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.
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