Living in a bubble

OK, so I’ve had my ear infection for 8 days now – in one or the other ear. It’s not much fun, firstly it hurts. Secondly, I’m almost deaf. It’s meant that I’ve had a fair bit of time of work in the last couple of weeks. Which is a bit of a nightmare given that I’m really busy right now, with quite a few deadlines coming up. But I’m getting better.

It’s strange living in this bubble not quite able to hear anyone. Just getting to work becomes a lot more stressful than normal, because social interaction is so important. The other morning I went into work just for a couple of hours. I met a lovely man, Pa Roland, who was chatting away to me, and I felt terrible because I couldn’t hear half of what he was saying to me, but neither could I make him understand that it wasn’t because I don’t speak very good krio (although to be fair it could have been) but just because I was a bit deaf.

It’s also meant that I’ve ignored a few people who’ve greeted me and I just didn’t hear. And also that I’ve given a couple of people a shock (Krystle had to check I was breathing the other morning when she couldn’t wake me up!)

However, the time at home in the hammock on my balcony, has given me a lot of time to think and reflect on my experiences here. So it’s been a pretty good experience overall in that respect. It’s very easy to go for days and days without any real alone time here. Now you all know that I’m not really one for alone time, I get pretty bored hanging out with myself for too long. That was probably one of the things I was most worried about coming here. As it turns out, the personal challenge that is spending lots of time with me has largely fallen to Krystle, who seems to have remained relatively sane as a result!

Anyhow, this is just one of those quick and random blog posts to let you all know that I am here, I am alive and thanks to all my thinking time, I have a whole host of more interesting posts to write soon…

Yesterday was my and ABJ’s birthday, although the celebrations have been going on for days before that. They comprised a mix of singing karaoke, eating, dancing, cooking, candle light, tequila and clothes. It was great fun, made all the more special by the wonderful people I got to spend them with. Una tenki!

ABJ and I share the same birthday, and therefore we are twins. Some people struggle to tell us apart. Now it’s even harder… because we have the same clothes!!! My wonderful brother had me my first Africana outfit made for my birthday, in the matching gara to his and I think it’s the most amazing gift I’ll ever be given. You can see us in the picture above (I’m on the left btw!).

I am incredibly lucky to have met such amazing people since coming to Salone. I can honestly say that since I arrived here, there has not been a single morning when I have woken up and not felt happy to be here. There has not been any time when I have wished I was back home, rather than being here. Right now I have an ear infection. I woke up this morning in a lot of pain. Krystle made all the arrangements to come with me to the doctor and got me all sorted before she went to work. Now I’m stuck in the house, my ear hurts and I feel pretty rubbish but try as hard as I can, there’s just no way I can manage to feel sorry for myself.

Of course I miss people and things. The night before my birthday I was remembering the year before, hanging out and seeing my birthday in with Ringo, Rob and Sam. I was really sad to have missed friend Alison’s wedding last week. I’d really like a bottle of brown ale (!). But there has not been a second of this experience that I would trade.

This is a wonderful country and it is a pleasure and a privilege to experience this life I have here.

Salone Food (1)

Food is a pretty important thing. Kate likes to joke that me and Krystle start thinking about our next meal just an hour or so after we finish the last one. The truth is it’s probably even sooner! I’d like to say it’s because we have to plan so much here, with having no fridge etc, and it is partly that, but also that we just like to eat! In fact, given what I eat it is a miracle that I’ve lost so much weight since getting here! I blame the heat and the dancing!!!

Salone’s most popular food is plassas, which consists of rice (what else?!) and then a sauce made with either cassava leaf, potato leaf or krin krin, lots of pepper and magi and some meat and/or fish. And of course palm oil (quite a lot of it, eh Mario?). I’m a big plassas fan and I often eat this at breakfast time from the cookry shop. Another cookry favourite is groundnut soup (which is a stew made with groundnuts (peanuts) and meat and pepper and eaten with rice.

