One definite aspect of Peace Corps service in Sierra Leone
is that it teaches you to appreciate small pleasures, especially those that
remind you of home. Yesterday I splurged and purchased a bottle of milk ($1.75)
from the Lebanese owned western style grocery store in Bo. The lack of reliable
power means that refrigeration is a commodity and so dairy is hard to come by;
the only other dairy I have had is the occasional wedge of laughing cow cheese.
A bottle of milk is not only a creamy indulgence, the lack of milk products
means that we have to be conscious to periodically take in dairy so as not to
loose the ability to easily digest lactose. But the real treat of the day was
the apple. For fifty cents, I purchased a refrigerated apple, and as I sunk my
teeth into the cool sweet fruit, I closed my eyes and felt I was under my
Grandfather's apple trees in the meadow in Vermont. It is amazing how evocative
a familiar taste can be; each bite, including the core, was fully savored with
great care standing in the sun on the dusty street corner as motor cycles
zipped by. It was the most delicious apple I have ever eaten.
As pre-service trainings nears its completion, eight weeks
of lectures, lessons, practicums, and teaching in summer school, my time with
my host family also begins to draw to a close. For the two months I have called
the Koroma family house home, I have been truly welcomed as a part of the
family and I would not trade the experience as it had been an emersion into
Sierra Leonean culture and life, but my home stay has not been without its
frustrations. As a guest in the house it is already culturally expected that
much will be done for me, but this is compounded by the fact that as a white
American it is believed that I am incapable of doing most things for myself as
I have a machine to do everything for me in the US. After the second week, I
had to prove that I was capable of pouring my own tea water in the morning so
that my 7 year old sister did not do it for me. The family was surprised when I
was able to fetch water from the well for my own morning bath. At times when I
an unable to do something proficiently the first time, the family is loath to
give me the practice to build the skills, a problem made worse as everything I
can do an African child can do better. Each time I have tried to wash my
clothes by hand, my siblings have laughed at me and taken the wash from me to
do themselves. Several times I have asked Mama Abibatu if I can learn to cook
some Sierra Leonean dishes. She has always said yes, but after my brother and I
return from the market with the ingredients, I am rarely able to go alone, Mama
has always prepared them herself while I looked on wistfully. While I have been
able to help out more as of late, I can now help to sweep part of the house
before my sisters take the broom from me, I am still in many respects treated
like a child. While my family is always well intentioned, and I will miss their
company and kindness, I feel that I would rather fail in doing something for
myself and learn in the process that just have it done for me. Regaining my
autonomy once I move to Mile 91 will be a breath of fresh air, though I will
miss not having my sisters run to greet me each day as I come home.
Last night I had a particularly wonderful evening with Mama
Abibatu and my sisters. The conversation we shared followed the pattern which
our most engaging and interesting talks have taken, Mama tells me about an
aspect of life Sierra Leone and I share its American counterpart. First she
spoke about politics in Salone; here there are two main parties, the red All
People's Congress and the green Sierra Leone People's Party. The ACP usually
favors infrastructure development and the SLPP favors education, though the
current President, Earnest Bai Koroma of the ACP has instituted large scale
educational reforms. Then at length I told her about the red Republicans and
blue Democrats, American politics and Barack Obama, who is loved here. Mama
shared stories of the Sierra Leonean civil war. She was in Freetown during the
conflict and each day when fighting occurred near the city, she would go down
to the bush before sunrise and hide until nightfall. She told of how as the
conflict devolved, the various tribal groups formed militias to protect their
own kind. In Mile 91, a large rebel camp was located in a walled compound that
now is filled with the houses of government infrastructure workers. Then I told
her the stories in great detail of what happened on 9/11 and the week of the
Boston Marathon bombing. This evening spent on the veranda telling stories
while watching the moon slowly rise made me feel how close I had come to the
family in the two months of living together.
