Busy Busy Busy!

My last week and a half has been a really busy time. So much has happened that I may even write a few different posts about it rather than try to fill everything in here! So this one, I will make about my work…
The week before last, I co-facilitated my first workshop here: two days on Participatory Action Research and then went on a five day field trip to support the participants in putting it into action! I have been doing this with an organisation called YAPAD (Youth Alliance for Peace and Development) which is an organisation with close links to CCYA where I am based and also happens to be the organisation where my roommate Krystle is a VSO volunteer. This meant that Krystle and I, along with Desmond K who is the Programme Officer and another Desmond (who I will call Desy here) who is YAPAD’s driver (and also, luckily for me, the best driver in Sierra Leone) got to travel around the country together. It was awesome and I had a great time. The four of us got along really well and it was great to see a lot more of the country. We travelled through Mile 91, Bo (where we stopped), Kenema, Kono (where we spent a few days) and then through Makeni and back to Freetown. So I was able to see some of the biggest towns in Sierra Leone.
Bo is in the south of Sierra Leone. Desmond and Desy both come from there so I was really privileged to be able to meet both of their families. Bo is the second largest town in Sierra Leone and is a really busy place. My only complaint was the number of mosquitoes and other insects that bit me!

On Wednesday, we hit the road again, after a great meal at Desmond’s mother and father’s home. It took us around 5 hours to get to Kono so we arrived pretty late at night and after a small adventure managed to get into the office where we were staying whilst in Kono. Kono is in the east of Sierra Leone and the climate there is quite different to Freetown, it actually gets quite cool at night which was really pleasant and meant there were fewer mosquitos about so Krystle and I had several pleasant nights sleep there. We were also delighted because on Friday morning, Uncle Bernard, the watchman at that office, heated us some water for washing. This is the first wash I have had in hot water since I arrived 5 weeks ago (naturally I wash everyday, just not with hot water, don’t panic!) but it was amazing!

So, what was the point of this trip… well… we are doing some preliminary research into the state of the youth in Sierra Leone and this was a small pilot survey that we will use to direct the larger project when it begins next year. So we spent 2 days training a team of local NGO staff in research skills and then they go off into their communities to interview young people using the discussion guide we wrote together. It’s a really different approach to research for me, because I’m not here to do the research myself, but to capacitate other people with the skills to do it for themselves. If I said this was a challenge for me, then that would be a huge understatement. I am a researcher and this is the most fascinating and exciting project I’ve ever worked on. It’s really hard to hold back and let others decide on the angle to take, and ask the questions and interpret the results when I have a million questions that I want to ask for myself. But it’s also really important that I don’t get involved in that, because these issues people are discussing with us, they are not my issues. The voices need to be heard as they are spoken, not as they are interpreted through my ‘outside’ view.