Walking through my neighborhood of New York away from the
homes and the main street, the countryside begins to open up. Any area that is
not thickly settled is called the bush and it is here that one really begins to
feel that you are off the grid. The gravel and dirt roads slowly begins to
narrow and become windy single file foot paths. Houses appear less frequently
the further you go; those on the edge of town are only unfinished concrete
block shells. Yet in these rough structures families still live, stretching
tarps or palm fronds across the open roofs to provide shelter from the rain.
Beyond the unfinished houses the only homes are the occasional thatched huts.
The bush around New York goes from thick shrubs and bushes higher than my head
through which it is impossible to see, to forrest with towering trees supported
with heavy buttresses, their massive trunks choked with climbing strangler
vines. Most of the bush though has beed reduced to rolling open grass and farm
land, punctuated by high palms and lumpy termite mounds. As the needs of people
in the nearby areas grow, the land is increasingly being cleared for fuel and
building wood, and then tilled for subsistence agriculture. As I made my way
across this landscape with several other Peace Corps, we came to a narrow
bridge crossing a narrow swift stream made from heavy logs laid side by side
and held fast with vines. As the path followed the stream, the water began to
widen and the stream transformed into a massive rice padi, about 75 ft wide and
several hundred feet long. As I walked along the rice padi I passed two young
girls carrying massive loads of firewood on their heads. Coming to a small
thatched hut, I saw a young woman preparing dinner for her family on a small
crackling fire. I asked if could take her picture and she eagerly said yes. She
called to her children and I snapped a family portrait. Their small house was
made of short mud brick walls with a steep roof of heavy palm thatch. The metal
pot of rice over the fire, the farmer's hoe, and the clothes on their backs
looked to be the only items not made with the family's own hands from materials
found in their immediate surroundings. For the family, their rice padi was
their livelihood and sustenance. But the most wonderful thing about the meeting
was that despite the great differences between this family and the strange
American who walked down the path by their home, they could not have been more
friendly and kind. The mother was eager to introduce me to her children and the
limited conversation we were able to share was animated and engaging. I dare
say that if I were to go up to a strangers' home in America, people with whom I
share a language and culture, I would not expect them to be immediately as
effusive and welcoming.
Hello. I'd like to talk to you about the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints. It is funny, but the religious faith which I have
had the greatest exposure to thus far in Sierra Leone traces its origin not to
Israel or Saudi Arabia, but upstate New York. For the past three Sundays, I
have gone with my brother Alfred to the local Mormon church. As my brother is a
perspective member, the Latter Day Saints church has sent multiple pairs of
missionaries over to our house to bring him into their flock. Sitting in the
yard with two 18 year old missionaries, one from Idaho, the other from Utah, I
was struck by a number of things. For these young men far from home, their
mission trip is one of ideological indoctrination and self policing.
Missionaries are allowed to call home only twice a year, on Mothers Day and
Christmas, and always have to be with their mission partner to keep each other
in line. They are forbidden to listen to radio, access the internet, watch TV,
listen to non religious music, or read any book other than the Bible and Book
of Mormon. I noticed the missionaries looking longingly at the Nook from which
I was reading. Despite the strict rules and self policing of their church,
which in themselves are a red flag, the young men described their fervent
belief in their church and their missionary work; their genuine desire to help
the people of Sierra Leone and do good was apparent. However the missionaries'
idea of helping the impoverished people around them implicitly rests upon the
fundamental objective of making people believe what they believe. Anyone trying
to change others' religious faith does so with the implicit assumption that
their own faith is correct and that their audience is in ignorance or in error.
This is certainly true with the missionaries I encountered and though their
message was delivered in a kind way, there was throughout their song and dance
routine the underlaying message that the Mormon church has a monopoly on
salvation and that theirs is the only true faith. When my brother asked what if
his family disagreed with his interest in joining the Mormon church, the
missionary replied “salvation is more important than family.” In the Mormon
services I attended, I learned that the President of the Church, Thomas Monson,
the successor of Joseph Smith, is believed to be a living prophet who receives
direct divine revelation on behalf of the entire Mormon Church. It doesn't
matter if someone believes that God is talking to them, people like that are a
dime a dozen on New York subways. What matters is that many other people
believes that this man speaks for God. And what are some of the recent
revelations? First that 16 year olds instead of only 18 year olds can go on
mission trips. Second that girls can now go on mission trips, though as one of
the missionaries said the church wouldn't let American girls go to a place like
Sierra Leone. Thankfully Peace Corps has no such qualms. After one particular
Sunday service, I went to a Bible study class that focussed on the family structure.