Peace Corps is challenging, no doubt about it, but what
makes things interesting is that the way in which the experience is challenging
is constantly changing. When we first touched earth in Sierra Leone it was the
immediate heat which stifled our movement and felt as if a hot washcloth was
across our mouths. Now it bothers me not as greatly as my base level of
acceptable body odor and sweat has recalibrated itself to my new environment.
Ask me again though when the real hot season rolls around. Next there was the
challenge of learning Krio and integrating into my new community and settling
into living with out host families. Experience slowly gained over time has
snowballed, and as I walk about Bo and chat in Krio I know that my functional
ability will only increase the longer I am here. Some of the greatest
challenges have been learning to deal with the frustration of being unable to
do anything easily with my host family and the tedium of sitting through
protracted ineffectual Peace Corps lectures. In one week I will travel to
Freetown and swear-in, formally transitioning from Peace Corps Trainee to Peace
Corps Volunteer, after which I will move into my house at Mile 91 and prepare
for school to start several weeks later. While I'll have something with meat on
the bone for me to sink my teeth into, I'll go from familiarity and routine to
starting from scratch again.
A month has elapsed since I wrote the above paragraph, and
as I sit at my desk in the living room of my new house, I am at a loss of where
to begin. The past few weeks have seemed like a year, each day being a full
odyssey unto itself. For the sake of my reader I will highlight only the more
memorable moments and sentiments. When all of us Peace Corps Trainees traveled
to Freetown we stayed in the same guest house where we had been lodged when we
were fresh off the plane from America only two and a half months previously. To
be there was shockingly surreal, as it made me think on what I knew and who I
was at that point, and how much progression had occurred in such a short time.
The 8 weeks of training had accomplished, more or less, what it was designed to
achieve. I know how to utilize the Peace Corps resources at my disposal to
ensure my health and safety. The eight week emersion of living in a Sierra
Leonean home has made me not only functional and conversant in Krio, but has
more importantly allowed me gain an understanding of the new cultural in which
I live. It was with nervous reluctance and trepidation when as neophytes we
began to do something as simple as a walk around town and through the market. Now
we eagerly look forward to such excursions as an escape from the tedium of our
lectures and routinely stay out till all hours. We're on a first name basis
with proprietor of our favorite watering-hole. Most importantly, I now feel I
am ready to teach. While I know that what I know now is only the tip of the
iceberg, I know I can do this. Perhaps I am still in the honeymoon phase, but
time will tell.
The swear-in ceremony itself was a akin to graduation in
that we were given encouraging speeches by a series of dignitaries, including
the US Ambassador, the President of Sierra Leone's chief of staff, the Minister
of Education, Science and Technology and Minister of Foreign Affairs. In
classic Sierra Leone fashion, the program was halted when the power went out
and the conference hall was plunged into darkness for a few minutes. We then
swore to defend the Constitution. To make it official we signed a document with
the text of our oath; next to the desk was a giant poster of JFK. From there to
our real induction ceremony – a day on the beach. The beauty of Sierra Leone's
beaches have to be experienced to be believed, and I have yet to see the
finest. After placing an order for a hookah at the thatched open front beach
bar where we staked out, we ran across the the powdery white sand and plunged
into the blue serf of the Atlantic. The water was the perfect temperature, ever
so slightly cool. As I bobbed in the rolling waves under the warm sun, looking
over the swaying palms and rising hills of Freetown beyond, I commented to one
of my fellow recently inducted Peace Corps Volunteers: “damn I love conditions
of hardship.”
The next several days were spent saying anxious goodbyes to
my friends as they left one by one for their various sites in each corner of
Sierra Leone. Though we have known each other only a short time, the
extraordinary baptism of fire which we have undergone together over the past
few weeks has made the 40 people of Salone 4 indelible comrades in arms. We
know we can rely and talk to each other about anything; homesickness and
nostalgia, the stresses of acclimating and adapting to our brave new world, and
the intricacies and nuisances of the various stages and levels of diarrhea. I
know we are all eager to begin the experience and work we were sent here to
undertake, but hereto we have been together all day every day, and always had
each other for mutual support and solidarity. As each group boarded their
Landcruiser and pulled out of the guest-house driveway, it struck home that
soon we would be on out own and that instantly everything would go from
theoretical and nebulous to practical and tangible. Though we knew it was time,
this anticipation of departure was especially keen for those who would not have
a site-mate in their community with whom they could commiserate. I do not have
a site-mate. When I arrived at Mile 91, the Peace Corps Landcruiser dropped by
off at the junction. I said goodbye to my friends in the vehicle and we wished
each other good luck. Then they drove off and disappeared round the bend of the
dirt road. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and thought: now begins the
next two years.
