probably be a next time if the problem is not taken care of, the dog could seriously injure a kid and we'd have more than rabies to worry about. Actually, this was the 'next time' since he bit some kid a little over a month ago. I said the same things, but that time had a bit more sympathy and confidence in my dog's behavior. My dog is one of the worst behaved dogs in town. He's playful, but essentially he's not trained at all. He chases and disturbs children, animals, people riding on motorcycles. I don't really know how to train him. I yell at him whenever he does bad things, but he doesn't really listen to me. I've inherited this dog from his original owner that raised him from a puppy. I get the impression he didn't listen to him that well, either.

     One option is to give him to another pcv in a neighboring town to try to train. She apparently used to train animals. I don't really think this would work out well. Getting him there would be difficult. She has a lot of children around her place. I don't think the dog would listen one bit to her and would just run off. I don't think the dog would be happy in another town. I think he would just be harassed by the other dogs. But, I don't want to kill him. The friend of mine and I will decide tomorrow what to do. Unfortunately, I think for the safety of the children, the best option is to kill the dog. I'm going to hate doing it, but I am not seeing much other option. He's a danger to the community. I don't want to just give my problem to somebody else. I'll let you know what happens. Don't judge me too harshly.

Bankε Race etc

So yet again, I'm in the home-ec room where we charge and use the laptops. I just finished a physics class. I figured I might as well write a blog so I don't get backed up and forget things like I did last time.

A few weeks ago I started a small garden in my back. It was a lot of work to get the rocky backyard plowed up. Luckily I had child labor. I don't know why, but the back is so full of rocks that you need to use a pickaxe to work with it. I have this little three room stone ruins in the back, so I am using one of the rooms to grow some things. The soil in this room is much better for planting than the soil in the yard. In either case though, I think the soil is pretty good. But I don't really know what I'm talking about.

I planted a bunch of granat (ground nut, peanuts), because they are nutritious legumes that will make good gifts and maybe last a little bit to feed myself. Legumes fix nitrogen, so they are good to be planting first so as to make the soil nice and nutritious. After those are done (they are getting pretty big now!) I'll probably plant some muna, sweet potato, because they are delicious and I can make french fries with them. Maybe I'll grow some peppers, too. The area is pretty small and I wish I had more room to grow. I have two more of the empty rooms in the ruins left. One I've brushed (taken a cutlass and cut everything down) in anticipation of making a stone oven, and the other is full of ants and I think I will just use as a trash dump. I want to make a compost bin, but I don't have enough wire mesh, and don't have wood working tools, and I haven't organized enough to the point of needing to borrow them. We'll see. I do really want to make that brick oven, though.

My dog had been missing for three days. Did I mention that? But yeah, he came back last night as I was standing outside thinking about how I missed my dog, so that was nice. Right now he's sleeping down by my bag. He likes to hang out around the school and then leave with me at the end of the day. He is too attached. Somebody told me they saw him getting beat up by a gang of other dogs yesterday. Maybe he just feels like I'm the only one that loves him. Dogs are weird here. They seem more intelligent in some ways than the comfortable, relatively independent dogs in the states. Sometimes I'll be in my back and there will be a big gang of dogs in the fields behind looking to be having a meeting of some kind. My dog is friends with this one other dog that comes by sometimes, and then he looks at me and they run off together. It's like they have their own dog community.

My village has had this annual Bankε (bahn-kay) Race for the past 5 years. Bankε are these small carved out boats they make to go to their farms. So, that was earlier this week. There is the boat race, which people come from surrounding villages to compete in and spectate, and there is also a swimming race. I figured I could win the swimming race because people here for whatever reason aren't very good at swimming despite living and working on a river.

So, I registered for it. I went to the place where it was, this run down warehouse on the edge of the river where there used to be a lot of rice exporting before the war. This is just another depressing destroyed place that once had a lot of industry and provided many jobs. There is this really nice house that I guess the president used to live or vacation at. It had all the modern amenities. Electricity, since apparently they even had a grid here, places for an oven, air conditioners, sinks, tiled floors. Super nice place. I guess when the rebels came through, they took everything and basically destroyed the place. Nobody really knows why. But yeah, I sat around for a few hours while nobody showed up and I talked with the people that live in the empty warehouses.

