Swear-in and site

I'm sitting in my parlor breathing kerosene and paint fumes. I figured I should try to write a long post about everything that has gone on in the past few days.
Let's start with.. swear-in I guess? Swear-in was a lot of fun. We had a ceremony at the biggest building in Salone. We took many pictures, listened to many speeches, and it felt a lot like graduation and prom put together. Afterwards we changed and got driven to the beach. The beaches here are fantastic. Clean, for the most part, empty, the swells are good, and the water is warm. Basically, this place is totally great for a vacation. Freetown is a little intimidating, but I would recommend most adventurous people to come to this place if they want to travel and have a great and interesting time. We stayed on the beach, getting some delicious, expensive food (schwarmas, burgers, etc) and danced a lot.
After swear-in, we started to do installations. I waited around in Freetown for a couple days and we explored and shopped at a couple leb-marts for things. Freetown feels a lot like any other city at times, and the development that is going on is pretty impressive. They are building new things everywhere and trying to improve the roads. Drainage is a real problem because it rains so much, and Freetown is sort of nestled between some mountains so the runoff is really bad. It's a beautiful city, really. In the morning on the day of my installation it was raining heavily. I hopped in the truck taking us to the hostel with all my small bags, and knew that these were terrible conditions for a travel day. We loaded up our car with three peoples' things. Each of us had a bike, a large metal trunk that weighs over 50lbs, and at least two large duffel bags and a couple small bags. I had a huge mattress. The bikes, mattress, and trunks had to be lifted up onto the back of the car, tarped up, and tied down with a bunch of rope. In the rain.
Once on our way, we had to drive the mountain road to go get gas at the US embassy. The US embassy is extravagant and set on this hill up on the mountains overlooking the city. We drove through the university area up in the mountains, and down the side of the mountains overlooking Freetown and the bay. It was really awesome and I had wished that my camera wasn't in the back stuffed somewhere. It took us awhile to get out of the city, but eventually we reached port-loko, the area where the junction for my village is. The road had a bunch of forks and I was wrong most of the time on which one to take. At one point we had to pick some guy up to show us the way. Mambolo isn't a small place, so it's surprising the road to it is so bad. I think one of my projects will be to make signs and put them up at the turns, if just for my own benefit.
The road was really bad, it was raining, and there was tons of weight on the top of our landrover. I was pretty afraid we could flip, but our driver, Paul, was awesome and got us to my village safely. At this point it was pouring, Paul was running out of time to drop us all off at our villages, and we still had to unload all of my things. So we just stripped down and Paul and I got on the roof to untie everything. Getting the trunk off the car was pretty scary, but everything went well. One of my neighbors, Mr. Santiti Bangura, helped a bit, and all of my other neighbors (children) were watching. I'm sure it was fun to watch the oputo in the rain.
Yup, now I'm at site. My name here is Shebura Kaba. Shebura is a chief title, and Kaba is the surname of the Salone 2 I'm replacing, Issa Kaba. Everyone here speaks Themne, and some people either refuse to speak in Krio or just don't know it. I thought coming to Salone meant I could speak a lot of broken English and get by, but nope, I've got to learn a language completely different from English. I'm picking it up slowly. At least I can greet, and that's what is most important.
There's this little boy, probably 11 or so, named Shebura that is like my apprentice, or something. His father told him to take care of the pisko, so that's what he's doing. He speaks Themne and Krio, and I guess I'm trying small to teach him some English. He's really hard to understand, but pretty helpful. I can tell him to do all sorts of helpful things. He carries things for me, helps me with chores, shows me where to buy things, talks to people for me sometimes, tells me what to say, etc. I have an awesome bike, and he rides on the back of it. So, that's pretty interesting. People have asked me if he's my boy, and I said yeah I guess so. He thought that I had asked for a monkey for some reason, so he took me to this house where I got sat down and they brought this baby monkey out and asked me if I wanted it. They really wanted me to take it, but I said no. I have a crazy dog and he'd probably kill it or something, and I just don't feel comfortable owning a monkey.
Today, I went to the school, talked a bit with the principal and teachers and read in the library. School 'starts' this coming Monday. I'll probably be teaching chemistry, physics, and further maths to the SSS students. I think I'll enjoy all of this, and hopefully I'll be decent at it. I'm still a little anxious about teaching, and I know it's going to be totally exhausting. I just hope my students are old and serious enough with school that I won't need to do much with discipline besides be a respectable fellow that teaches well. The library is sort of there. I'll spend some time getting it cleaned up and organized with tables and chairs. Apparently students don't use the resources that are there, and there isn't really much of an understanding of libraries and lending books here. I might just make it a nice place for productivity and open it up for students after school to do their work.
After the rain stopped, I went back home, ate a quick meal I bought from some kid in front of my house, and then my friend Muhammed came and complained I hadn't called him, since we were supposed to paint. I bought two gallons of paint in Bo and some brushes. He brought some old rice bags, his roller brush, and other things. I went and bought some kerosene from this old ma that seemed to not want to talk to me if not in Themne. I don't know if everyone appreciates my fresh presence and my lack of instant knowledge of Themne. We mixed the gallons of blue and white together with some kerosene and started painting my massive parlor. We managed to paint the entire thing, and then some. Shebura brought me some coconuts and helped a little bit. Everything is now this really nice happy light blue, including my outer doors. I'm really happy about it. My house is starting to feel like my own. I bought some yellow curtains to put up on the huge windows. Basically, my house is going to be awesome.
Then, Muhammed knocked the big bucket containing the remaining paint off the table he was standing on and onto the floor. So, now I have this big blue spot on my floor. He cleaned up all the excess, and tomorrow his son is going to come clean it up for me with some kerosene. It was fun washing myself in kerosene. I gave him quite a bit of money for the work, and he was really grateful. He has four kids and a wife and I think he struggles a little bit. So, I'm glad I can employ him and his family a little bit. His wife is going to brook all my dirty clothes tomorrow. I'm having him make me a table and I'm having one of Shebura's brothers who is a carpenter make me a book case. I also mentioned to Muhammed about tiling my parlor, which would make it super great. We'll need to buy a machine to cut the tile, but I'm pretty excited about doing it. We'll need to figure out something with the price of things, because it might be expensive. It would be a machine that he could use to do more business though, so I'm hoping he can help invest a good portion of the cost and I'm not just buying it for him.