Now that I was finally at my post, there were two orders of
business for the two weeks until the beginning of school; learn about and begin
to integrate into my community, and make my dusty drab house into a sumptuous
designer bachelor pad. Challenge accepted. I developed the routine of having
one day working in my house, reading and relaxing, then dedicating the next to
being as extroverted as my stamina and the midday heat allowed. Fortunately I
have an amazing next door neighbor who has helped immeasurably on both fronts,
becoming my guide, Themne teacher, and close friend. Osman Kanu is 17 and has
an amazingly kind, warm, and quietly effusive disposition. Since I have moved
in, each day the Kanu family has given me a large bowl of whatever meal they
have cooked for the day, usually rice and a sauce, without being asked or
expecting pay. When I offer to contribute monetarily, they decline, saying that
they appreciate the work I am doing, though I am at a loss as to what this
might be. Before I came to Mile 91 I took a massive US high school world
history book, thinking it might come in handy. Low and behold Osman is a
passionate student of History and I am thrilled to facilitate his learning.
Many nights we have read from the textbook and plan to finish the entire tome
in 2 years. We teach each other our languages. At night we read by the light of
an exquisitely carved and varnished wooden standing candelabra which I designed
and Osman built by hand. In addition to attending the first year of Senior
Secondary School, high school in Sierra Leone, Osman is a highly skilled
carpenter's apprentice. I have watched him saw and plane boards and have seen beautifully
crafted furniture take form in his workshop with only the use of hand tools to
make the pieces. This has naturally led to the most satisfactory of
arrangements: let me give you wads of the US government's money, and you can
build me awesome custom furniture for my house. In addition to building a sofa,
love seat, armchair, coffee table, long table, wall shelf, bed, full length
vanity case, and clothing rack for the previous Peace Corps occupant of my
house, Osman has built for me a table, office desk, bench and seat for my
toilet, kitchen shelf, book shelf, two chairs, and the candelabra. The finished
desk upon which I am typing this, Osman created from rough lumber in a single
day. The price his carpentry shop overseer posed was 70,000 Leones; 50,000 for
materials and 20,000 for labor. 70,000 Leones is about $16. After the varnish
dried Osman carried the desk to my house on his head. Did I mention he is 17?
Osman has also helped me paint the inside of my house, taking it from a blotchy
muted light blue to a restful deep blue. Maps of Sierra Leone, West Africa, the
African continent, the world, and pictures of home now decorate the walls. As
we transformed my living living room, I pumped G-Eazy and Daft Punk from my
battery mini-speakers, then the Kanu family and I ate rice and beans together.
Cultural exchange at its finest. Osman has also helped my to purchase items in
the market, such as a giant water barrel, avoid paying the “white man tax.”
Once a week I draw water from the well in the yard with a rope and bucket and
fill the barrel which stands in my kitchen next to my tiny one burner gas
stove. In addition to beautifying my home, these projects also have given me a
sense of pride and ownership of my new house. Lord knows I'll spend a good deal
of time here. Soon I plan to pull up the worn and drab patterned linoleum floor
covering and put down more aesthetically pleasing flooring. No matter the ups
and downs of my Peace Corps work, I'll always have a comfortable and restful
retreat to call my own; its all about making my house a home. Above my desk
hangs a string of Tibetan prayer flags from my mom's greenhouse in Boston and
in the kitchen rests a small bottle of pure Vermont grade A maple syrup, worth
its weight in gold.