The lesson was on the importance of harmony and love in the family. Though
there was an implicit advocacy of patriarchy, the teacher also stressed that
mothers deserve as much respect and praise as fathers, that every member of the
family is important and that corporeal punishment should not be used to
discipline children. And so there in lays the quandary; while the message still
supports a patriarchy, it at least advocates for a higher status than many
Sierra Leonean mothers currently enjoy, and for kinder discipline than relying
on the cane.
A few days ago one of my fellow Peace Corps Trainee's host
mothers died suddenly in the night. She suffered either a stroke or heart
attack but the death was totally unexpected, and though she was taken to the
hospital no efforts were made to revive her, it being far too late to save her.
I recently learned that Grandma Koroma, who lives with us, had nine children.
Only three lived. Today my neighbor learned that her brother died. Death is a
part of life here.
Recently, the Peace Corps trainees received a long awaited
announcement that will radically affect the remainder of our service, our site
locations within Sierra Leone. After an interview in which we were asked a
myriad of questions, such as would you prefer a small rural village or larger
town, we eagerly awaited the big news. While the PC takes our desires into
consideration, as we have been in only two big cities and know so little of the
country, this was like being asked to choose between chocolate or vanilla
without ever having tasted either. When the day of site announcement arrived we
filed into a classroom on our school compound where a chalk map of the country
had been drawn on the floor, trying to contain our anticipation. Near the
center of the room I found where I will be calling home for the next two years:
Mile 91. In Sierra Leone there are only a few main highways, and here a highway
is a paved road with one lane in each direction. From Freetown, the capital on
the coast, the highway goes east 91 miles into the heart of the countryside
until it forks to the north and south. The location of this major junction
gives my community its name. Two days after learning our sites, the principals
of the schools each Peace Corps will be serving in came to Bo. It was then that
I met Mr. Mohammad K Fornah, the head master of the Benevolent Islamic Junior
Secondary School. I feel after spending one week with him that he is in
education for the right reasons and will be a good teacher to work under. While
some of my Peace Corps colleagues will have to deal with classrooms of over 100
and teachers who force young female students to have sex with them for a
passing grade, at Benevolent Islamic class sizes are capped at 40 and Mr.
Fornah has helped to start three other schools before helping to found
Benevolent. I should make it clear that Islamic schools in Sierra Leone are
still secular in nature, all schools having to adhere to the national
curriculum. The only difference is that Islamic schools offer an extra course
in Arabic. All schools across the nation begin each day with morning assembly
where the national anthem is sung, followed by Christian and Muslim prayers in
turn. After two days of workshops with our principals on how to work
effectively together over the next two years, the Peace Corps and our new
mentors and partners left in pairs for each corner of Sierra Leone.
Mile 91 is a town, not a village, of about 10,000
equidistant from the northern and southern edges of Salone, and a third of country’s' width from
the coast to its eastern border. The central location of the town is due to
it's intimacy with Sierra Leone's major transport artery. In the middle of town
is a wide roundabout, or turntable as it is called, with a giant cottonwood tree
in the center. Around the turntable are many small shops, open front bars, rice
and bean stalls, a petrol station, the entrance to the local market, and of
course an English football cinema. Businesses, NGO offices, a police station, a
radio station, private homes and compounds line the three highways branching
out from the turntable; the Bo road to the southeast, the Magboroka road to the
northeast, and the Freetown road to the west. My proximity to the road, and a
paved road at that, means that I will have a relatively easy time traveling to
any part of the country to visit my Peace Corps friends in more remote locals,
the national parks, Freetown for a taste of the city, or any of Sierra Leone's
famous beaches for a weekend vacation. Also Mile 91's market is the beneficiary
of all the passing lories which routinely bring in fresh and varied foods, a
welcome switch from rice and thick veggie-goop. On Sierra Leone's ethnic map,
Mile 91 is in Themne land and the majority of its residents are Themne, the second
largest ethnic group in the country. But as a junction town, 91 has a number of
ethnic Mende, Fulla, Susu, Limba, Krio, and Mandingo people as well. This
offers one of the greatest benefits I will savor everyday living in Mile 91. In
many rural villages where many of my fellow Peace Corps are going, the denizens
only speak the local tribal language, but in my heterogeneous junction town
most everyone speaks Krio. Krio is directly related to English and I can
already communicate well in it, the structure being easy to grasp and much of
the vocabulary being intuitive cognates. Themne is a purely African tribal
language and is brutally difficult, having only become a written language in
the last twenty years, and even so it has never really been codified. As one
Themne/English speaker put it, “One speaks English but we just talk Themne.”
