Layt de!

There is a limited mains electricity supply in Freetown, and it is one of the main issues that people believe affects development in Sierra Leone. At Christmas, we were promised electricity… and eventually, it came. Although not to my house.

Most houses get electricity for a few hours each day. But not us. When all my neighbours had their lights blazing, we were still sat with candles. Then one night last week, when I was sitting in my room, reading the newspaper with my torch, the light in my room flicked on and off. I thought I was going mad. Then it happened again. I panicked, I shouted my roommate Kate, and asked her if it was happening upstairs too. No, she said, then 2 minutes later, yes, it was! Cue lots of running around flicking light switches and talking excitedly. Then there is a knock on the door, it’s Ayo, our security guard. He was just doing some checks of the circuit box, has he caused a problem. A problem? No Ayo, you legend. You’ve just fixed our electricity!

OK, so it still doesn’t work everywhere, but now, every couple of days, we get a light and a plug socket in each of mine and Kate’s rooms, lights in the lounge and on the balcony and the odd plug socket here and there. Nothing in Krystle’s room, clearly the wiring still needs some work, and we need to buy some lightbulbs. But we still get excited every time we come home and flick that switch and find light there!

For the people of Sierra Leone of course, this is not enough. An intermittent, unpredictable electricity supply is better than nothing, but it does not make the difference to health and education and industry and security and family life that would be made by a permanent supply. And it’s still only in Freetown (and a couple of big towns in the south).

For me, living without electricity for a few months has been exciting, a novelty, part of the fun. For Sierra Leone, this is one step forward.

Something about CCYA

I never write as much as I should about work on this site… so I’m going to make a conscious effort to from now on!

However, my writing isn’t up to much, and this lovely lady from VSO does it for a living so I thought why not just post a link to this… it’s a story about the work of CCYA: http://www.vsointernational.org/what-we-do/casestudies/abass_koroma.asp

I will attempt to write more about work soon. I’m working on some funding proposals and a big piece of research and I do a sideline in designing labels for bottles of honey and to be honest anything else that needs doing… I’m busy and enjoying myself. At the end of next week I’ll be travelling up country to Makeni to spend a week working at our extension office there. I’m going to be visiting some communities up there, hopefully including Abass, who is featured in the article above.

I’ve also had a few people travelling from the UK recently who’ve bought me wonderful gifts such as raisins, newspapers and chocolate (and a toilet brush, thanks Krystle!) and a couple of packages with shoes and clothes from home (thanks mum and dad!). The packages and letters that I know people have sent in the post have not yet arrived, but I live in hope…

Greetings pop pickers

OK, so I didn’t manage to say the words on the radio… but it was a show about young people and advocacy, so it’s not entirely surprising!

So, yesterday afternoon, about 2pm, my boss runs into my office and says “Jayne, you’re going on the radio tonight to talk about the state of the youth!” and so I did! We were invited to go on a show called ‘Insai Salone with Ismeal Koroma’ which is aired on CTN (www.cottontreenews.org) and is an English language show about life in Sierra Leone. I took part in a radio discussion with Femi and Desmond, two of my colleagues at YAPAD (Youth Alliance for Peace and Development) which is an organisation closely linked to CCYA and one that I work with frequently.

It was my first time on air in Sierra Leone and I really enjoyed it – I was on for an hour which is more air time than I’ve ever had in the UK! Because I was the only woman on the panel, I got asked a lot of questions about gender mainstreaming (which is not exactly the state of the youth). As my colleague Charles pointed out this morning “you are not too much a feminist” so I probably didn’t give answers that were as provocative as they’d hoped. I tried to talk about the idea that men and women experience things differently, and that this needs to be considered in all parts of life, education, health, employment – that men experience marginalisation too, but perhaps in a different way to women. I also managed to talk about CCYA and the bee keeping project, which is something that has taken up a fair bit of my time recently. Anyway, everyone seems happy with it and it looks like I’ll get the chance to go on air again sometime. So, I've been in Sierra Leone for 3 months, I'v helped to produce a radio show, I've had my photo on the front page of a newspaper and now I've been a radio panellist too. This really is the land of opportunity.

And the funniest thing? Apparently (though I didn't notice this myself) a few krio words slipped into my English! So I must be learning, small small.

The Cold North

New Years was spent in Kabala, in the North of Sierra Leone. Everyone was telling me that it was cold there. I didn’t believe them. How wrong I was! It was absolutely freezing at night and in the morning, I needed a blanket to sleep in and also long sleeves!!

We spent our New Years Eve in a nightclub with some friends, and let the new year in at 12 midnight on our watches. Five minutes later we let the new year in again when the DJ realised that he’s missed midnight, or maybe we were just on BMT. We danced round a bonfire and had a lot of fun!