On the days I have not been indulging the in felicity of
unbounded domesticity, I have taken to walking about my community to get my
bearings in my new environment. In the morning, I will head our of my house and
just walk without a set purpose, returning in the evening to collapse into bed.
As I greet people on their verandas, I have yet to have an interaction that was
not friendly and welcoming. Many shared their strong memories of Peace Corps
from before the civil war and of the gentleman whom I am replacing. On these
days I will spend 5-15 minutes talking with each group of people I encounter,
keeping time with the policeman at the checkpoint on the road out of town (who
shared his jug of palm wine), the manager of the local radio station, the imam
of the area's largest mosque, the town blacksmith (who had me work the bellows
of his smithy as he pounded out farming machetes on his anvil), and shopkeepers
and vendors in the market (so as to develop relationships and take mental notes
on what is available and where). On the days when I have felt lonely and
isolated, going out into town has always
buoyed my spirits. However the constant attention at times is very tiring.
Greeting people is an indispensable part of the culture in Sierra Leone and to
fail to do so is a major foux-pas. This means that a every time I leave the
house I must greet, at least for a moment or two, each adult I pass. There is
no such thing as a expedient or quick trip into town. This is compounded by the
fact that as one of the only 4 non-Africans in town (more on the others later),
and a high profile one at that. I am a celebrity; most everyone knows my name,
and the young children who don't yell oporto (white man) like a high pitched
broken record. To this I call back othemne (Themne man) or attempt to ignore it
as best I can. Always being the center of attention can be brutally tiring at
times, and I am attempting to focus on recalibrating the expected pace of life
and appreciating the sincere extensions of hospitality.
It is the formation of little comforting rituals which has
made the transition into my new life infinitely more comforting and familiar.
Each morning since the start of school I have arisen at 6:30. This is after
floating in and out of consciousness for an hour after the call to prayer from
the nearest mosque partially wakes me at 5:30. Flicking my cheap Sierra Leonean
lighter 50 or so times, I light my little one burner gas stove and heat a pot
of water for my morning cup of Earl Grey tea or cardamom Arabic coffee with
sugar and milk powder. For breakfast I either slice a number of bananas into a
pot of oatmeal with a hearty dash of cinnamon or saute onions and eggplant for
a two egg omelet which I put on bread with mayonnaise. A breakfast of champions
eaten as I listen to the morning news from the BBC World Service over my
shortwave radio. This is usually the voice of the only native English speaker I
hear all day. At the end of the day after all is said and done, I take a bucket
shower of cool water by candle light in my tiled bathroom where the sloping
floor makes the water run into a drain. Then I curl up with my head lamp under
my giant canopy mosquito net and write a page in my journal. Each day is filled
with so many small events and I want to record my sentiments on any one day to
chart my own progression. Even three months in it is amusing to read the
entries from my first few weeks in Sierra Leone. After that I read one poem in
my book of the 101 most famous poems in the English language. Then I read my book
of the week until I find myself rereading the same paragraph over and over,
switch out the light, and listen to the crickets and occasional howling stray
dog as I drift off to sleep.
To be a white man in Sierra Leone naturally means that I am
a racial minority, but it is being a hyper-privileged minority that at times I
have had to eschew and downplay. Though I am routinely offered, and I decline,
the best seat or the first serving, most of this is because of the great
culture of hospitality in Sierra Leone. The overwhelming majority of times race
has come up in conversation, Sierra Leoneans and I talk of how as people we all
have the same basic emotions as human beings; hopes and dreams, fears and
worries, no matter the color of our skin and that race doesn't matter. The only
explicitly harsh words against white people I have heard have never been
directed against me and have been in the context of discussing colonialism. As
one wise older man said: “the white man came and gave us the Bible and told us
to read, and when we looked up he had taken our land.”
