Sorry it's been awhile. Merry (happy) Christmas and a happy new year!
I'll try to just catch up chronologically..
The term ended and then we gave exams for the last week. In order to reduce corruption with teachers taking bribes for grades, we don't 'invigilate' (proctor) our own exams. Each teacher gets a class and we give them all of the exams for their classes. I've got SSS4 which is a small class, so it was really easy.
Only one of my exams has been taken so far. The first week of second term is going to be another exam week. The logic here is that having finals the first week of the new term will get them to actually show up when they are supposed to. The problem is that all of these exams are probably going to be failed because the students will have forgotten everything over the three week break. My exam for SSS4 over organic chemistry should be fun.
I haven't graded the physics test yet, but looking at it I am a little bit disappointed. I basically made it too difficult for them. Next term I have some things I want to change. I am going to use more disciplinary measures, set solid classroom rules, and have more assignments. I am going to have to slow things down a bit, probably, since I think only a few of the bright students are actually getting anything I am saying.
So yeah, after exams were given, all of my peace corps group had to go to Makeni, big city, for our in-service training (IST). It was sort of like pre-service training but only about 10 days (thankfully). We stayed at this nice catholic mission for boys and girls that had electricity most of the time, and running water, most of the time. It was luxury! Our sleeping situation was not too great though, since we all just had to stay in this big room together. I have some weird skin infection in a couple places, but I think it will go away. Shrug.
Makeni is a really cool place. I like it much more than I did Bo. It seems to be rapidly developing. They have an electrical grid that is mostly reliable, solar lighting over lots of nice paved roads with good water management and even trash cans (I know, crazy). It is really dangerous to walk around in, but it's neat. It is just a crazy developing african city.
The training involved teaching practices, some discussion about grants, youth development, and our counterparts, mostly teachers, came the last couple days. It was pretty productive and I think interesting for the Sierra Leonean counterparts. A lot of people rarely ever travel and many have never been outside of their district despite being like 30. There were a couple educated and intelligent Sierra Leonean women that were there, and I think just their presence and input may have been one of the biggest benefits of the conference. Most men here are incredibly chauvenistic because they never see intelligent women because girl's education here sucks because of all of the barriers to education they face.
It was nice to see the whole group of us together again (37 now), but I am pretty happy to be back to my village. I get pretty exhausted from the whole group dynamic and lack of independence. I can't believe I went through 10 weeks of it during PST! Now, there isn't really another long training. We have MST at the 1 year point, but it is only a few days long.
We spent all of our off time just going around Makeni. There wasn't really much to do at the center we were staying at besides play ping pong (we had two tournaments). I didn't bring my laptop and forgot to bring any shirts. I have an explanation though. I bought a new lock for my house before leaving site, and locked it the day I was leaving and then came back in order to get the rest of my things packed and leave, but the lock wouldn't open. It was the best lock I could buy, but it was still from china and low quality. But yeah, it caused me to have to break into my own house.
Luckily I had a key to a back room. The room isn't connected to the main house, though. My ceilings are at least 10 ft high. I tried to put a bicycle on top of a plastic chair to make a ladder, but I ended up breaking a leg on my nice plastic chair. The ceiling there wouldn't bang through. I climbed up a window and had to shimmy across to the corner that I could get into my room from, and had to bang in a ceiling panel there, pull myself up into the ceiling, then bang in the ceiling panel in my room while holding myself up, and hop over the wall without impaling my hand on the nails sticking through the boards. I managed to hang from the wall and drop into my bedroom with only a single scratch on my hand from a nail. It was a total mess, but I had to just change, wash really quick, and leave. Luckily the way I broke in is still from a place only I have the key to.. I don't want to have to do that again.
Back to Makeni. We went out to the nightclubs a few times. One night, I was dancing, and some guy danced right in front of me. I was having the habit of checking my pockets every once in awhile to make sure my few items were still there. I checked, and my wallet was gone. I knew it was the guy that had just gone in front of me though, so I turned around towards him and felt down his arms going for his pockets. He had my wallet in his left hand. I'm really happy I didn't lose my ID or money! A couple other people on another night were successfully 'tiefed'. One had her money purse cut with a razor blade, and somebody else had his smart phone stolen from out of his hand. Apparently Makeni is nice but there are a lot of thiefs! Nobody was hurt, luckily.
I bought two more gallons of paint in Makeni and managed to get them back to my house safely. That was quite the dangerous task! But I'm still alive and now my bedroom is nice and green. Shebora painted some weird thing that looks like a robot.
My counterpart told me that Christmas at my village would be 'fantastic' so I decided to come back and spent it here rather than go to the beach like most everybody else was planning on doing. It has indeed been fantastic! My village has this tradition of making these 'devils' and having somebody wear them and walk around town. Different parts of the village make their own devil. The one I ended up supporting was named 'Salone Money' from Ropollo (area of town) that Shebora's family made. This thing looks ridiculous. It is like the tackiest thing you've ever seen. It's pretty cool though and everybody says we are going to win the competition for best devil because they had the white man supporting it.