Then, people started to show up. I stood around for a couple more hours, but now there was a lot of people and loud music. It started to get dark, but we eventually started. I got into a boat with a motor, and five of us were taken out to the middle of the river a bit upstream. It was going into high tide, so the current was really strong. Everybody was asking me whether I was using a life jacket or floaty, but I told them no, and they were surprised I was going to go 'manual'. One other guy decided to not use his floaty.

We jumped in the river, and started to be pulled down towards where all the people were standing under this massive cotton tree (biggest kind of tree I've ever seen). One guy was ahead of me, but after awhile I could see both of us were getting very tired. He was way ahead and in a better position to be carried by the current to where we needed to go, so I figured he would win. But he gave up! and swam towards a floaty. He asked me, in Themne, whether I was too tired to finish, and I said sure, because I didn't understand what he was saying, and one of the Bankε racers came over. I told them no, I wanted to finish. The current was going to pull me way past the finish line at this point, though, and I was getting a little worried. Luckily as I got nearer the shore the pull was much less strong and I made it.

So, I came first place. It was bizarre, and I was exhausted. Everyone was around me shaking my hand, congratulating me, taking pictures of me without my shirt on. Somebody gave me a can of fanta. I sat down while being smothered by a lot of people looking at me, and my friends asking whether it was too much. It was fine. At this point, I am getting used to the attention. But this was more than usual, of course, since there were probably 200 people at the event. I'm pretty sure me swimming was one of the main attractions. I had heard people driving around on a motorcycle advertising about it over a megaphone. I can see how this job can certainly go to one's head. It is like I am living in my own little fairly isolated world. Here, I am a celebrity figure. I don't care for it all that much; it is something I deal with. I don't like being analyzed all the time and being the center of attention just because I'm conspicuously foreign.

I thought that I would win a bag of rice, which is a big deal (150,000 Leone), but I didn't get a prize, really. The guy that won the bankεrace received a bag of rice. I got a fanta, some fame, and a jar of mayonnaise, later on. I figure the biggest benefit might be that people will stop calling me Issa Kabba. This is really tiring, considering I feel like they know that I'm not Issa Kabba but continue to call me Issa Kabba. To kids that yell Issa Kabba!, I say nεs abita, mi nε yi Shebura Kabba!, and they pause for a second and most of the time again shout Issa Kabba! Or they call me Shebura Issa Kabba.

Yesterday some woman told me she had a fever and was sick and wanted medicine. I told her sorry ma, I don't have anything to give you. Which is mostly the truth. People here think westerners have medicine to cure everything. I've basically learned that medicine doesn't really cure sicknesses, it just can sometimes help the body to cure itself. Especially with viral infections, medicines can't really do much. I would feel like I was lecturing if I just told them to rest, eat as much as possible, and stay hydrated, and they wouldn't appreciate it I imagine. So I left, but felt bad  for the woman suffering and like I was missing an opportunity to make my neighbors think I'm great.

I figured if they think that my western medicine can cure anything that giving the woman some ibuprofen might actually do something as a placebo. Of course it could help to lower the fever. I struggled with the decision to go give her a couple ibuprofen for awhile, simply because I don't want to be considered to be a pharmacy. I don't know what the wisest thing to do was. I just know that giving her a couple ibuprofen gave them a good opinion of me and may have helped a small amount to reduce the woman's suffering. We'll see about the repercussions. I doubt their will be an unbearable amount. I can generally get out of giving people money, which I never do, but when people say they are sick, it's difficult to know what to tell them. I know I can't really help them, but they think I can, and therefore should.