But it has
been the few times when Sierra Leoneans have advanced ideas of white racial
exceptionalism that have truly stunned me. I'm a skinny-ass honky. One day I
was passing a worker, who could have been on the cover of a bodybuilding
magazine, digging a massive irrigation ditch with only a pick and shovel. We
warmly greeted each other, and as part of greeting I thanked him for the work
he was doing and said what a strong man he was. To this he replied, “no, you
are a white man, you are stronger than me,” lowering his eyes slightly. Once
greeting an old man in a thatched house out in the countryside, as we shook
hands he gently touched my right forearm with his left hand, saying ”white skin
is so beautiful.” A old lady brought me a plate of rice and beans, for which I
thanked her effusively. To me she said “no, thank you. Do you know what it
means for a white man to come from America to Sierra Leone to help my black
brothers and sisters?” I have only heard such comments on a handful of
occasions and I always try to be as outgoing and personable as I can, denying
any inherent white status to the person who has made the comment with a laugh
to make light of the situation. But even the fact that a few such comments have
been made is arresting. Whether it is a legacy from over a century of colonial
rule, decades of ineffectual and corrupt leadership and a civil war, a
dependency of foreign aid, or a combination of those factors, I know not. Nor
can I offer an answer to the problem of racial self-effacement, but I do feel
the solution and the action must come from Sierra Leoneans for Sierra Leoneans,
and not from a white voice.
As the days passed in turn, and the start of school was
still several weeks away, I began to feel very restless and stir-crazy. Without
any real work to sink my teeth into I was feeling despondent and so went out
looking for something, I didn't exactly know what. As so out I went,
introducing myself at the various offices around town, explaining who I was,
the few skills I posses, and that I was happy to lend a hand in whatever
capacity I could. Like a pilgrim I arrived at the Our Lady of Guadalupe medical
clinic. The staff is comprised of one volunteer doctor from Italy who will be
there for a few months, two nuns from Mexico who have been in Sierra Leone for
two years and are trained nurses, two Sierra Leonean nurses in training, and
three volunteering Sierra Leoneans who help in the pharmacy and lab. I told
them that I am an English teacher,
and that the extent of my medical training was that which I received when I
became a lifeguard 4 years previously. The extent of that training was rub
lotion on it. I offered whatever help I could. Why yes we would very much
appreciate your assistance the sisters said, can you come in tomorrow? Indeed I
could and did.
The next
morning at 8:30 I began taking the medical notes and records from the patients
who sat patiently waiting. Through the gates a motorcycle sped in and a mother
leapt off, running inside holding her semi conscious infant. I watched and
fetched supplies from the medical cabinet as the staff quickly worked over the
child as he writhed and moaned. He was in the advanced stages of malaria. The
nurses did all that they could to bring his high fever under control but as is
so often the case here, lack of knowledge of disease and how to fight it leads
people to seek medical treatment for themselves and their children after it is
far too late. After a time, the child's jerks and groans became softer and less
sporadic until he stopped moving all together. It was 10:45. The Italian doctor
called me into her office where she and a scared teenage girl sat. As the
doctor speaks Italian and English, and Krio is similar enough to English; she
is able to roughly communicate with patients but she asked me to help
facilitate a conversation with my more advanced Krio. I told her the 16 year
old swears she has not had sex. I then helped explained to the teenager that as
she had said her period was late and had a positive pregnancy test, this was
slightly dubious. That day at the clinic, a woman had been stretched out on a
bench resting for what she knew lay ahead. She was pregnant with her seventh
child and in the early afternoon she began having contractions and going into
labor. The clinic is equipped for births, but this woman's case was far more
serious. She was only six and a half months pregnant. She needed to go to a
full hospital immediately and fortunately the clinic has a rather advanced
ambulance. But there was still a line of people who had been waiting hours to
be seen and only a handful of staff. And so as the mother was lifted into the
ambulance, the nurses remained at the clinic while the doctor, the woman's
husband and I jumped in and shot down the highway, siren blaring. The drive to
Bo, the nearest major city, is two hours and fortunately the road is paved. The
woman was laying on a gurney in the center of the ambulance and said that she
