Managing fayn

So yet another month has passed! I feel like I have too much to say and will end up not saying much of it.
I have been on break from school for the past couple weeks and have traveled around a lot. The first weekend there was a big birthday party in Freetown I went to. It was for one of the girls in Salone 3. T-shirts were made for the party; they are great! There was also a

scavenger hunt that everyone got to get people to do stupid things. I won't get into this too much. We stayed up the entire night walking along Lumley, which is the main beach shore in Freetown with a bunch of bars and clubs. Beaches here are pretty much perfect: decently clean, hardly anybody there, and completely lawless. We had a good time and everybody came out of it alive! The worst thing that happened I think was people doing Muslim ablutions with beer. This felt inconceivably sacriligious to me and I think could have easily gotten us all killed.
After this, I headed to Bureh and relaxed on that beach. I've said before how great this beach is. Again, nobody besides us and the beach bum surfers that run the place were there. Bureh is always paradise.
I had to go home a couple days later in order to run the chemistry WASSCE practical for the seniors. The week before I had to run the physics WASSCE practical. I electrocuted myself with 230V AC. That was pretty bad but again I'm still alive. Running these things was really stressful for me, but everything ended up going okay. The official examiners that came ended up being entirely incompetent and I was able to basically help my students as much as I wanted during the practicals (labs). In America the stuff I was doing would have gotten me in big trouble. The students told me the examiners didn't understand my english and so they didn't know I was basically giving answers to my students the whole time. I think it was pretty obvious what I was doing and they just didn't care enough to get up from their chairs.
Some people will say this was wrong action on my part but you have to try to understand how the system here is. The exams are almost less testing the students' abilities as much as they are testing how much they have been 'helped' by their schools wanting good results. In an ideal Salone, there would be total honesty involved in this hugely important examination (it decides whether or not a person can go on to university or not). I have to face reality a bit and try to put my students on level playing field with other schools. It is no fair to them if everybody else cheats and they end up with a low score just because I wanted to be the honest American. Saying this, I still did less than I think most schools do in order to give their students unfair advantages. I consulted the rest of the teachers and they all told me it would be unfair for my students if I didn't do this in the Salone style. I am a little nervous saying these things on my blog, but it's no problem.
After the exam I started construction on this big oven at this guy Otem Pottery's house. He has experience in masonry and ovens, and I had the initiative to experiment with building an oven of my own design. So now that oven is pretty well completed. I think it is probably the most architecturally advanced structure in my village. I kept in mind principals used in these ovens called rocket ovens. It basically involves making the heat flow over the walls of an insulated inner furnace. There are three layers. The furnace is floating on some bricks inside of the secondary wall which is spaced a couple inches from the furnace on three sides. The front side is sealed and has a passage all the way through into the inner furnace. The design I had looked at was using a big metal box you just set on top of some pillars, but this is Africa so we built the thing entirely out of bricks and mud. This proved to be really challenging. Otem was able to make an arched roof to seal the oven, and then he made another arch with the secondary wall that was similar with the inner furnace and allows the heat to pass over all of the furnace surface. The outer wall is just mud break, and all of the empty space inside is filled with dirt to provide insulation and support for the whole structure. It looks like a big square box with a cone. I'll put up some snaps. It seems to work as intended, but we haven't baked any bread yet. I am a little worried about how much wood it is going to take to heat up all of the inside. There is just a lot of mass to heat up, but if it is well insulated I don't think it should take too much wood.. I am thinking it is going to be something we have to warm up in the morning and then use all day because it will stay super hot and we don't want to waste the heat stored inside all of the brick and dirt. We will see. I am just really hoping it isn't a failed experiment and I have just used a lot of the guy's resources to try to improve on something they already have a design to do fairly effectively. In America it is okay to do experiments like this (it didn't cost a lot besides the clay bricks). Here, people will be upset with failed experiments.

