Conclusion

I've been meaning to write this one for a really long time now. I'm sorry it's taken this long to get around to it. Unfortunately this is my last post.
My group was to have its Mid-Service Training (MST) in Bo. Myself and a few friends had plans to go on a week long bike trip down to the border of Liberia after MST. So, before MST began I had to transport my bicycle from my site down to Bo. This was an adventure in itself - it took me a whole rainy day of stress (I was worried for my bicycle getting stolen) to get to Yele where I met up with a few people I was going to ride with the 30 mi the next day down to Bo. I didn't get to Yele until it was dark. It was a really scary poda-poda ride! At one point a woman puked on some of the passengers in the back seat. Everybody in the car was really upset about this, to say the least, but I eventually got to where I needed to get. Paige, the volunteer in Yele, sent some children to come find me and get me to her house.
The next day was a lot of fun. It took us the whole day to get down to Bo. Yele is in Themne land whereas Bo is in Mende land. The transition was really interesting. In the border villages, it seemed like it was alternating Themne families and Mende families. I've never been able to be yelled at by children: "Oputo!" and "Pumoi!" at the same time! We went through some really cool places. This country is just beautiful. We stopped in this one village that was a big producer of pineapples - delicious! We probably ate 10 of these amazing 25 cent pineapples.
Just as we were getting into Bo and finally onto paved road, it started raining on us. We had avoided getting soaked the whole day, but we got soaked just as we got where we wanted to get. We were all exhausted but happy. The next few days we had our training. All of this training was focused on stuff we were planning on doing in the next year. On the last day we managed to meet with the representative from the CDC that was evaluating the situation on ebola. This was quite a privilege. We were told that there was very little chance that we were going to be evacuated because of the situation. The outbreak was still thought to be confined to the eastern districts Kenema and Kailahun and people were remaining optimistic. It felt to most of us to be sort of a hopeful optimism, but we took confidence in what our country director was telling us.
MST ended and we started the bicycle trip to the south the next day. This trip was just amazing - I'm so happy I was able to go on it. I got to see a lot of the country I never had seen before and spend some time in Mende land. A lot of us PCVs had plans to go home for vacation - we had more than a month off from school. So we ended up staying in houses that we had borrowed keys for from people that had left to America. So we stayed in a village called Jimmi Bagbo for a night. This place was really small and pretty isolated. There was a huge overgrown ruin of a house built by an old ambassador of China. The next morning we left for Pujehon, arriving in the afternoon. This site had 3 volunteers - it's a district capital. I chatted with a bunch of men drinking ataya. Ebola was on everybody's mind. The most we could do was to tell people that it was real and not being faked or just cholera. I guess we were starting to get close to the forefront of the outbreak, but I wasn't worrying too much about it. None of us wanted to face the idea that we might have to evacuate because of this invisible threat on the horizon none of us saw the effects of.
After Pujehon we cycled another 25 mi more south and more into the jungle. Being in Sierra Leone has made me feel like I'm at the end of the world - biking even further into the bush under a constant downpour on roads that are close to being impassible just exaggerated that feeling. I loved it - what an adventure. We eventually arrived in Bumpeh Perri, 20 miles from the ocean and the bottom of the country. Some time before we had lost cell phone reception and were fine with it. We hadn't told Peace Corps where we were going. We spent the rest of the day figuring out whether or not to spend the next day getting to the beach and possibly crossing the Liberian border. It looked like we were going to have to take a car. That night after we had our rice we went to the NGO compound who were going to run a generator. This NGO, I think World Vision, had a big satellite dish to get internet even though we were way out there. I wanted to wash and everybody else went to this compound to check emails and things. After I had washed by candle light standing on some dirt with huge centipedes crawling around, I started walking over to the compound and was told we had gotten an email saying we were getting evacuated and needed to contact PC ASAP.