Last night I bought a bunch of kerosene from these two little girls walking around with bottles of kerosene. I bought most of what they had, and I'm white, so I'm obviously rich. They were reticent to give me the full change back, but eventually did, and then asked me for 1000 leone so they could eat. I told them no, I can't. I don't like to give straight money to people. People ask me to give them some of the change after I buy things all the time. I think the biggest thing I have struggled with is whether or not I should be spending my money on expensive things. The purchases I have made have painted me as being rich. Yet, I say I don't have money to give to people. This doesn't make sense to them, and makes me seem greedy. I cook for my neighbors sometimes, or else buy things to give to people. This seems to be working well. Cooking I've found to be hugely beneficial. It makes me seem much more strong, independent and gives me a good thing to give to people over money.

Mr. Mansaray, one of the teachers, has this idea to help the community. This is a farming community, so they all deal with grain and land. A long time ago all this land was cleared of the mangrove forests by just a few families. The men that did it are like these mythic ancestral fathers. But essentially this has resulted in all the land being owned by those same few families. Everyone else that farms rice here has to rent some plot from one of the families that owns the land. After they get the land, they either purchase grain or loan the grain from someone if they don't have the money. This system is full of corruption, essentially. Sometimes people end up making 0% profit after harvest because they have to pay back their earnings to the people that have rented them the land and the grain to grow. This is part of why people here are starving. They don't have enough funds after harvest to be able to feed their families. Typical issue of greedy rich people exploiting poor people and siphoning all of the money to themselves. Some people do this ridiculously laborious work on empty stomachs, which is pretty crazy. Farming rice is some of the most laborious work I've done. Most of the farmers are locked into the life and can't really do much else because the money is not there.

So, we are thinking about starting a seed bank where instead of wealthy individuals loaning out rice to the poor and exploiting them, there will be a system in place to prevent exploitation. We'll see how this moves along. That friend of mine that has helped me to paint and build things on my house, Muhammed, has been a farmer his whole life and is pretty excited about the project. In fact, a little too excited since he wants to be moving it along right now and I want to first learn how to write grants and what organizations might want to help fund the initial supply of grain. I won't be doing this until in-service training in a couple months. I'm just glad I now have a secondary project I can do to make Peace Corps happy with their investment. I'm so happy I'm not one of those PCVs doing something other than education that are fully expected to just be dropped somewhere and do something of their own invention. At least with education I can just teach and even if I do nothing else outside of the school I'll still be happy with what I've done.

The happenings of the past month

So yeah, I have definitely failed to be updating consistently. Let's see; I guess a lot has happened in the last month or so! But not too much, really.

Time is flying by, I guess, as I am settling into living here. Right now it's 3 in the afternoon and I am running a class for my fellow teachers on typing. My past peace corps was able to bring some old laptops back with him when he went back to America midway through his time here. Nobody has any experience with typing really even though most have gone through the universities here. They all say they want to type like me. The job is pretty easy because I just sit around reading or doing my own thing once they are started on the typing program.

Teaching is going pretty well. I am teaching SSS1 and 3 physics, and SSS1 and 4 chemistry, but the SSS1 students have not come yet, so my load is really light right now. The SSS1 class' standardized test results have not come back yet, so that is why they are not currently attending school. I end up teaching two classes a day at the most, but this will go up to 4 when the SSS1 students come. I guess they'll be back next term, about 10 weeks from now. The year has three terms, about 12 weeks each. I feel a little bad compared with the workloads of the other teachers, but I imagine I will take on more later. Right now I'm just enjoying the time to get into the hang of teaching. I'm starting to enjoy myself, but only when I'm relatively prepared. My students are pretty serious, and even a bit smart. I sometimes ask them whether or not they want to take the hard route where I explain a lot or the easy one where I just give them something they won't understand, and they take the hard route. I'm pretty happy to oblige them.

Right now there is a lot of dispute with the teachers, particularly the new ones this year, because of money issues. The principal has been unable to get the money needed to pay a lot of them. I think it is the fault of the government in issuing money. Apparently money for teachers generally always comes late. The only reason that people go into teaching is because there aren't any other jobs, and if they aren't doing something, they won't be doing anything besides making working on their farm, which doesn't pay much and is really laborious. So it seems that if you are young and want to make something of your life, you have to be a teacher for a bit, and hope that you'll move up or get a job, or something.