This thing is pretty huge. People from all over the country came for the festivities, even from the city. When I got there, the thing was about to start, and somebody handed me the stick in order to defend our devil. So I was one of the people holding people back from the devil dancing around, which was pretty cool! I don't know if I was protecting the devil from the crazy drunk people or the people from the devil. At one point some drunk dude fell down near the devil and the devil fell over him. I should have gotten the guy out of the way!
This whole thing was pretty intense. There are two devils that dance at a time. There were two yesterday, and will be two later today. But each devil has its group of supporters, so we were afraid that there could be violence. So, we had the police around. I'm pretty sure they were drunk, though. I'll put up pictures sometime. I was really happy to see this, since I rarely ever see genuine Salone culture. Unfortunately I think a lot of it died in the war..
In a couple days I'll be meeting the rest of the people from Kambia (my district, the Kambia Family Crew) and going down to the beach near Freetown for New Years. We are taking the boat all the way to Freetown, which should be great! It's going to take like 12 hours apparently.
I'm reading War and Peace. It's really long and boring, but starting to pick up.
So, I'm doing pretty well. I am not really looking forward to school starting back but there is still a little while to go and some intensive relaxation and surfing still to come.
I hope everyone has had a nice Christmas and stays safe on New Years!
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Thanksgiving and ranting
Here I am again!
Last weekend all of the Salone 4's went to a town where 4 of us are stationed in the center of the country to celebrate Thanksgiving together. It took me about 6 hours to get there, for whatever reason. I think it was because for the whole time I was in lorries that I felt like should break down at any moment. Some of these vehicles people use here must be 40 years old.
I mean, there isn't a whole lot to say. I didn't really take any pictures, unfortunately, but I imagine a bunch are going to be on facebook soon if you want to see them. We drank lots of palm wine and ate lots of delicious thanksgiving food. We were all pretty impressed with what we (a few of us, and not so much me) were able to produce. It was nice to see everyone again, but I find that I get burnt out on white people pretty quickly these days. By the way, happy Thanksgiving!
We have this week long training coming up in a couple weeks, so with leaving we just said k see you all soon. I'm not really looking forward to it. I almost have nightmares about training. Good thing it is only a week long and not ten like the PST. There are countless times when I am wanting to say "I'm an introvert, for god's sake!" But yeah, I'm striving on and learning patience. I can deal with anything, but I can't promise I'll feel like talking.
I know my community likes me a lot. I feel like I am doing the job well. Luckily that is what I came here for. I am focusing on learning Themne, which is progressively coming along. I'm just impatient to make it go faster. Yesterday I finally met the guy that teaches Themne to the primary school kids in town, so that sort of made my day. I feel like so long as I put a lot of effort into learning their language, people are going to love me. I think knowing this language is going to be a huge asset to me. I think it is cool that I'll end up being probably fluent in this language that just a few million Africans speak. I really like the language - it's logical in a lot of ways, sounds nice, has interesting features, etc. I still can hardly understand what most people are saying. They all speak it really fast of course, and some people, especially the children, are just impossible to understand.
I have been wanting to say that I am astounded by how much these people are just that, people. I have been mostly talking about the differences but to be honest I am being more surprised at the sameness of humanity. I have been wondering whether I have been seeing so much similarity between these Africans and Europeans because they are a little bit westernized from their history and the whole spread of western culture in general, beacuse of the kinds of people I'm around, or because I am integrated enough to be seeing through the cultural layer and to the basic things that makes everyone human beings. I know everyone thinks this racist thought even if they don't acknowledge it, including Africans: Africans are somehow fundamentally different from the whites.
From my perspective, I am not seeing it. People here seem to me to behave pretty much in the same manner as people in the States. They have as much depth, personality, strength, likes and dislikes,and capabilities. I meet plenty of wise people here. But, this place is impoverished and violent and most of Europe and America has a huge surplus of wealth and is relatively civil. Why?
In prehistory I'd say Africa got the short stick as far as available resources for development like domesticable plants and animals. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel. Then, Africa was exploited not only by its own people, but later by Europeans. This all created a long lasting instability that still seems to be at work. Many African states were colonized and then later clumsily gained independence. After Sierra Leone gained its independence, things became much worse. The British just sort of up and left. During the colonial ages, I doubt education of the natives was a priority for the masters. Their leaving opened the country up to exploitation by the rich and powerful.
Eventually people were fed up with starving because rich people were taking everything and there was a stupid war that reset development yet again. It's a classic story of the rich and powerful exploiting the rest of the population. This is happening everywhere. I see nothing innate in Africans that has caused these problems. I see how this can happen anywhere there is not an educated population, there is resource scarcity that promotes corruption, and the system is so easy to work outside of. I am afraid of politicians the most. They'll steal everything and let everybody else starve if you don't have a system in place to prevent it. It's unfortunate they are sort of necessary.
Things are going pretty well. The term is ending. I've written a couple really difficult finals for my two classes. I hope not all of them fail, but I mean if they do, it's their own fault. I told them in the beginning my classes would be difficult.