The next day, as is tradition in Kabala, we climbed the hill next to the town. We took the long, easy way up, but in the midday heat, Diya and I still needed a rest at the top (and a few on the way!). As more people arrived, there must have been around two thousand people on the mountain top and it was a fantastic atmosphere. The view was awesome. The climb down later that afternoon was the ‘difficult’ route and I must have fallen at least 3 times! I have something of a reputation for always being dirty out here (it’s very dusty and I’m very white so the dirt shows up more on me…) but the state of my legs and arms was unbelievable! I would post a picture here, but I’m too embarrassed…

So, our holiday ended although I spent a couple more days in Makeni as I still had some days off work. It has been an amazing couple of weeks and really made me realise how much I love being in Sierra Leone. I’ve missed my three travelling companions in the last few days, especially Diya, whom I seem never to run out of things to talk about with!

I’m really excited to explore more of the country and of the West Africa too, and hopefully some of the other trips we are planning will come off, Liberia, Guinea and Senegal are top of the list at the moment, but we will see what happens…

Pikin News

In between Christmas and New Year, we spent a few days in Makeni. Since my motorbike accident in the UK, I’d been quite nervous about being on a bike, but as ocadas (motorbike taxis) are the main form of transport in Makeni, I had to overcome that! It’s safe to say that after a hilarious incident whereby I was meant to be helping Grant at work and taking some kids round delivering letters, but managed to lose them (or did they lose me? I’m not sure!) I’ve pretty much overcome my nerves and in fact by the time I left makeni I was even starting to enjoy it!

Grant is a VSO based at Radio Maria, in Makeni. One of the projects he is working on there is making a news show for children. Because of my ridiculously enthusiastic approach to everything, I decided to volunteer to help Grant at work whilst I was in Makeni. How much help I actually was, I’m not sure. I think possibly that I was just a disruption to the kids actually doing anything at all! But I did have a lot of fun and working on that was one of the best parts of the holiday for me! The first show was broadcast whilst I was in the studio, but I also helped prepare the news for the second week and I was excited and nervous listening back in Freetown when it aired. I felt very proud of the achievements of Grant and the Children of God group who made the show and privileged to have been a part of their work.

The Banana Way

Banana Island is a mini paradise, it’s just off the coast of Sierra Leone, a boat ride takes about 20 minutes and it is the place where I spent my Christmas. Diya, Grant, Julian and I spent 4 happy days enjoying the beach, swimming in the sea and eating freshly caught fish and looking for monkeys. There was a lot of laughter and we all mastered the art of doing nothing pretty well. Our room was decorated with the Christmas stockings Grant and I had both had made (great minds think alike!) and Christmas Day was spent out on a boat trip and then playing baseball on the beach, before heading to the village Christmas party.

It was a perfect Christmas, and none of us wanted to leave when it was time to go home, we had made good friends with the staff (who have even called us since we left!). I learned something about myself on that short trip and I understand more now about how important small exchanges are in making an impact as a VSO in a place like Sierra Leone. There’s more than just work to do here, the whole life that we live is important and I’m glad to think that even on our holidays we were able to do that. I’m looking forward to going back to Banana Island again!

The best Christmas present ever!

When my boss told me that we were closing the office for nearly 3 weeks over Christmas, I said to him, "what am I going to do for 3 weeks!" yes, the workaholic in me was terrified. Seeing as I have at least 4 blog posts of updates to do, I think it's fairly safe to say that I managed to fill the time pretty easily!
I spent my first couple of days hanging out with friends on the beach and Christmas shopping, then the real holiday began with a trip to Makeni. Kate, my room mate had her mum visiting, so I hitched a ride with them to Makeni which is a town in the North of Salone where some of my good friends live. Two of them, Diya and Grant, were to be my travelling companions for the next two weeks, so it was a great start to our holiday to hang out for a night in their homes. Also my twin brother, ABJ was there which was cool, even though he is my neighbour in Freetown, it was good to catch up with him somewhere else.

Whilst we were shopping at the market for lapa, Grant and I spotted an ocada driver with a tiny puppy. He offered to sell it to us for Le 5000 (about GBP 1) and as this was our Christmas present spending limit, Grant was going to buy it for me! Kate, quite rightly, stopped us from this crazy act, but it was still the best Christmas present ever, as it's the closest I've ever been to owning a dog! Then the next morning, my sister called me from Australia. It was so great to talk to her and I was very excited! In fact, I even cried, which is the first time I've cried about anything since leaving the UK. I must miss her!!! So basically, my Christmas was already the greatest ever before the travels even began!
I'll write more about what I actually did soon... and put some photos on too!!