Okay..
So
still catching up small. The week before last we found out where we
are being placed for the next two years and then had a few days time
to visit the place.
My
village is named M---. It's in the Kambia district, a little bit
north of Freetown. It's known for its rice farming and abundance of
foods. I was able to eat a couple delicious papaya, a pineapple, and
lots of coconuts. I think the children are going to be supplying me
with lots and lots of delicious fruits. It is on this big river
called the Great Scarcies that goes out to the Atlantic, and all of
the rice fields around the area are fed by the river. The river is
tidally locked, so it is pretty neat to see the level of water in the
fields change throughout the day. Most people in the village are rice
farmers of course, some are fisherman and boat makers, and a few are
artisan type crafts people. I'm pretty satisfied with my village –
it's beautiful and the people are interesting!
There
are two main ethnic groups in Sierra Leone: the Mende and the Temne,
and M--- is deep in Temne-land. So basically I'm going to have to
learn another language, Temne, that is completely different from
English. Krio, the lingua franca in Sierra Leone, is pretty similar
to English, but I'm still not completely proficient in it. I'll be
learning Temne mostly by talking to small children in Krio, so that
should be fun.
I've
inherited a ridiculous dog that chases motorcycles and runs at groups
of children just to scare them.
Transportation
to and from M---- is sort of difficult. I think 16 miles to the
main road (main road is paved, road to main road is not) took close
to 4 hours. I had a chicken at my feet and I think there were about
20 people packed into a minivan sized car (poda-poda). Transportation
anywhere here sucks a lot. I'll just have to try different methods to
try to cut down on the time..
My
school is really great. The name is S--- SSS. We have a
huge three story building with quite a lot of facilities that most
other schools in this country just dream about. There are full
chemistry and physics labs that are not being used well at all, so
I've basically made it my project for the next two years to make
these nice. We don't really have people that are qualified enough to
know how to use the labs effectively. I'll be teaching physics, math,
and I imagine also chemistry probably at the upper SSS level. I want
to focus on the good upper level students, but I don't know how much
good I can do them at this point. There is the WASC, the standardized
test everyone must take for getting into universities here, and it's
extremely difficult. Everything rides on it, unfortunately. We'll
see. I'm sure I'll talk about my village and school a lot more in the
future.
Today
we had a village day. These are basically little field trips we take
to four different villages in the surrounding area. We've had three
of these total, and this is the last one we'll be doing. With this
one my group had to put together a life skills workshop for the
community and present it over an hour. My group did its talk on
nutrition, so we made some visual aids and everything for it. It went
surprisingly well given we only had a couple hours to plan it. The
audience was mostly just adult community members and we got good
reception. The other group talked about malaria and simple ways to
stop and reduce the spread of the parasite. One woman had sort of a
negative reaction to mine and the other groups presentations. She was
arguing from the point of view that a lot of people can't afford to
eat well and feed their children like we were telling them they
should or buy mosquito nets and other things to limit malaria.
Otherwise, everyone seemed to enjoy the presentations. I hope we
helped someone. It's hard to tell a group of adults things they don't
already know, and you feel like an ass when you do. The presentations
were more for us as teachers than it was for them, really.
PC doesn't like me putting up my exact location.
PC doesn't like me putting up my exact location.
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