The grammar, vocabulary, and vowel sounds are completely different from
anything I have ever encountered. While I am studying the language, I suspect I
will only be able to converse in Themne by regurgitating a short memorized list
of sound bites on command. Thankfully many people speak Krio in 91, or else my
ability to communicate, integrate, and connect with and learn from the people
in my town would be greatly compromised, which would make essentially
everything I will need to do much more difficult.
When I arrived in Mile 91, I first went with Mr. Fornah to
his house to meet his family. Mr. Fornah's two wives told me I was welcome in
their home, that they would always be there to help me, and Mr. Fornah's sons
Lamin and Abubakar said they were excited to show me around their community.
Next we went on a short walk down a gravel road, past low bungalow houses and
across one of Mile 91's highways, until we came to my house. Seeing Mile 91 and
especially my house for the first time allowed all of my imaginings of what my
home for two years would be like to instantly coalesce into reality. My home is
a simple one story concrete white-washed house with a tin roof. On my first night
in my house I availed myself with this feature by taking a shower under the
waterfall formed by the eaves of the roof. On one side of the house is a
veranda, open on one side and enclosed by a concrete latticework on the other.
I plan to spend many an afternoon reclining in this space with a good book and
a G&T, or more likely a stack of papers to grade and a plastic cup of
chlorinated water. There are four rooms in my house, a guest bed room, an empty
room I will make into a kitchen, the master bedroom and a large living room.
Unlike some Peace Corps who inherited an empty house, mine is already mostly
furnished. In the living room I have a large desk and chair, a plush arm chair,
love seat, sofa, and a coffee table arraigned around two large barred windows.
Ample wall space will allow me to hang many of the maps and photos I have
brought. As I am not a skilled painter, I have had the fun idea of decorating
one wall by flinging paint in a Jackson Pollock style. The master bedroom has a
hanging rack for clothes which will be a welcome relief from living out of a
suitcase, and a full length mirror. This is a mixed blessing. Hereto, I have
only seen my face when I have looked into my small shaving mirror every other
week. My first reaction upon seeing my rugged countenance was to convince
myself that I was channeling Indiana Jones. I then quickly moved on before I
could convince myself otherwise. I will be sleeping in a double bed with a
thick foam mattress in a carved bed frame; the green mosquito net makes it a
cozy escapist den. I have been very fortunate in that I have been left an
extensive library of literature on Sierra Leone and Africa, massive Russian
novels, and an extensive section on the great artists from the Renaissance to
the Dutch masters. Another very nice feature my house has is an indoor toilet
which means I will not have to go outside and lock and unlock my front door
each time I get diarrhea in the night. All I need do is haul up water with a
bucket and rope from the well in the front yard and carry it into the water
barrel in my bathroom to either pour into the toilet bowl to flush, or over my
body to wash. The first night in my house I was welcomed by a spider the size
of saucer above my toilet, his mandibles pulsating and twitching as if in
greeting. I immediately killed him and declared war on the resident arachnid
population, scouring the house until I could rest in peace. Now that I have a
space to completely call my own, I am looking forward to the process of moving
in and making my house a home.