Training don don!

So I can't believe it, but we are finally finished. We had Monday and Tuesday this week to teach something, and then had to give our final exams for the summer school students on Wednesday. I just reviewed and we played games to take up the time. Teaching is really stressful and oftentimes uncomfortable. I hated not really being prepared and still having to stand in front of 50+ children trying to entertain them enough for them to not find talking more interesting than paying attention. I'm basically glad I won't be teaching Junior Secondary School. Hopefully I get the older kids that I'm wanting, and I think I will.

On Thursday after the exam was over, we had to do a life skills class. One of the three teachers in my room was sick, so me and the other teacher had to pull the class off just the two of us. We had planned this thief and cop skit we were going to act out to be able to talk about decision making. E went into the class and acted like I was sick like the other guy and she was just going to teach them a boring english lesson. I burst into the classroom wearing sunglasses that made me look like a menacing criminal, brandishing my pocket knife at a room of at least 30 children. I said it was a cutlass and that I wasn't afraid to use it and yelled “this is a robbery, I'm taking hostages!” I pulled a few students forcefully up front and told them I'd kill them if they tried to leave! I figured I might as well take the chance in Africa to threaten students with a knife because I could never ever do it in the states. They all laughed and had fun. The skit was entertaining, but probably not all that educational. The students had to bargain with me to get the hostages out without people dying and too much money being lost, because if most of the money was stolen, the school was going to close. Two students ended up getting killed and I got away with 2.5 million leones.

Yesterday, Friday, was the awards ceremony at the school. So like with any meeting in Sierra Leone there were many speeches and belabored activities. The Islamic missionary guy talked, the principal talked, our acting country director talked, and then we all passed out awards to the top three students in our respective classes. It was cool to give them recognition, and I'm sure all these students will succeed. A really smart girl in JSS 3 named Augusta gave the vote of thanks for the student body. I talked to her a bit afterwards. She wants to be a journalist and goes to a girls boarding school in Freetown. She likes to read, write poetry, and all sorts of other impressive smart things.