When I left again the oven wasn't quite finished, and now I have come back and Otem has built the secondary wall around the furnace. I left for Bo to see my host family. Everything there is good and I had a good visit with them. I wish they were a Themne family (they are Mende), but it is neat to see both of the tribes. In Bo I met up with a girl in my group, Rebecca. We hung out in Bo for a day and woke up the next morning at 3 to catch a taxi going to Freetown. Waking up and being out at the witching hour doesn't exactly help our status of being witches. I walked to her house under a full moon and was tailed by packs of dogs for half the way. This was really scary. One of the packs was these four dogs, and one was nipping me on my ankle. I tried to stay calm and just keep walking quickly out of the neighborhood. I was so afraid I was going to get bit, but I gave them no reason to bite me so I was okay.
Rebecca and I left in this car and had a frigid 4 hour drive to Freetown. I've never been so cold in this country. We got to town and went to the national stadium for this west african cultural fair thing. There weren't many visitors there, just the vendors sitting around being really bored trying to get us to buy things. There were a lot of west african 'medical doctors' selling remedies for various ailments. Blindness, worms, incontinence, penis enlargement, making your man want you, etc. I tried to take a picture of one booth but the people got really upset with me. I shrugged and turned around to snap the other booth selling the same stuff and the person I initially tried to snap yelled over to them and told them I was trying to take pictures. This man was really pissed off so we backed off and I ended up with no pictures. I don't understand the taboo with pictures. The west africans we met were much more rude than most Sierra Leoneans you come across. They made me appreciate how friendly and willing to help foreigners Sierra Leoneans are. Having a girl with me helps a lot I find, too. Most of the merchants seemed pretty successful and tired of being in a place like Sierra Leone. I am only just now realizing how truly backwards, poor, and dirty this place is. Most other Africans even have a lowly opinion of it.
After the fair, we went to the downtown area and ate at this place full of white people and snobby rich Sierra Leoneans that was the closest I have gotten to a legit western restaurant. I had a delicious philly cheese steak. I bought a bunch of Themne books to hopefully learn from. All of the books, even the first level one, is entirely written in Themne, so it might be a challenge. I look forward to learning to read Themne, though. Right now I can understand just a little bit of it and have to sound the words out to recognize them, but it should be fun and I think maybe really helpful.
We also went to this place called the big market which is this two story building packed full of expensive cultural items. I've never seen so many baskets, lappas, country cloth blankets, tribal masks and other stuff. All of it is really cool. A few of the merchants travel around the country and buy these sacred objects from the chiefs to sell them to rich people. There were even very cool and artistic bronze statues that had to be at least a century old. I don't see many artistic cultural items here, so this was really interesting. I might buy one at the end of this, but it is quite an investment.
We then traveled to another town and stayed there the night with a couple other people. None of us were the volunteer that actually lives in the place. We rode in the back of a tractor. It was nice, but that is the end of my vacation outside of my village!
Now I am back. I have been running errands all day and am continuing to be busy. I want to cook some thulla and buy the pan for making the roof of the oven. I'm not really looking forward to school starting back. Easter is Sunday. I'm looking forward to partying and dancing with devils!  Independence day is the next weekend. I'm looking forward to more partying and dancing!