I have written before on the inordinately welcoming nature
of Sierra Leoneans, but this has never been exemplified more strongly than
whenever I walked about Mile 91 on my four day visit. Knowing the paramount
importance of greeting, I was sure to introduce and talk with my new neighbors
and people throughout the community, to learn about the place I will be calling
home and to set the best first impression I could. As I said to people that I
would be living in Mile 91 for the next two years and that I was here to be a
school teacher, over and over again people said how they were glad I was going
to be part of their community, that I was welcome, that I should feel safe and
at home, that I should come to them should I need any assistance, and that they
appreciate what I am doing and why I'm here. These sentiments were reemphasized
by many of the big men in Mile 91 whom I went to meet with Mr. Fornah,
including the paramount chief, local area chief, manager of the local radio station
(frequency 91.0), the local inspector of schools, the town police chief, the
local bank manager, and other stakeholders in the town. While the warm welcome
I received was very encouraging and heartening, I felt a little strange
accepting such praise. Though I feel that I will become a valuable teacher in
my school and that I will have the opportunity to do some meaningful secondary
projects, I have yet to actually begin the work that lays ahead. My welcome is
also due to the very high esteem in which the previous Peace Corps Volunteer
I'm replacing was held, Mr. Cash Kunze of Oklahoma. I was unable to meet with
Cash before he retuned to America, but we were able to talk on the phone and
his insight into how to approach my Peace Corps service from his perspective of
two years experience has been very beneficial. As I walked about Mile 91, a few
small children upon seeing a white man called out “Cash!” thinking I was him.
It is very common to have young people and children call out their word for
white person. In Tanzania it was muzungu. In southern Sierra Leone, Mende land,
it is poomoi. But in the center of the country, Themne land, the word for a
white person, which was called out to me many times, was oporto. When the first
European explorers came to Sierra Leone in the 16th century, the
people they met them asked who they were. “Portuguese,” the strange fair
skinned foreigners replied. And since then, the subsequent foreign visitors to
Sierra Leone have born the name of the Portuguese explorers of five centuries
ago.
Back in Bo after my five day visit to Mile 91, I began to
prepare for the last three week phase of our training, teaching summer school.
This meant making myself look presentable. Though my hair was neat by US
standards and I could have gone another two months before needing a haircut, my
family began to insinuate that I was looking unkempt. I walked down the side of
the highway running through Bo until I saw a small one room open front wooden
shack, a local barbershop. The single office chair nailed to the linoleum floor
which served as a barber chair was unoccupied so I stepped up. Cool and easy to
maintain, the only hair style worn here by men is no hair. I knew what the end
result would be, but not the process that would achieve it. For the next hour
the barber, a young man in a Manchester United jersey and flip-flops, hacked
away at my mane with a pair of scissors which would have been better suited for
kindergarden arts and crafts. But it was in the next phase of my metamorphosis
that the barber showed his true ability. Unwrapping a new double-edged razor,
he held the blade against a comb and quickly ran it back and forth over my
scalp, turning my tufts of uneven hair into a uniform peach-fuzz only a few
millimeters high across my head. Then, in Sweeney Todd fashion, he took the
razor blade and freehand shaved my face. My family was thrilled at the result,
saying that I finally looked sensible, but I am still getting used to seeing
the contours of my skull for the first time. The cost of my trimming and shave?
$1.25, including tip.
On Monday morning I stood with several other Peace Corps in
a light drizzling rain at the New York junction, where the dirt road into our
neighborhood meets the main paved highway. As the Peace Corps bus pulled up we
piled in, 36 in a vehicle meant for 28. Off we roared into downtown Bo and the
Ahmadiyya School campus where several hundred young students were gathered for
the beginning of the Peace Corps summer school. As much for our benefit as for
the students, the Peace Corps offers a free three week summer school as a way
for us to put all of the theoretical lessons we have received into practice. It
is also a time when we can try different teaching, testing and discipline strategies
before we begin the academic year at our respective schools across the country.
The buildings at the Ahmadiyya School are very similar to those in the other
schools I have seen; painted concrete buildings with a sloping tin roof, bare
classrooms lit only by natural light coming in through an open barred window
without glass, filled only with hard wooden benches and tables. The extent of
the teaching materials in a classroom are the blackboard and a piece of chalk.