Last night we had guys night at this bar called Obama's. It was pretty fun but felt a little bit like hazing. We joined back up with the girls later and all had a big la-di-da with Salone 3 at the nice night club.

I went for a run this morning, and now I'm getting ready to go to town to buy everything I need to get for site. I've bought a mattress, a kerosene stove, and need to get a bunch of other stuff. After this we have the host family recognition meal thing. I'll be packing everything up today, PC will be picking the stuff up tomorrow, and I'll leave Bo on Monday. We'll spend a few days in Freetown being taken around by our LCFs (the language/culture/tech trainers that we have had for the past 10 weeks). There will probably be more la-di-daing, but now on the beach! Swearing in is on Wednesday, and we are all really excited to be done with all of this and sitting on our verandas at site. 

Ready for training to be don don

Not too much is new now. Still teaching two classes in summer school. This week wasn't as good as last week as far as my students doing well on their exams.

All of us are trying to figure out the thought process of the students that come out of the primary school system here. Most seem to just regurgitate random pieces of information they learned by rote and hope that some of the words stick in the right places. There isn't a whole lot of conceptualization going on I don't think just because their entire system of education is based on the rote method and they are never taught to think critically about solving problems. Like I said, the information goes into their heads in pieces, and it seems to only stick in memory. The information I guess is never really thought about once it's there, and so connections and parallels are never really seen to produce the sort of higher thinking problem solving skills that the American system tries to promote. Of course some students here seem brilliant and capable of thinking at a higher level past memorizing and regurgitating facts. Some seem to have original thoughts and can write intelligible proper english. Some writing from the bad students is absolute gibberish that they can't even read back to me when I ask them what it says.

It just sucks that the system is so strangling. This is all just my own opinion, and I'm sure it's not just the rote system that is the problem.. I'll be teaching at the upper levels, so suffice to say, I'll probably be sticking to helping the smart kids and mostly leave the hopeless ones on the wayside.. Hopefully if they have stuck in the system this long, they are hard working and smart. We'll see once school gets going in the next month.

I'm really tired of training. Everyone is. Today (Saturday, Aug 18th) we had a cooking demo we had to go to at 8. It took 4+ hours to cook everything, and I couldn't help but feel like I was wasting an extremely valuable weekend standing around. The chop was swit, at least. I'm completely exhausted of talking with people. Even people that I want to talk to, like this cool guy I met today at his pharmacy, Dr. Muhammed Fofana. I'm just exhausted, and the work is never ending. So yeah, bad day; can't wait to get to my house and have a small breather. 

Summer School etc

I just wanted to post something short since I'll be headed to the internet cafe sometime today. It's eid-el-fitr though, the end of Ramadan (Pray Day), so I'm not sure the place is going to be open. Muslims, most of the population, will be praying/eating/celebrating. My host family is Christian. We went and bought some pork. I don't know if any slight is meant by that? Probably not. Christians and Muslims seem to get along completely here.

Nothing much is all that new really. We started summer school, so I've been teaching two classes, Junior Secondary School 1 (JSS1) and 2 at this muslim girls school called Amadiya. Apparently 1500 girls are enrolled here during the regular school sessions.

I run a class with two other people. I'm teaching science and the other two are teaching english and math. I think I'm doing fairly well and just need to improve on board management, keeping a quiet class, clarity, speed, and volume of speech. The students seem to be enjoying the lessons I'm giving them in matter and energy. I've made some demos, and brought in local examples of elements, mixtures, and compounds. I was able to demonstrate chemical -> electrical -> magnetic energy transformations with an electromagnet I made from a curtain wire, a battery, and a nail I found in my classroom. Our one class, JSS1, is right out of primary school, so we aren't even sure most of them are understanding our english. You need to slow down your speaking a whole lot.

This will be a different experience from what I'll probably be doing in Mambolo (my village) for the next two years. I'm pretty sure I'll be teaching much older kids in the Senior Secondary School (SSS) 3 and 4. I hope to be a rolemodel for the older kids that have potential and desire to be scientists and engineers. There are a lot of randomly bright students here, like anywhere, and a whole lot of less than bright students. Being in Bo, a big city, is different as well. Kids that are coming to summer schools are ones that want to come or have parents that are interested in getting them educations.