I have told the story without much of the feeling and inner thought. I need to stop having such separation between posts. So much happens all the time and I am always busy. All of us have really enjoyed the break. At the beginning I was excited but afraid for something bad to happen. This is a relatively common feeling. I have never felt so much fate in my life. I feel like my life is somehow in the hands of God. This place makes you more religious, I guess. I tend to think of God as the ridiculous emergent and abstract machinery of reality rather than some dude. Muslims have sayings that are highly fatalistic that seem to at surface fit the situations faced in this place. Why are some people at the absolute dirty bottom and others are able to have a good life? I don't really know why, but these thoughts come into mind when you see the disabled beggers here living in the horrible slums of the major city of one of the poorest countries in the world. The slums are unimaginable by American standards. Many people here are living lives unimagineable by Americans. You should feel lucky! You were randomly 'selected' to be one of the few humans to have enough valuable paper to have access to my blog!
How do I speak about things without using the vocabulary of fatalism? Transport here is dangerous. Every time I get into a car I think today is the day I might die. If I get out of this place without a scratch, it must just be because the universe (God) just doesn't want me to die yet. I even feel more okay about dying. I see death almost every day. A dead puppy in a dirty gutter, a dead chicken in my backward, standing around a still flaming crushed taxi on the side of the road silently with a large group of people.  It doesn't really make too much sense to the human brain desperately trying to rationalize everything. It must just be because God wants it to be that way, right? I am okay dying tomorrow; I'll just try to live well with what I have been given today. If God says yes, which mortal man can say no? I'll survive, Inshallah. I won't be traveling for a little while, so unless God decides it's my time to randomly contract a terrible disease and die a miserable death tomorrow, I'll probably keep you posted on my life. I'll be trying my best to take my life out of the hands of a cruel and unfair God. I hope he won't get me for a good number of decades.
What else? I'm happy, but pondering whether or not I should be given my situation. I have always been a resiliently content individual able to be happy even without people around and that is proving to be of great benefit for me here. A lot of the group seems to be falling into a bit of pessimistic malaise, especially now that we are having to go back to our jobs. I'm trying to stay strong and keep doing cool things. It's been almost a year. I can do another year, no problem. A nice girl would help me get along, but I can survive without one. This job doesn't seem conducive to having a happy and healthy relationship. Everything seems to drive one to find outlets and attachments.
I think everything about my life has changed. I don't think the same about life at all. I have been exposed to a different way that people live. I always knew it was there but I was too busy encased in my own phenomenal experience. Life is less valuable here. I still want to do what I am good at, but I won't be able to shake Africa from my mind. Everything that happens to me in America will be a blessing. This place is ridiculous, beautiful, sad, exhuberant, energetic, full of change, hopeless, all at the same time. We are surviving by the love of our brothers and sisters.
I am headed now to go get my bobo to tote a few sheets of pan for me so we can finish this oven before the rains come and dissolve all of the mud brick.
I ought to mention the current water crisis. I don't even really have enough water to wash dishes and I am struggling to have enough water to drink. Bobos have to walk like an hour to fetch water for me. I hope it rains soon!