One of the new teachers that has come from Freetown has nowhere to stay, and since I have two spare rooms, I am being forced to allow him to live in them. The rooms are connected to the parlor by a door I've barred closed, so it's pretty much fine. He just moved in. He seems like a decent guy, but I'm still pretty irritated about having to hear him live in my house. I really liked the quiet and the privacy. I'm trying really hard to be comfortable with it, and it's not too bad. I don't feel insecure with it, really. Everyone acts like I should find it unpleasant to live alone, but yeah, culture.

In my SSS3 physics class we are talking about waves, and I am explaining to them a lot of the underlying features of the function describing a wave, and they even seem enthusiastic about it. They come up to the front after class and ask me to explain things again. My SSS4 chemistry class is also pretty fun. We are talking about covalent bonding. It's less exciting than waves, but they still seem pretty interested. I am happy about their enthusiasm, but still lingering in the back of my mind is the idea that these smart, hard working, successful students won't be able to succeed further because of the broken system outside of their control, and the poverty of their families. But I shouldn't think that way.

The school has ridiculous amounts of chemistry and physics equipment that has basically aged and gone to waste over the last 20+ years since the German Baptist missionaries that built the school left. I think they left because of the war. Because of the war, a lot of this country feels pretty post-apocalyptic. In a nearby town there is this big gated establishment called the seed multiplication project. There is a bunch of cool, old genetics equipment just sitting around, and big machines that nobody knows how to use. Everything about the war is depressing. But yeah, I intend to get the labs nice, clean, and organized again. I think just doing this will make the school look very good. This school is considered the highlight of the area, but recently it has been moving down in peoples' minds because of rumors going around about not having teachers. The rumors are only partially true, I think, and it's mostly just payment issues.

The nice chemistry equipment and huge abundance of reagents are pretty tantalizing, so I am learning all sorts of chemistry so that I can better organize things and maybe do some synthesis. Organic chemistry is really neat. The one issue with the lab is that all the rubber has aged and is basically unusable now. I haven't found a place yet that sells tubing, but I'm sure I'll find it somewhere. Otherwise, maybe the glass connections will be good enough. There are all sorts of cool things I can probably do with the stuff, but I am pretty afraid to be handling a lot of it. The physics lab is equally cool, but the problem with it is that we don't have a source of power for the power supplies. Well, maybe we do, but I have yet to work on it. We have a solar panel that we are using right now to charge phones, power the principal's house, and run the laptops. There's a nice inverter for it, so maybe I can get power to the equipment with it.

For the most part life has just been sort of the daily grind with occasional things happening. Language learning has slowed down a lot, and all I feel like doing in my off time is reading, painting, drinking tea, sleeping, or eating. Sometimes I ride my bike. This last weekend I rode 32 miles to the highway and back. It took like 4 hours and I was completely exhausted. It was good, though, and makes me confident I might be able to bike across this country at some point. I want to begin training for the marathon, also. It's this coming May. I think I'm going to enjoy myself here so long as I stay really active. It seems my two primary personal goals are to learn a lot of lots of interesting things, and to be really fit.

I'm reading a lot, which I am really enjoying. Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl was very interesting and I really recommend it. Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist that spent three years in concentration camps during WWII and was able to glean from the experience a pretty profound understanding of human nature. American Gods, by Neil Geiman, was a pretty entertaining and well written novel with an interesting premise. Right now I'm almost finished reading Kafka On the Shore. It's difficult to explain, but I would recommend it. I'm still trying to finish A Brief History of Nearly Everything, which is basically the history of everything from a scientific perspective. This has been a really great book, and I would recommend it to anyone, but it's not exactly brief!

