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.