Mi pus don bon!

Amoos ami po koor!

Sorry for the unflattering image of my puss.

Further odysseys of Shebora Kabba

Things are going pretty well. Doing lots of science. I think the best way to enjoy yourself in situations like this is to have something to focus on.
Yesterday I had a distillation apparatus set up in order to make distilled water for the chemistry WASSCE exam. We can probably manage with regular well water (it's fairly visibly clean, but I imagine it has lots of salts in it) but yeah it sounded fun to make a distillery. I have lots of fun with all the fancy glassware I have. Every 'experiment' I do has the students pretty interested, and I am usually happy to explain things and satisfy their curiosity. It's a shame this lab has gone to waste. Like I've said before I think those Germans must have thought they were going to do publishable research here or something. The only thing I don't really have is butane for the bunsen burners, but I plan to buy a tank the next time I get a chance.
The students were so interested in the distillation apparatus (it looks pretty cool) that they wanted to present on it for the L&DS (Literary? and debate society). So we took it outside to where the L&DS was going to be and got it set up. I had one of the students go buy a couple packet double punch (http://babygotsauce.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/pouch-e1332905621395-224x300.jpg). Everything went pretty smoothly, but it was a little bit windy and my tiny alcohol burner was struggling. Fortunately, the apparatus was dripping the alcohol during the presentation. The student is really good and knows a lot but sucks at presenting. That is kind of frustrating for me. So we made super concentrated (~160 proof I think) double punch rum in front of the whole school. It was so concentrated with alcohol it evaporated in your mouth and was really terrible. Double punch is bad enough as it is. The flavor was more soluble in alcohol apparently, so it was just stronger (worse) than usual packet liquor. I had the students take the equipment back to the lab and the solution was gone by the time I saw it again.
I am trying to pick up again with the Themne. I really want to be speaking it. I can understand what people are saying half the time and sometimes can make decent responses, so conversationalism is slowly coming, but I haven't been working very hard with it lately. I have just been really busy. I plan to hit it hard this coming break. My initial goal was relative fluency by the end of May, but that is probably unrealistic, but not entirely. I just need to study more even though it seems like it doesn't help (but it obviously does).
It's stupid how 'clean' chemistry needs to be.
The Bangura family is building a new house with mud bricks. Mud bricks are kind of cool. I find it amazing you can build a house that lasts like 30 years with dirt. They seem to turn back into dirt eventually, unfortunately, but it doesn't cost anything besides labor. I spent a little bit of time shoveling some dirt yesterday. Every time I do any sort of work it's like, theatrical or something, which is kind of annoying. I enjoy doing work, since I have the energy to do it. It is another component of being a celebrity, I guess. I'm not expected to be doing the work the common man does, so when I do it's some sort of deal that needs to be recorded. It goes a lot to boosting my PR. People are like, oh, he understands how to work (oh tara mupanth)! and tell me to have somebody take pictures. Soon after starting people always ask if I'm tired, or offer to take the shovel or whatever. I say no, I gbilly!
While shoveling some man named Abu Kamara came up. He wears these huge super magnifying glasses that sit off kilter on his nose. He says he is a pharmacist and plans to come teach at my school next year. He seems to know science and he's sort of really cool. He's probably 40 or so. He wants to live alone near the school and open a pharmacy and do research or something. He says he wants to have a peaceful place to work on his projects. He wants me to be his research partner. I am really hoping this guy is legit because it would be awesome to work on a real project. I am hoping I can learn things from him. He went back to Freetown and said he'll bring back a paper he wrote. I don't know if he is actually published or not. I'm looking forward to working with this potential chemist.
I feel like the title of my last post has become more and more true: I just want to do science. I enjoy teaching, most of the time, but I love just spending time in my lab. There is so much work to do with it. Right now I am just trying to make a decent enough volume of distilled water to make clean solutions with. I feel somewhat blessed to be the person I am and to have this lab. I can't afford to not take advantage of this (very short) time. I am hoping when I leave the lab is well organized and again operational.
Today they were again working to build the mud brick house. MA (that little girl who is my titi, like Shebora, my bobo) has been wanting to make some butterscotch. It's really easy. I bought everything we needed: Condensed milk and 'butter' (margarine). After taking my time waking up, I went over to their house and one of the auntie's made it in a pot over a three stone fire with all the kids around. After it was cooked down I got to roll it into balls. It was incredibly hot and painful. I took a small portion and gave the rest to MA to sell. When people here make things to sell it seems like they don't do any calculations to find out how much they ought to sell things for. I'm afraid most of the time people probably lose money by making things to sell.
Not all of the condensed milk was used and there was a small bit at the bottom. I guess her father, I-Tal, dude I've talked about before (his nickname means he's tall), had told her to give the remainder of the condensed milk to him. People doing things like this piss me off. It feels like people are trying to get everything they possibly can out of me. He didn't ask me. He just assumed he could take it. The habit of people here is to take and ask later instead of the other way around. Before I went to make the butterscotch I had to buy some soap for Isatu, his woman (wife), to brook my clothes for me. He told me to come over and proceeded to explain that he was hungry, in Themne (oputo, I yema di!!). I understood what he was saying because I hear people all the time telling me they are hungry. I didn't really say anything because it's hard for me to actually express upset/resentment in a difficult foreign language. I need to learn to tell people I'm upset in Themne. So he assumed I didn't understand and said it in Krio. I think I just walked away. I do too much for that family, and their father is the reason they struggle to have money to eat every day, IMO. He smokes and drinks his family's money away. So I don't like him too much. He's just trying to exploit me.
Shebora and I fixed my bicycle yesterday. I don't know if I mentioned, but my rear shifter broke and so I've only had three gears for awhile now. It's been manageable but I stopped loving my bicycle so much. Fortunately for me, I have Issa Kabba's bicycle in my storage room. So we took the shifter off of his bike and put it on mine. It works well and I'm really happy to have gears again!
So, things are going fine. It feels like I could be doing more of course, but I feel like the community liking me and me feeling comfortable is probably already more than I could have asked for. I never have enough time to do everything I want to, but the things I am doing are just fine. It is a day to day process. Now I am going to go run.