There’s also plenty of street food in Salone that you can buy for a few block (quick conversion: 1 block = 100 leones. 6000 leones = £1). Salted plaintain chips in plastic bags are an essential when you travel up country. ‘Ice’ is some kind of frozen yoghurt type thing that you eat out of a plastic bag (a slightly less sophisticated version of yoghurt in tubes!), which we always get on the way to the beach. Bread with sweet milk, which is bread that is spread with sweetened condensed milk (real comfort food). Roast meat, usually goat meat that is fried with onions and pepper and wrapped in newspaper to take home. There are an assortment of biscuits, beniseed cakes and banana breads or fried doughnut type things that people carry round ready to sell. You can buy green bananas everywhere and orinch (oranges) that have been peeled, that you bite the top off and suck the juice from (it’s a method I have almost mastered!).

Finally, but one of my favourites, there is fry fry. We have a fry fry lady who comes to our office every lunchtime. She sells fried chicken and fish, fried plantains, binch (beans cooked with onion and pepper and oil), boiled cassava roots and fish balls. My regular lunch is fried plantain with binch and if I’m lucky, hot bread from the bakery across the street. Yum yum!

Sierra Leone is not exactly renowned for it’s cuisine, in fact a friend of mine (who will not be named here… answers on a postcard!) once commented whilst eating my (English) cooking that “this is alright really, or maybe I’ll just eat anything in Sierra Leone!” However, I’m a big fan of Salone food. In fact, it struck me whilst writing this that there is a whole host of other food that I haven’t yet mentioned, not to mention the drinks, so I’m going to call this post Salone Food (1) because I’ve got 8 months left on my placement and lots of eating still to do!

Busy bees

Makeni is a town in the north of Sierra Leone, it’s one of the biggest towns after the capital city and it’s home to a CCYA extension office and extension officer, Yankuba. I really like Makeni, so when I was offered the chance to run a workshop on research and advocacy at Diya’s organisation and then spend some time in CCYA’s operational communities around Makeni, I was delighted.
Yankuba took me to our communities on his Honda, after making sure I was well protected with my helmet on and jacket zipped up. Roads are not good in Sierra Leone, and to get to Thonkoba and Mabamba involved taking some pretty bad tracks.

In these communities, we run a few projects. We have an animal husbandry project. Participants are given goats to breed, the first time they bear a female goat, they are to pass this to someone else in the community so they can also start breeding, after this all the offspring are there own. We also have projects growing rice and cassava and groundnuts. And finally, my favourite project, the bee keeping project. Our communities keep bee hives from which they harvest honey which we then sell in Freetown. The honey is completely pure and it’s delicious, I’ve eaten quite a lot of it (paid for of course)! I’ve also designed the label for the bottles and done a fair bit of sticking of labels onto bottles, so it was great to finally meet our bees and beekeepers who start the process off!
Now, I’m scared of bees (not a fact I’ve revealed to my colleagues!) but I managed ok and I didn’t get stung. The photo above is of Yankuba and I near to the place where the hives are situated.

I learnt a lot in my time in Makeni, about how different life is in the provinces compared to the capital. This is going to really help my work here and I’ve come back from the trip much more focused and aware of the areas where I believe I can be of the most assistance to CCYA. I am here as research advisor, but it looks like my role will extend well beyond that.

Whilst in Makeni, I also caught up with the Children of God group who make the radio show that I’ve helped out with a couple of times. It was great to see them all. Grant had kept it a secret that I was coming so they were surprised to see me. I didn’t really help out all that much, although I did sit in on the show and got to press the ‘record’ button (my special job!) and then on my last day the girls gave me a plant (that’s a hair braid). I should have taken a picture really, but didn’t and it’s all gone now! I’m always sad to leave Makeni, as I love it there. But this was made slightly better by the fact that my colleague Yankuba travelled back with me and that I arrived home to find my first two letters! They took 2 months to arrive, but now we know that the post system is working, so if anyone would like to write that would be great, just ask me for the address.