Last week, my entire organisation took a trip to our extension office in Makeni to engage in a workshop concerning Gender, HIV and AIDS. This was organised by my fellow VSO volunteer, Alona, who also works there as a gender advisor.
The workshop was fascinating, not only because of the different information that was presented to us, but also because of what the associated discussions revealed to me about some of the views that are ingrained within society here.
We had a quite heated discussion on some of the issues surrounding the treatment of women, gender based violence, womens position in society and in the family and the relationships between women and men. I have to admit, and I’m not proud of this, but I did get angry. I found that my colleagues would say one thing, say what was considered progressive, but then the underlying view, the humour, the jokes, would reveal a different view altogether. It upset me, more I think than I ever expected it to, to hear women discussed in such a way, so openly.
Of course, the week wasn’t all work. We managed to fit in a trip to Apex with some of my friends from Makeni and of course my lovely colleagues. I stayed the weekend, had some quality time with Yankuba discussing football hooliganism, with Grant eating peanut butter cookies (girl scout ones no less) and talking the meaning of life, lapa shopping with Diya, watching James successfully highjack one of Sierra Leone’s top artists album launches... I got caught in an amazing thunderstorm, gave an impromptu spelling lesson to the local kids and coped through an all in Krio conversation with some of the girls from COG about traditional cultural practices. I even managed a picnic under some palm trees, and I had my first experience of going to church in
Next week, it’s Easter, we get 3 days off and I’m going to find monkeys and hippos in the bush. Yay.
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