About 55 students crowd into one room, 2 or 3 to a desk. For the summer school
I am teaching levels Junior Secondary School 1 (JSS) and JSS 3. This is the
rough equivalent to 4th and 6th grade in the US, but the
differences between my Sierra Leonean pupils and their American counterparts
are huge. This is due not only to a terrific lack of resources and money in the
educational system, but endemic problems within the system itself. The teaching
style here focuses on rote memorization and regurgitation. Conceptual learning
and critical thinking is not emphasized; students can recite the steps of the
scientific method, but ask them to explain it and apply it to an example and
only the brightest in a class will be able to answer. I have yet to see a
student with a textbook in class, so their books are what notes they copy from
the blackboard. Massive class sizes do not help. Students at our summer school
take 3 subjects, the subjects we Peace Corps will be eventually teaching,
English, math, and science consisting of chemistry, physics and biology. JSS
students during the regular school year can take up to 12 classes at a time
including math, integrated science, geography, language arts (English),
agriculture, religious-moral education, business studies, social studies, the
local tribal language, French or Arabic, home economics, and computer science.
(Computer science is only available should the school have the resources, and
my iPod is more powerful that the entire Ahmadiyya School's antiquated dusty
computer lab). Class periods are only 35 minutes and students take each class
only 1-3 times a week. Far too little time is given too infrequently to far too
many subjects. Cheating is widespread. A 50% is a passing grade on exams in
most schools, yet it is common to have over half of a class fail a test.
Discipline consists primarily of flogging. But when students realize that Peace
Corps teachers will never flog them, instead of earning their gratitude, some
students respond to this gesture as a sign of weakness and a reason to not take
us seriously. Like classrooms in the states, there are a handful of students in
each class who are very bright and can easily keep pace with the material we
teach, the majority struggle along and try as best they can, and some are
essentially beyond help. And so as teachers it is out job to help as many as we
can without going too slowly and defeating our own purpose, and making sure the
students know they can always come to us for extra help.
For the past week I have been teaching my JSS 1 class
adjectives and my JSS 3 class biographical paragraphs. I have been trying to
emphasize critical thinking by asking my students to write their paragraphs
about a strong memory they have, and to describe that memory in detail. I
specifically said I would not grade for grammar but on the depth of the ideas
they expressed. The results were wonderfully surprising. While I received many
tests which said “I like football because it makes me feel good,” there were a
number of papers that I received which were revelatory. One student wrote about
how his father was killed in an auto accident when he and his mother were
bringing him home after he was born. Another said how when we was able to go to
school for the first time he felt so blessed and lucky that he was being given
the opportunity to become one of the educated people in the world. Several
students wrote about deadbeat fathers and how their parents beat them. Many
wrote with great passion of how football is their catharsis and release, a time
when they are able to just have fun with their friends. A few students
reminisced of fond memories of good times with their families on major
holidays. Some wrote of the feeling of peace they experience each time they
pray and go to Church or Mosque. It can be easy to be lazy and fall into the trap
of thinking that the extent of your students' experiences are limited to what
they can express in articulate English. Though the paragraphs were not well
written in most cases, they showed a staggering awry of deep experiences. I
fully plan on conducting this exercise to get to know my students when I go to
Mile 91. If I can teach my students to start to think critically and be able to
express themselves in writing, I will consider that a more meaningful and
gratifying success than having them learn grammar rules. Before I began
teaching I was afraid I would be a deer in the headlights in front of a class
of students. However I have surprised myself, finding that I have easily
stepped into the role of teacher. Adequate lesson preparation is very important,
but some of my best ideas have been improvised in class. Also it is a matter of
realizing that here I am not expected to be like the amazing teachers and
professors I have been so fortunate to have had during my own education. I am a
long way from Mounds Park Academy and Bates College. But the teaching practice
at the Ahmadiyya summer school has made me feel confident that while I still
have much experience to gain as a teacher, the challenge is certainly one I can
meet.
I had a moment the other day, sitting quietly during a break
in a bare unfinished classroom at the Ahmadiyya School, that came together
spontaneously and perfectly. On my laptop, the screen saver slideshow was
flashing pictures of the island in Canada, the smooth rocks with gnarled windblown
pines, the glistening blue water, and Grandma at the wheel of our boat speeding
across the bay. I thought of what that place means to me and what I have
learned there. Playing from my computer was G-Eazy's All I Could Do. I thought
of all my wonderful friends from Bates, the countless experiences with them,
and how that has shaped me. These thoughts were washing over me as I looked out
the window through the falling rain over the school yard and to the houses and
palms beyond, thinking to myself, “I'm in Sierra Leone, how cool is that.”
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