I'm also doing a lot of math and teaching a couple of the teachers some stuff for their exams at university. I've been happy that my school is full of pretty smart people. My fellow teachers are fairly well educated, comparatively speaking. They have interesting things to say and are interested in the things I have to say coming from my own perspective. Their notions about America and the West are a little skewed, but not too terribly. The universities here are western style, so it seems to turn out people that are sort of westernized in their thinking and how they want to act and dress.

One interesting aspect of university life that someone was telling me about was their version of Greek societies. They aren't Greek, but they are what they call camps, and they are pretty similar in a lot of ways. There are different camps for men and women, and they rush if they want to join one, and there is even hazing! An interesting difference is that they serve to elect the president of the university. So, university presidents here are democratically elected. This seems cool at first, but it sounds like it just causes a lot of political problems in the school.  The teacher that was telling me about this was the spokesperson for his camp while at university, and so he received the worst treatment among anyone from the other camps. He gave speeches against the candidates from other camps, supporting his own. Apparently he had to have a body guard and basically feared for his life. He had an incident once where people were trying to get into his room. He managed to escape, and the university didn't offer him any protection. It sounds like the camps rule the school by force. There are riots, violence, and it just sounds bad for the learning environment, in my opinion.

Most of the educated people want to go to America, of course. Here, everyone wants to go to America.  They ask me if I could get them in. There is the perception that it is much better than here. I try to tell them that it depends, but it is hard to tell people that have worked for a degree that they probably wouldn't be able to get by well. But they ask me about service jobs, like cleaning, and figure if they were able to immigrate they could get a job like that. They probably feel any place is better than this, and that may possibly be true besides for places that have violence and oppression. At least the people here are for the most part free to be poor, instead of being forced into it. But that is only partially true, unfortunately, given the corruption and cutting of money by the powerful people. It's hard. A common saying is 'this is Africa, we suffer here'. I don't really know what the solution is. There just needs to be more business, to provide more jobs. But to have business, you need the support of the government or else have a lot of money. The government is poor because it is terribly managed and corrupt, and the only people that have a lot of money are the ones in the government.

This guy that was in my town for awhile but has now left because the rains have started to stop (not sure I've mentioned him), European traveler dude, is entirely cynical about different aspects of Africans after travelling around the continent for three years. I don't know how to feel about it really. He feels that the relationships you get with people here are not at all the same to those we are used to in the west. There's not really a deep emotional aspect, and you can't trust people because they are always in it for gain. I guess this is how relationships anywhere are, but in the west we have deeper aspects of trust, sincerity, etc. Maybe it's just because he's white. People here are just as complex, I would say, on the surface, as anywhere I've seen. Everyone has a personality. Things are just different in weird ways, and you ask yourself how they are thinking. I don't think there is any sort of fundamental mental difference - somebody born in Africa and raised in western culture would have the same capacities and characteristics as some white kid.

The guy just makes it seem like he thinks they are fundamentally different creatures. And they are, because their upbringing is /totally/ different. It makes you think about all the things that happened in youth to shape who we are, and what makes us westerners. There's a lot of good here, and these people are stronger, physically and emotionally, than most westerners - they have to be because their lives are much harsher than the ones we dealt with. I am so happy for that passport I have in my lockbox, my peace corps ID, my USD emergency fund, my parents sending me things. I am happy I'm going to be here for only two years, and then I get to go back to some posh environment with carpeting and showers.

I went to Port Loko last weekend to go to the bank to get my fat wad of cash and buy some things. It seemed to me that if I wasn't being greeted, people were telling me to give them money or food. That is the case a lot of the time, and it's sort of bothersome after awhile. It's like people aren't seeing me as a person, or appreciating me for anything other than that I have money and food I could give them. A criticism might be that they are only being nice to me because they want something from me. I get that impression from some people, but not all. My village isn't this bad. A group of young boys wrote me a badly written letter where they were asking me to buy them a book. I told them no, I can't, because I can't afford to buy one for everyone. They said I wouldn't have to. Yes, I would. Every time I give somebody something, I can tell that they talk and other people get the idea to come tell me to give them something. But yeah, I don't really like to do these things, because it just gives the impression that I will do it again, and I will eventually have to say no, anyway.

