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.