I got the package from my parents! It only took a couple weeks to ship, surprisingly, and it is not at all tampered with. They sent me some cool books, delicious food, and other things that I really appreciate! I've been making a lot of paper airplanes and things using the book on paper airplanes they sent me. I'm again finding that a lot of kids here don't know how to share things. They also don't know how to take care of something and not destroy it in a short time. So I mean, they like the planes, but it's really annoying when every kid wants their own, saying "yu go mek fo mi!" and obviously don't understand when I say "A mek for una-ol!". There's a culture of just asking for things here, and it is starting to be pretty annoying. It can be as bad as someone you've never met saying "Give me money" just because I'm white. Our figuring is that people have gotten used to giveaways, but PC doesn't work that way. It just seems rude to me.

Now I'm at this internet cafe in Bo called Mars. This place is so expensive. I'll try to upload some pictures to my facebook.

Site visit and another village day

Okay..

So still catching up small. The week before last we found out where we are being placed for the next two years and then had a few days time to visit the place.

My village is named M---. It's in the Kambia district, a little bit north of Freetown. It's known for its rice farming and abundance of foods. I was able to eat a couple delicious papaya, a pineapple, and lots of coconuts. I think the children are going to be supplying me with lots and lots of delicious fruits. It is on this big river called the Great Scarcies that goes out to the Atlantic, and all of the rice fields around the area are fed by the river. The river is tidally locked, so it is pretty neat to see the level of water in the fields change throughout the day. Most people in the village are rice farmers of course, some are fisherman and boat makers, and a few are artisan type crafts people. I'm pretty satisfied with my village – it's beautiful and the people are interesting!

There are two main ethnic groups in Sierra Leone: the Mende and the Temne, and M--- is deep in Temne-land. So basically I'm going to have to learn another language, Temne, that is completely different from English. Krio, the lingua franca in Sierra Leone, is pretty similar to English, but I'm still not completely proficient in it. I'll be learning Temne mostly by talking to small children in Krio, so that should be fun.

I've inherited a ridiculous dog that chases motorcycles and runs at groups of children just to scare them.

Transportation to and from M---- is sort of difficult. I think 16 miles to the main road (main road is paved, road to main road is not) took close to 4 hours. I had a chicken at my feet and I think there were about 20 people packed into a minivan sized car (poda-poda). Transportation anywhere here sucks a lot. I'll just have to try different methods to try to cut down on the time..

My school is really great. The name is S--- SSS. We have a huge three story building with quite a lot of facilities that most other schools in this country just dream about. There are full chemistry and physics labs that are not being used well at all, so I've basically made it my project for the next two years to make these nice. We don't really have people that are qualified enough to know how to use the labs effectively. I'll be teaching physics, math, and I imagine also chemistry probably at the upper SSS level. I want to focus on the good upper level students, but I don't know how much good I can do them at this point. There is the WASC, the standardized test everyone must take for getting into universities here, and it's extremely difficult. Everything rides on it, unfortunately. We'll see. I'm sure I'll talk about my village and school a lot more in the future.

Today we had a village day. These are basically little field trips we take to four different villages in the surrounding area. We've had three of these total, and this is the last one we'll be doing. With this one my group had to put together a life skills workshop for the community and present it over an hour. My group did its talk on nutrition, so we made some visual aids and everything for it. It went surprisingly well given we only had a couple hours to plan it. The audience was mostly just adult community members and we got good reception. The other group talked about malaria and simple ways to stop and reduce the spread of the parasite. One woman had sort of a negative reaction to mine and the other groups presentations. She was arguing from the point of view that a lot of people can't afford to eat well and feed their children like we were telling them they should or buy mosquito nets and other things to limit malaria. Otherwise, everyone seemed to enjoy the presentations. I hope we helped someone. It's hard to tell a group of adults things they don't already know, and you feel like an ass when you do. The presentations were more for us as teachers than it was for them, really. 

PC doesn't like me putting up my exact location. 