Yesterday I came home and my dog was sitting on the front porch and both of his eyes were completely swollen and horrible looking. I initally thought that he had gotten in a fight and had lost his eyes. Then I thought it was a bacterial infection. Somebody told me I should go buy eye drops, so that's what I did, and figured okay, that's that, he'll be fine after a few days. Then somebody told me that he probably got spit in the eyes by a snake, and that made a lot more sense than a bacterial infection. So I guess my stupid dog confronted a cobra. I wasn't really sure what to do and was pretty distraught about it. I tried to wash his eyes, but he wouldn't open them much at all and it was pretty useless. He still could see it seemed. Today his eyes look much better and he can still see, fortunately. One still looks pretty bad, so I'm wondering whether or not he might lose his vision in that one. I guess we'll see if the venom damages the eyes much or not. I think he'll be fine.

Well, what else? I have been cooking all my meals for myself, besides lunch which I buy from the 'lunch ladies' that come over to feed the kids. I don't cook extravagantly too often. I buy expensive things like bread and granat (peanuts). I've been buying raw granat and then having somebody with the grinding machine mash them up for me. I then put it with sugar, oil, and condensed milk, and it's totally delicious. I think it's got a decent amount of protein. The bread I fry with margarine and put some mayonnaise on it, or eat it fried with the granat. I cook some rice most days, because it's pretty cheap, but it's sort of hard to make good without making a sauce with it, which is a lot of trouble. The lunch ladies have rice with this dry spice mix and oil which is really simple and decent, so I've been making that. I eat a lot. It's the famine season, so I feel a little bad about it sometimes. Apparently during the dry season, which is coming soon, there is a lot of food and everyone is happy. Right now, the harvest from last year is starting to run out, so things are more expensive and less abundant.

I think I'll grow a mustache. I still haven't cut my hair, and I guess I won't, so I look ridiculous. Oh well.

