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.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Monday, October 21, 2013
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.
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.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
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.
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.
Friday, October 18, 2013
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.
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.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
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.
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.
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