I just want to do science..

I know. It's been awhile, again. Time flies here, and sometimes I don't feel much like writing. That's pretty much it. I'll try to catch you up.
Themne is hard. I think any foreign language is hard to learn. Especially when you don't know what to learn to advance and have no guide to tell you. My friend Muhammed Kargbo is still trying to help me out with it. Most of the time these days I can get people I meet to say 'oh tara kathemne!' (he understands themne), and so that is pretty good I figure. It doesn't take much usually though, beyond being able to greet correctly. I'm striving on. People love it when you take the effort to learn their language. It's a sign that you respect and value them and their culture. It's fun, too.
We had 'sports' a couple weeks ago. The school divided into four houses - red, blue, yellow, and green. I was one of the house masters for yellow house. It was pretty fun, but I had developing tonsilitis the whole time and basically exhausted myself, resulting in a pretty bad throat and ear infection that took a week of sitting in my house to go away with antibiotics. Five of my friends came to see me run the 100m race against house masters from the other three houses. I lost really badly, but it was okay. I think the hundreds (a thousand maybe?) of people watching appreciated that I was not a sore loser, and I at least tried. In Africa, when you try, you are a winner!
After sports my friends and I were invited to the former minister's mansion for drinks. This guy, A. P. Koroma, used to be minister of works in Sierra Leone and was responsible for all of the road system. He was sacked by the president even though he was democratically elected. It's pretty sketchy. I guess him and the president used to be pretty close and were the founders of the political party that is currently in power. The guy is totally loaded. Now, he is just spending lots of money. I don't think I have ever been treated more 'big'. This guy in a suit came up to us when we got to the place, I think his butler of sorts, and guided us in. We were let into this air conditioned side room with fancy couches and an expensive television. All of the chiefs and paramount chiefs were there and some guy introduced us to them. Then we just sort of hung out with A.P. I felt terrible the whole time. I figured if I didn't get antibiotics then I would probably die from the infection in a couple weeks or something. My friend Jeff was able to get some from his house, I thontho kuru (praise be to god).
Uhh.. Just now, I came back from a small patrol to Kono district for a get together. It was nice to get out of my village for a couple days, but now I am pretty stressed out. It took 8 hours both ways. I felt like I was more in the middle of nowhere than I usually do, and that is saying a bit. The area is mountainous and pretty much jungle. You see a few villages along the way, but other than that, you just see lots of jungle and horrible road. The germans did a terrible job.
I have been working in my chemistry lab more and more. I'm trying to get everything working, making apparatuses, doing cool stuff. I made an apparatus to produce light gases, like hydrogen. It's fun to blow it up! I made an electrochemical cell a little while ago. I've also put together an electrolysis apparatus to produce oxygen and a battery pack so we are able to do circuitry now. I am planning to build a radio and maybe eventually a transmitter. I don't have any pressurized butane (I don't think I can make it and pressurize it myself; I'm going to have to buy a tank somewhere), but I made an alcohol burner. It's just hot enough to be able to bend glass rods with it. I just bought a glass file in the city, so I basically now can make nice chemistry apparatus to my design. For any future Salone group that might be reading this, I would say to not expect to have most of these facilities. My school is unusually well equipped. But, there are a lot of ways to manage. You can do electrolysis just with some batteries and mayonnaise jars, basically. If you want to talk about managing with limited resources, you can send me an email. I've also found The Golden Book of Chemistry, free online, to be super fun and helpful!
I am starting to feel like making my students realize science is cool, useful, and making them enthusiastic is the best means to getting them a good result on the WASSCE (standardized test that decides their future). Most of my students have been doing well on my exams and I think this is because they actually are enthusiastic about studying and learning the material. To learn something you need to be motivated, first and foremost. They see all of the cool stuff you can do knowing how things work, and how important chemistry and physics have been in creating the modern world they all admire. I've heard them say man, I want to be a scientist! but it's hard. I want them to know it's hard but that they can learn it if they want to bad enough. Others say they want to be engineers. I think it's all great; I really like that class.
I am desperately looking forward to the two week break after this term. Something that has been pretty characteristic of a lot of my time here has been a level of constant exhaustion. I don't really know what it is. I'm just busy all of the time and it's difficult. It's hot, my lungs suck, I rarely get enough sleep (ideally need like 10 hours), I'm yelling over noise a lot (getting better at that), living in a foreign culture seems to be fundamentally stressful, etc etc. It is nice to go for a get together with the other pcvs but it does not really relieve my exhaustion, especially when travel time is 5+ hours one way in terrible conditions. Traveling here, it no easy. Going to Kono, I managed to get into this car that had a dead battery and a broken radiator. Not only could we not start unless we were on some hill and pushed, but we had to stop a few times at villages along the way so the driver could go get somebody to get water and cool everything down. I thought the engine might blow up. The time I traveled before that, one of the back tires popped and went flat and we had no spare, so the driver decided to just drive slowly on it for the 5 miles or so to a place we could park and he could go get a tire. It took the guy over an hour to come back with a new tire. The old one was all tied up with the rear axle. We had been riding on the rim basically, mangling the rubber the whole time.
I'm writing this instead of doing the work of typing up this mock exam for the WASSCE for the senior students to take next week. There's like 50 questions and then two other parts I need to type. I think I am having to type the exams for the other teachers too. I'll basically be typing this whole week it sounds like. I forgot my headphones today and I am pretty upset about that.
Since I haven't written in so long you've missed out on lots of things that have happened. So, sorry about that! I'll try to be better.