I am focusing on a lot of things. I have some more designs I want to paint on my walls and outside doors. I am reading some good books and almost done with a couple. I really recommend Sophie's World: A novel about the history of philosophy. It's a weird premise that the author really pulls off well. I'll have to wait to see how it ends. I know this two years is going to be short (it's flying, really) so I'm trying to milk the 'free time' for all it's worth in self improvement and learning. Doing PC is probably one of the best things I've chosen to do just because it's this great stretch of time that forces you to do all of these things you never have the chance to do in the US. I'm going to come back to the states with an education that you don't get at a university. I spend a lot of time thinking about how I'll be young still when I get back. All of this is a huge asset for me.
Last weekend all of the Salone 4's went to a town where 4 of us are stationed in the center of the country to celebrate Thanksgiving together. It took me about 6 hours to get there, for whatever reason. I think it was because for the whole time I was in lorries that I felt like should break down at any moment. Some of these vehicles people use here must be 40 years old.
I mean, there isn't a whole lot to say. I didn't really take any pictures, unfortunately, but I imagine a bunch are going to be on facebook soon if you want to see them. We drank lots of palm wine and ate lots of delicious thanksgiving food. We were all pretty impressed with what we (a few of us, and not so much me) were able to produce. It was nice to see everyone again, but I find that I get burnt out on white people pretty quickly these days. By the way, happy Thanksgiving!
We have this week long training coming up in a couple weeks, so with leaving we just said k see you all soon. I'm not really looking forward to it. I almost have nightmares about training. Good thing it is only a week long and not ten like the PST. There are countless times when I am wanting to say "I'm an introvert, for god's sake!" But yeah, I'm striving on and learning patience. I can deal with anything, but I can't promise I'll feel like talking.
I know my community likes me a lot. I feel like I am doing the job well. Luckily that is what I came here for. I am focusing on learning Themne, which is progressively coming along. I'm just impatient to make it go faster. Yesterday I finally met the guy that teaches Themne to the primary school kids in town, so that sort of made my day. I feel like so long as I put a lot of effort into learning their language, people are going to love me. I think knowing this language is going to be a huge asset to me. I think it is cool that I'll end up being probably fluent in this language that just a few million Africans speak. I really like the language - it's logical in a lot of ways, sounds nice, has interesting features, etc. I still can hardly understand what most people are saying. They all speak it really fast of course, and some people, especially the children, are just impossible to understand.
I have been wanting to say that I am astounded by how much these people are just that, people. I have been mostly talking about the differences but to be honest I am being more surprised at the sameness of humanity. I have been wondering whether I have been seeing so much similarity between these Africans and Europeans because they are a little bit westernized from their history and the whole spread of western culture in general, beacuse of the kinds of people I'm around, or because I am integrated enough to be seeing through the cultural layer and to the basic things that makes everyone human beings. I know everyone thinks this racist thought even if they don't acknowledge it, including Africans: Africans are somehow fundamentally different from the whites.
From my perspective, I am not seeing it. People here seem to me to behave pretty much in the same manner as people in the States. They have as much depth, personality, strength, likes and dislikes,and capabilities. I meet plenty of wise people here. But, this place is impoverished and violent and most of Europe and America has a huge surplus of wealth and is relatively civil. Why?
In prehistory I'd say Africa got the short stick as far as available resources for development like domesticable plants and animals. Read Guns, Germs, and Steel. Then, Africa was exploited not only by its own people, but later by Europeans. This all created a long lasting instability that still seems to be at work. Many African states were colonized and then later clumsily gained independence. After Sierra Leone gained its independence, things became much worse. The British just sort of up and left. During the colonial ages, I doubt education of the natives was a priority for the masters. Their leaving opened the country up to exploitation by the rich and powerful.
Eventually people were fed up with starving because rich people were taking everything and there was a stupid war that reset development yet again. It's a classic story of the rich and powerful exploiting the rest of the population. This is happening everywhere. I see nothing innate in Africans that has caused these problems. I see how this can happen anywhere there is not an educated population, there is resource scarcity that promotes corruption, and the system is so easy to work outside of. I am afraid of politicians the most. They'll steal everything and let everybody else starve if you don't have a system in place to prevent it. It's unfortunate they are sort of necessary.
Things are going pretty well. The term is ending. I've written a couple really difficult finals for my two classes. I hope not all of them fail, but I mean if they do, it's their own fault. I told them in the beginning my classes would be difficult.
I am focusing on a lot of things. I have some more designs I want to paint on my walls and outside doors. I am reading some good books and almost done with a couple. I really recommend Sophie's World: A novel about the history of philosophy. It's a weird premise that the author really pulls off well. I'll have to wait to see how it ends. I know this two years is going to be short (it's flying, really) so I'm trying to milk the 'free time' for all it's worth in self improvement and learning. Doing PC is probably one of the best things I've chosen to do just because it's this great stretch of time that forces you to do all of these things you never have the chance to do in the US. I'm going to come back to the states with an education that you don't get at a university. I spend a lot of time thinking about how I'll be young still when I get back. All of this is a huge asset for me.
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