It was night, so we couldn't leave the place we were and weren't able to call because of the lack of reception. We decided we would just leave early the next day. Half of us decided to get our bicycles further upline to at least Pujehon, and the others took transport. Daniel and I woke up at 5 and set off the 25 miles through the pouring early morning rain to get to Pujehon. I had the key to the house - we arrived and simply had to leave our bicycles there. We called Peace Corps even though both our phones were starting to mess up because of the moisture. They were telling us to consolidate the very next day according to district. Unfortunately, my village was on the complete opposite side of the country. I resolved to get there so I would at least have a little bit of time to say goodbye and pack some of my valuables. I was assuming I wasn't going to be coming back to Sierra Leone anytime soon. Unfortunately this has turned out to be a good assumption..
I ended up traveling for 16 hours that day. I left my bicycle in Pujehon and transported back to Bo with the group, grabbed the package my parents had just sent me, and went to see my host family. I ended up giving them a lot of things from the package. I got a car to Masiaka. This took way longer than it should have - the driver had to buy a new tire. I was stressed out. I had to get to Kambia to get a camera my parents had just sent to me (mine had been broken for ~4 months). The friend in Kambia that had my camera sent his bobo with it down to the lorry park. I chartered another vehicle to get to the junction to my village because the sun was already setting. Unfortunately through all of this hectic car hopping I left the remains of my package in the back of a driver's car. He got a bunch of good food and some cool books! I'm sure he felt blessed that day.
I eventually reached the Mambolo junction and was just really really wanting to get home - I felt terrible. I waited for nearly 2 hours for my friend to get there to pick me up. A nice family fed me and I hung out with them and snapped the kids. I had a cold and sad ride back with my friend. I told him what had happened and that this was the last time he'd be taking me. We stopped at my bobo Shebura's house and I said goodbye to Ola, his father, and told Shebura to be at my house early the next morning because I was leaving.
I didn't get to my house until maybe 9 - I had to immediately pack everything and get my house ready to be sealed up for a long time. I got everything together that I was planning to give away - again I assumed I wasn't coming back. Essentially my house looks pretty close to how it did when I was living there. I didn't pack very much besides valuables. I gave Shebura my hammock, my paints, and a bunch of other stuff, and had a lot of other things to give to all of my neighbors. The next morning all of my immediate neighbors showed up and I let them inside my house - I didn't care anymore. I knew things were going missing. I had just finished building railing on my back porch. It was really nice and I was looking forward to having a year to enjoy it. I told Shebura to take care of my garden. He took my kitten, Beans. I hope everything is going well. The Peace Corps vehicle showed up at 10 and I left everything.
We got transported to Freetown thinking we would be leaving in the next few days. Washington was working to get all 100+ of us tickets on short notice. Most of my group ended up leaving quickly - I was stuck in Freetown for a few more day with a few people left over. This sucked a lot, but they eventually got a ticket for all of us. We got out no problem. A lot of foreign organizations like ourselves were trying to get out. We flew to Guinea, picked up a bunch of Guineans, then went to Paris. I had a few hours layover there and from there was on my own to Chicago and got picked up by my parents. I felt like I was in shock - this whole transition happened so quick and under such bad circumstances.
I don't want to forget Mama Salone. What is happening there right now is horrifying. Things aren't getting better. There are dead bodies in the streets and the number of cases is just continuing to rise. My heart goes out to the whole region - this suffering I think is unlike any that the majority of the West is able to conceive. Some people are having half their families killed by this terrible disease. There's no recompense. I can't imagine the fear there right now as a faceless killer sweeps invisibly through villages and now towns and cities.
I hate to be leaving this blog on such negative notes. I have aimed to give you a real image of what my experience has been like in Sierra Leone. Despite all of the bitching I've done, I was happy the whole time over there. The whole thing was just a big adventure. This has been life-changing for me. I wish I would have had another year to explore this wonderful place and know these loving and good-spirited people. I could not have asked for a better place to have visited and worked in. I dedicate this story to my village, Mambolo, my students, my fellow teachers, and fellow Peace Corps Volunteers.