Catching up

Well, hello again. I have been meaning to write this for a really long time but never got around to it. Then, as time has gone on, the post has become more and more intimidating to write. Now, I just feel like I am not going to do justice to most things that I have done in the past month. Sorry I have been a slacker! I'll try to make catching up exciting.
I'll start with New Years. Unfortunately my friends and I (KFC - The Kambia Family and Crew. We have t-shirts.) were not able to take a boat all the way down to Freetown. We got about halfway, but it still took us about 3 hours on the boat. There was a guy named Pedro that was laying across me and Chris shaking out of fear for the water! These people are ridiculous about water.
We went and hung out at the hostel for a night. It wasn't all that fun, since there were so many people there. After that, I went down to Bo alone in order to see my host family. I stayed with these people for ten weeks, and they really became a sort of family for me, so it was very nice to visit them for a little while. Unfortunately I got there so late and had to leave early the next day, so we only visited for a few hours. I think it was enough just to greet them.
The beach was wonderful, as always. This time though there wasn't really any waves to surf, so my plan of surfing all day and being a beach bum was a bit diminished. I stayed until the 1st. It was a pretty standard party, but it was a lot of fun to just be in such a far off place with such a diverse group of people. The group that started the surf club is this German NGO. They are there sometimes, but mostly the place is run by Sierra Leoneans. Our bartender turned out to also be a medical doctor. He bandaged up this guy that got pushed into the rocks. That beach is dangerous! I spent my day snorkeling, walking around this island you have to swim to (barefoot; bad idea), and living an unproductive beach life. It was fun for the time I was there.
I was happy to get back home after the holidays. They weren't as relaxing as one might hope. It was very relaxing to just sit around at home and do whatever for a bit before school started back. The first week back was another week of giving exams. The class I was invigilating (proctoring) for was the SSS4: the senior students that are about to graduate and take the WASSCE. One of the girls came every day because her dad is one of the teachers here and she lives right next to the school. Another of the girls came a couple days. For the most part though, the SSS4 just did not take their exams. In fact, I am sitting behind about half of them taking my chemistry exam right now. I am being nice enough to allow them to take it now instead of giving them all failing grades.
Another thing that is happening right now that is new: we have a band! Some minister guy donated a bunch of brass instruments and drums to my scchool so that my school can even be more awesome than it already is. Unfortunately they sat in a room for a long time before we started to use them. Now, we have some guy coming for a couple days each week to teach the students. The band is not balanced at all. We have two trombones, six trumpets, five snare drums, and one bass drum. Somehow it will work. These kids are amazingly musically talented. I can hardly even describe it to you. I have never seen people pick up instruments as fast as some of the kids have. A few days after we started this program, I heard somebody in the distance playing the school song perfectly on a trumpet. I have no idea why they are so naturally good. I'm impressed and happy, pretty much. I think the band will give huge repute to the school and lift us even higher nationally.
I am happy to be part of such a successful and famous school - all of it is due to strongly well intentioned administration, and mostly solid teaching. Even the students are serious. I hear horror stories from other pcvs, but for the most part I am not seeing any of it with my students. I feel like all of my skills are being taken advantage of and developed here. I have realized just how broad my education has been. I am successfully teaching hard science topics in physics and chemistry; I have smart, serious, and interested students; I get to play around with and be in charge of a nicely equipped chemistry and physics lab. I am lucky.