Lots of stuff

So, life in my village is going pretty well. I thought I would have to kill my dog the other day, but I changed my mind about going through with it and my dog is still happy and alive, and I am happy he is alive. He bit some kid on the butt and my principal had to pay a hefty price for a rabies treatment. He doesn't have rabies. He just likes to chase and play with children because they either provoke him or enjoy being chased. He apparently had bit some kid awhile back, and so now I was feeling like he was a problem that had to be taken care of. Everyone agreed that he had to go, pretty much. All the children love the dog, and I love his company and security. So basically I decided he just needs to be trained. I've started throwing things at him when he does bad things - hopefully this will make him realize the things are bad. He's a weird dog without much training. I don't think he understands how to sit down with only his front legs up like I always see dogs do. I noticed he is either standing on all fours or laying down. He also doesn't at all understand fetch. I think he's afraid of sticks.
I played some football with Shebura and the neighborhood kids yesterday. Shebura told me I sabi (understand/know how to) play, and I even actually made one of the goals. So that was nice, and I'll probably keep occasionally playing with them and hopefully come out decent at football.
Today I made a trip to Port Loko to go to the bank. It took most of the day, but it was pretty fun. I ended up going by myself because the friend in the village on the international highway was given some ridiculous should be out of his responsibility job to do at his school because his principal was out of town. I took a taxi down the highway with this rich woman and a few other people. I could tell she was rich because she had a nice google smartphone. The guy next to me wanted my phone number because he wants to be my friend and go to America and thinks I could talk to the ambassador and somehow negotiate it for him. The rich woman and I basically spent most of the ride telling him how America isn't perfect; you have to work hard and there are plenty of people poor and suffering there. People have a lot of grasping misconceptions here.
So now that I'm rich again I've been able to pay off all the people that have been doing work for me or selling things to me. I bought a big long iron pipe for 55k. I'm going to buy some concrete and other things that will allow me to put the pipes in on my back porch so I can put a railing there, and extend the roof a bit. I'm going to get some gutters on that bit and I'm wanting to create some bucket filling thing but I'm not sure yet how I'll do it. Piping/plumbing hasn't really come here as a trade quite yet, I think. They make houses, so carpentry, masonry, and all that is around, but indoor plumbing is mostly just found in the cities, if at all, so the materials for piping seem rare. Then I gave Shebura 60k to give to his brother who is making a nice bookshelf for me. I'll get that tomorrow. Then I paid my neighbor Mr. Bangura the 10k I owed him for sewing up some holes in my bed sheet. I'm pretty sure I hadn't given it to him yet. I figure he wouldn't tell me the truth even if I had. You can hardly expect honesty when it is perceived that the system is against you and you have family to take care of. I think people just have too many kids. But then there are good reasons for that, I think. Now I'm having Muhammed make me a work table, and that will probably cost me at least 100k.
The current exchange rate is I think 4300 Leone/1 USD. Five block (500 Leone) can buy you lots of stuff. You could get 5 butterscotch candies, or a big scoop of boiled granats (ground nuts, peanuts, which are tastier I think than how we prepare them in the states), or a cup of pepe (peppers), or a bunch of MSG cubes (maggi cubes, supposed to be bouillion that they put in a lot of dishes), or a bon-bon chocolate candy thing, and lots of other things. So 20 cents is quite a bit here. But then some things are still pretty expensive, some more expensive than in the states, but these things are mostly just found in the supermarkets (leb marts) in the cities for rich people. People are poor, so they mostly just stick to eating traditional dishes, which are pretty cheap to prepare. Rice is really cheap, and you can get a big bushel of cassava leaves for five block which will cook at least a couple large portions of plasas. I can buy five crabs for 2000, so I guess that is cheap. I can get lobster here too, and I bet you it's under a dollar.
I've stll not managed to make a traditional dish that is actually tasty. Shebura says I no sabi cook. I haven't even been able to cook decent rice yet. I've really started enjoying the traditional dishes, so hopefully I can start making them decently, because otherwise I'm just eating the little things my parents have sent me and expensive things I bought in the city, and these things will be gone soon. When people feed me cassava, or petete leaf, or other delicious dishes, I'm really grateful because it's all tasty and nourishing. I don't know if I would be able to prepare these dishes in the states really, because a lot of ingredients are just here locally. The cassava, which I'm surprised we don't grow because it's really good for you, the petete leaf (potato) which we don't eat, the palm oil, maggi cubes, etc.
This orphan kid that lives with his grandmother in another village and comes to my town to go to my school just came to talk to me more about living in a spare room I have on the side of the house. He has no money at all. My salone 2 had paid for his school fees and let him live here. I think he's terrified of me, because I'm being a little difficult about letting him stay here and committing to helping him go to school. I don't even know the kid. I didn't want anyone else living here, but I am sort of being forced because this boy will not go to school if I don't help him. It's not very expensive, and I guess I'll have yet another person to help keep outside the house clean. I am okay with him living in the house so long as he is quiet and everything. Where he is living in the house means he probably won't be in my business too much if at all. I am starting to become the part of the powerful, respected, scary guy. There is a hierarchy and I am at a decently high spot simply because I'm the only white dude in town (besides that Swiss guy traveling around Africa in this van he has parked in town for the rainy season): something I feel a bit bad about but may as well make the best of.
Update since last night: Shebura woke me up at 7 this morning to bring my shelf to me from his brother. I'm not sure how he got it here, since it's huge and heavy. Somehow he managed despite being a small boy. The shelf is really great. I want to polish it.
Shebura is telling me that this kid that wants to move in and says he's a poor orphan is lying about it. I'm going to talk with my principal and my Salone 2 and figure it out. I almost look forward to telling the kid to go away.  I haven't really taken kindly to somebody I've never met showing up at my house essentially forcing me to give him a room by guilting me.
Jo-Jo, another friend of mine who is Shebura's age is leaving today to move to the district capitol with his family. I'm fairly sad about it because he was a cool little kid and  spoke English.