could wait no longer. With the Italian doctor gently giving instructions and
encouragement, a tiny baby boy was born. The newborn could have been held in
the palms of my hands. There was no clamp in the ambulance medical kit and the
doctor asked me if I had anything that could suffice. I tore off a strip of
cloth from the mother's wrap, a piece of colorful fabric to tie off the
umbilical chord. Holding up the child for the father to see, the doctor asked
what he wanted to name his son. Pointing at me the father said, Samuel. The
final stretch of road to the Doctors Without Borders hospital was an endless 5
miles of washboards and frozen waves of earth over which we had to creep at an
agonizingly slow pace. Examining the mother, the doctors said she would be
fine, but that there was no realistic hope for the child. Being born two and a
half months premature is extremely serious anywhere, let alone the nation with
the world's highest infant mortality rate. Swathed in a blanket against his
mother's chest, Samuel, his mother and father, the doctor and I made our way
back up to Mile 91 in the ambulance. Sitting silently next to me, the mother
took a small pouch from her wrap with her delicate fingers and took a pinch of
snuff. I very gladly accepted a pinch from the extended pouch. As I savored the
effects, we sped past a mini-van bus with a goat tied to the roof. Reflecting
on the day, a death, a birth, the sights sounds and smells working in the
clinic, I was struck by how unfazed I was by it all. The next day the mother
came into the clinic for a follow up. She told us Samuel in now is heaven.
Three months ago as I sat in the terminal at
JFK, if you had told me what I would be seeing and doing, boarding the jet
would have been infinitely more nerve wracking. But after only 12 weeks of
Peace Corps, planet Sierra Leone has cease to be disconcerting. Since my first
eventful day at the clinic, I have been back many times. I have helped to
change bandages on mangled legs, distributed medicine, helped set IV drips,
prepared injections for the nurses and even given injections. Witnessing an
epileptic seizure, I tried to explain to terrified onlookers that it was a
noncommunicable disease and not demon possession. As I was taking the
temperatures of waiting children to determine who were the most serious cases
to be seen first, I thought of how heinously illegal my hands-on help in the
clinic would be in the US, and how unqualified I was. I then realized the
stunning fact that I am very qualified. I can offer another pair of clean
hands, I can take directions and efficiently do what needs to be done after
being shown once, I am not squeamish, and I can speak both English and Krio.
Adapting to Sierra Leone means having to accept and understand that there is
just a different set of rules here; there are no rules.
Especially in my position, it is amazing what doors you can
open just by asking. Mile 91 has it's own radio station which broadcasts music
and talk programs, and as it focuses on local issues it enjoys quite a large
following. Radio is particularly important as it is the one outlet of mass
media which can reach a very wide audience in Sierra Leone; radios are cheap
and the majority of the adult population is illiterate. Three of my fellow
Language Arts teachers at Benevolent Islamic Secondary School are involved at
the 91.0 station; one is the production manager and two conduct an evening talk
program called Good Governance in which a panel discusses national politics
concerns, with a focus on how the community can get involved and access their
government. I expressed my interest in assisting at the radio and with the
program. Several days later I got the word, come on down to the station tonight
for our broadcast. The two teachers and I had about a half hour prep during
which I speed read a pamphlet on Sierra Leone politics and scribbled notes as
if I was preparing for a debate rebuttal. The atmosphere was very much “we'll
do it live.” It was with nervous excitement that I stepped into the
broadcasting booth. The two panelists and I introduced ourselves. To remain
calm, I tried to ignore the microphone a few inches in-front of our faces which
transmitted our every utterance to an unknown number of ears, people whom I
would see in town, live. Over the next 45 minutes we discussed the the issue of
the night: the responsibilities of members of parliament and how citizens can
communicate grievances to their elected officials. The Sierra Leoneans spoke of
the problems of citizen's apathy, corruption, and politicians who are very good
at talking and little else. I was asked to comment on the differences between
politics as I see it here and in the US. I said we have the same problems. The
entire program was in Krio. As I type this I am at the station waiting to sit
on a panel discussing the proposed redistricting before the upcoming election
of the Yoni Paramount Chief.
Three and a half weeks into living at my site, my feeling is
so far so good.