Okay, now for sad things. Over the holiday while I was back at site I was taking Themne lessons with my counterpart, Muhammed Kargbo. One day I went up to the school to see him, but he and his wife were busy having to take their infant son, Ishmael, to the clinic. I liked this little boy. I saw him every day and was looking forward to watching him grow up a little bit before I leave this place. He seemed to have a fever and wasn't really eating. He didn't look that terrible. I figured he would just get over it. Later that night, I guess after struggling, he died. I got a text in the morning from another teacher letting me know. I got a text from him in all caps saying "my son Ishmael has died!". Waking up to this just made the whole day dismal. I went up to the school for the wake/funeral thing. Lots of people were there and we just sort of sat around in silence. One woman came wailing. I wasn't really sure what to tell my friend, and I still don't, but he is at least smiling again. Children die here all the time, unfortunately. His wife's mother came the next day from another city and ended up taking away his wife. I guess his mother in law now wants him to prove his love for her daughter or something before she allows her to come back and live here.. She still hasn't come back. I think this is ridiculous and that a father and mother should be allowed to grieve together over the death of their son. But, yeah.
One of the senior teachers had a stroke and we have all figured he was on his death bed. I have figured that up to about an hour ago when I saw him walking around with a cane. He is still not well, but he says he is recovering slightly.
My friend Eytal's older brother recently died. I decided to not go to the funeral.
Right after all of this, a couple pcvs came to visit my town for the day. They came, we walked around, Shebora's family prepared delicious food for us, and then we left and went to another town to see more people. It was nice to spend time with a small group of people in the area.
Then.. I went to a city in the center of the country for a birthday. I thought lots of people from my group would be there, but only two other people actually came. It was okay, but a little bit disappointing! There was supposed to be a dance competition at this one place, but that never happened, because this is Salone. That was this past weekend, so I think I am mostly caught up. If I would have written a blog post a couple weeks ago, it would have been much more ranty and detailed. Maybe you are happy I haven't endlessly ranted in this one!
Language. I am having a lot of fun learning Themne. Even though I get impatient sometimes with my progress, I think I am probably moving pretty quickly with it. I know a whole lot of vocabulary, and it is getting easier and easier to quickly memorize words. Unfortunately, I struggle a lot with piecing them together. The connecting words and the grammar is sort of hard to figure out. Everything changes depending on number and possession and the like. I think the language is well structured and intelligently put together, but nobody really knows how to teach this aspect of the language besides people that have studied it, like my counterpart. Unfortunately, since the death of his son we haven't really had a class. I think my brain is unconsciously starting to figure it out though. I seem to be getting better at hearing what people are saying even though I don't really hear the exact things they are saying, just maybe a few key words. This has been really neat. I have basically discovered that learning language is not impossible - it just takes time and work. I think learning a language that is actually spoken by a large number of people and isn't a dying indigenous language would probably be really easy, comparably. I have no guide, no dictionary, no grammar book, no cassettes. I can't wait to be fluent in this language, and I think once I figure out the grammar that will come quickly. People here love me for learning their language. I think I will be one of a very small number of westerners that are able to speak and understand Themne.
Okay, I hope I have hit most of the big things. I am going to go home and relax, and then wake up and do it all again.

Holiday happenings

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!

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.