Cholera? and other things I'll try to remember

Let me see.. where did I leave off? I guess it has only been a few weeks. Sorry about that. I'm just super busy between training, trying to do all the activities I want to do, and spending time with the fambuldem. It is hard to find time to get the computer out and write something. Right now I should probably be spending time with the family but instead I am writing a couple posts and eating nutella and protein powder. A de try small.

I got pretty sick the end of the week before last. I couldn't sleep Thursday night due to GI distress, and had felt malnourished and overworked the past few days to boot. I began taking oral rehydration salts in the morning, then felt terrible at training, got a small fever around noon, and went to the infirmary to sleep it off. I was there the rest of the day and figured I was in the clear since the fever had peaked and was going down. At the end of the day, I stumbled home and collapsed into bed, feeling absolutely not fayn. I called our medical officer (PCMO) who told me to take some anti-nausea meds. I go to do so but feel the need to go to the bathroom first. I walk to the bathroom, but begin to feel a loss of consciousness on the way. Not thinking, I start taking off my underwear to do my business, pass out and hit my head lightly (no concussion!) on the door. When I wake up, I think uhh what just happened, and to my unpleasant surprise found I have relieved myself all over my host families bathroom floor.

So now I feel a bit better so I clean and disinfect everything to try to save my family from the terrible bug I've got. I decide I ought to call the PCMO back and say "so, I just had a horrible experience". She tells me I need to get a friend to come over to check me for concussion and take care of me, so I call someone, M, and they get over to my house as quick as they can. I'm pretty disoriented, but feel (relatively) just fine, and am fully aware and conscious. We are just sitting on the veranda and me, my ma, and M are talking. Then, I apparently lose consciousness for over a minute, and I wake up to mi ma shaking me and M throwing water in my face. I've resoiled myself, and it takes me a bit to get my vision and hearing back to normal. So yeah at this point everyone is freaking out and I'm wondering hmmm.. maybe I did get a conscussion.

My mom and M pack some clothes for me, PC sends a vehicle out to my house, and me and M get driven to Bo national hospital. I sit around for a bit feeling fine, wishing that I didn't have to be giving everyone so much trouble (this is like 8 pm on a Friday). The doctor gets called in, and I talk to him for a little bit. I have a small fever. He thinks it could be malaria, of course, so he wants to give me meds for it. It wasn't malaria, and the PCMO just wants me to get an IV. While talking to the doctor, I pass out again and they take me to a room in a wheelchair. I'm pretty disoriented and having some visual distortions and am still wondering whether I got a slight concussion. I clean myself up and they get me into an uncomfortable bed and put an IV in my arm. M has to stay with me the whole night in a room that smells like death, and I feel pretty bad about it!

So yeah, feel just fine in the morning, but according to PC policy, I have to get driven to the PC compound in Freetown the next day. This takes like 4 hours. The sickness don don. I eat delicious indian food (I was starving) and get a stool sample for the lab which I still haven't gotten the results for. The PCMO is pretty certain it was cholera, but who knows. It was quick, but super terrible nonetheless while it lasted. I hope you enjoyed the terrible story!

The PC hostel is pretty great. It has 24 hr electricity, a nice kitchen, reasonably fast free internet, and was just a really relaxing atmosphere while I was there. The building is high up on a hill overlooking Freetown and the ocean on three sides. There were a few Salone 3s there with medical things, and about 10 Salone 2s that were doing their Close of Service (COS). In the end, coming here for a few days was a pretty good experience because I got to talk to all of the people that have been in country for two years. These are the people that we are replacing the sites of. Everyone is pretty interesting and has many crazy stories. Most seemed a little bit jaded about dysfunctional schools, (bad?) cultural aspects Americans don't really care for, terrible transportation, and lots of other things. Everyone was sad that they are leaving, but happy they are finished and going home to America, too. The generational aspect of PC is pretty strange feeling. I know I'll be in the same place in two short years, but it seems like they have gone through a lot.

I'm going to bed and don't feel like typing out the second post right now.

Random stuff

Okay, it has taken me awhile to get this posted. The internet in Bo is mostly usable, just extremely slow. For those writing me letters - thanks! I really appreciate both email and physical letters! If you want to send me a package, that is super awesome! Most things I can find in the city here, but I'm trying to stock up on protein dense foods for when I move to site.. so send me some delicious food and whatever other cool thing you'd like. It seems like packages and letters do get here eventually. Send them soon, because I have two more months in Bo before moving to a less accessible part of the country.

I have a cell phone.. +23278615983 which you can text or call. I don't know how much texting may be.. it could be free, and calling is sort of expensive unless you use skype or other voip service in which case it is ~$0.40/minute I think.

So, I've made it safely to Sierra Leone - it was a very long and exhausting trip to get into West Africa. After having a quick orientation in Philadelphia, the group of us (43 from all over the US) flew from New York to Brussels, laid over for a bit, and then flew to Lungi Intl airport near Freetown, stopping for an hour in Senegal to refuel. We took a ferry from the airport to Freetown, the main city in Sierra Leone, and were bussed through the city to the Peace Corps hostel.

                A lot of things on this side of the world are pretty striking compared with anything you'll see in America. I'll try to start from the beginning, but a lot has happened that I basically won't get to, and the atmosphere of the place is hard to get across.

                Transportation is scary - road conditions even in Freetown can be really bad: there are massive potholes,  pedestrians are everywhere, there are tons of daredevil motorcyclists (okada drivers), and everyone drives really aggressively (and stupidly). Something else you immediately notice is that the place is sort of just a really big all week flea market. Unemployment in the American sense of the word is pretty high, but people still work a lot selling things or doing odd jobs. Most everyone wakes up before 7 and does hard work the whole day. I would say people here lean more towards working to live rather than living to work like some Americans do.

                Everything is more difficult here: there are no washing machines or easy solutions and it seems everything gets dirty more quickly. People are poor in the most basic sense of the word: there is simply a lack of material goods. In America if your toilet breaks, you think oh I'll go pick up the part I need from the nearest hardware store! But here people struggle to have the goods to even macgyver a fix.

                Despite all the unemployment, squalor, and poverty, there is a lot to love. I would argue that culture here is deeper. I mean, the country is smaller than South Carolina, yet has a deep history and rich culture that is apparently relatively unique. It is a pretty diverse and I think unique place. Though I'm sure many things are common across West Africa. Everyone is community oriented in ways Americans don't see often. They always try their best to help each other, and everything is shared. It is considered rude to not share food when there is someone available to invite to eat. It's rude to not help out your classmate when they don't have the answers ('spying' is a huge problem for us teachers)! Everyone is pretty much automatically my friend once I greet them, and most people despite not having much have good intents. A volunteer was saying how someone broke into their home, and only stole as much as they thought the volunteer didn't need.

                I can't really say everything that has gone on, or how much my views or personality may have changed. So far I am very happy with my decision to do this thing, and every day I am feeling better. Here's some random things: I have killed 6 huge spiders so far, and am currently dealing with trying to catch a mouse that keeps managing to eat some cookies I bought in this bizarre air conditioned supermarket this last weekend. The mouse kept stealing the spider bodies from my trash and it was sort of a mystery where they were going to! We are pretty much celebrities here, and have a big job on our shoulders. We are such a significant group in this country that we even got a special session with President Koroma, and a banquet thing run by the heads of the Ministry of Education. My host family has three girls (Beantu, 11; Kola, 12; Abata, 13) and a 16 yo boy named Luseni. Families here are extended and ill defined, so there are tons of random kids running around from the neighborhood, and most adults are my Aunties and Uncles (just a title).

                All of the other volunteers are fantastic individuals. A lot of us are pretty different from one another but all get along well. We all came here knowing what we were getting ourselves into, and we are all supportive about doing the job at hand.  We are at this training center in Bo learning Krio, pedagogy for the subjects we'll be teaching, and all sorts of other things. I wake up every day at 6:30, go to bed around 10. I'm busy all the time. When I am not at training and not socializing with my family (mostly playing with the kids) I'm eating by myself (tradition for honoring guests) and trying to study whatever. The last couple weekends we have all been going to the night club, the market and internet cafes. The internet sucks though. I'll try to get this posted next time I go.