Party time

On Saturday, it was World Aids Day. I went with my friends Grant and Davina and took part in a march through Freetown and spent the morning listening to various speakers talk about Sierra Leone’s approach to HIV and AIDS. One of the speakers was the new president of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma. It’s quite strange to think that I’ve been closer to the president of Sierra Leone than I have been to any prime minister in the UK. It also made me realize how little we consider HIV and AIDS in the UK. It’s shocking really that this is the first World AIDS Day event that I have attended.

In addition, on Saturday night we had a big party at my house, to say farewell to my flatmate Krystle. We borrowed a generator and so we had electricity in our house which was pretty exciting, and we had a DJ who played some great music. Lots of people came to the party, as Krystle has made many friends here, including ALL of my colleagues, which I was really proud of. It was a great party and despite a few organizational traumas, we had a lot of fun. There are pictures on my facebook site!

Krystle flies home on Monday and many of my other VSO friends will be traveling to the UK for Christmas also, so it will be a strange time. However, myself and 3 other VSO friends of mine Diya, Grant and Julian (see you have a mention now!) have plans to take a trip to Banana Island for a short break, so I will be spending Christmas Day on the beach. Can’t complain at that!

Time to get back to work now… I’m working at the moment on designing a label for the honey that is produced through a community project my organization is running. Hopefully we’ll be able to sell quite a few in the run up to Christmas to help generate some income for the beekeepers. In fact I hope none of my friends here are reading this or they are all going to guess what their Christmas presents will be!

A bit about me...

OK, so I’ve been here for almost 7 weeks now and it sort of feels longer and sort of feels shorter… time goes fast here. Already it’s Thursday and another week is almost over! What doesn’t help is that I am currently planning my work schedule until the end of June… which is most of my time here accounted for… and it’s exciting stuff but I will write more about that some other time.

So, people ask me about what life is like here so I’ll try and write something about that now… so you know that I don’t have electricity, but that’s been fairly easy to get used to really. We have a generator at the office so I just bring everything into here to charge it up! The sun goes down about 6.30pm and we use candles from there which is pretty nice really I like it.

Food wise, as we don’t have a fridge, it takes a bit of planning each day. Generally one of us picks up food on the way home from work and we cook together, making sure to make enough so we have some for breakfast the next day. I’ve actually lost a fair bit of weight since I got here, which is proving a nightmare because half of my clothes are now too big for me. However I’m trying to eat as well as I can, which is harder than you might think as vegetables and fruit are seasonal so you can’t get a big selection (and they’re expensive too!). The only other health related issue I have is that I get horrible reactions to mosquito bites so my legs look awful at the moment, but they don’t hurt or itch, they just look HORRIBLE. My main concern about this is that we are having a party on Saturday night to say goodbye to my flatmate Krystle and my dress isn’t going to look that great accompanied by blotchy legs… oh and my dress is now a bit big for me too!

So, everyone has been asking about photos. I’ve not taken that many pictures, but I have posted a few on my facebook page now. The one on here is of me and two of my colleagues, Bakarr and Alimamy. The thing is I’m not a tourist so I don’t carry my camera everywhere. Also, the internet connection is slow and I just don’t have the time/ patience/ money to spend hours uploading pictures. But I’ll put a few more up, so that you can all see my tan (which by anyone else’s standards would be pathetic but by mine is amazing!) … basically if you want to see what Sierra Leone is like then come and visit me! (Seriously, do come, because I need some smaller clothes bringing out… and some flipflops… and chocolate raisins!)

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.

what to write?

I'm really struggling with what to write on my blog at the moment, so if anyone has any questions that they would like to send me that would be awesome and would really help!

Next week I'm going up country again to Bo and to Kono to do some research (that's why I'm here afterall!) and when I get back I promise that I will finally get round to taking and posting photos!

3 weeks old

Today I am 3 weeks old in Sierra Leone which is pretty weird because that isn’t very long and I feel that I’ve been here a long time already, but at the same time I still have so much to learn!

On Friday, my entire organisation went to our extension office in Port Loko, which is a town to the north of Sierra Leone. There are about 18 people in my organisation, just 4 girls (including me!) but everyone is ‘young’ in their 20s or 30s so there is a great atmosphere. The drive to Port Loko took about 4 hours, I travelled in Charles’ car with Alona, Anita, Bakarr and Osman. The roads aren’t all that great here and it takes some skill to negotiate them (Charles has promised to give me a driving lesson when there are less people as passengers!) but I felt totally safe in the hands of Charles and Bakarr’s driving.

We went for a 2 day workshop to discuss our strategic plan. It was a great workshop and we all worked very hard, but had a lot of fun too and I feel like I got to know some of my colleagues much better, as well as meeting for the first time some of our extension officers who work out in the provinces. We went out for a few drinks and some dancing on Friday night after we finished work (we set off from Freetown at 630am and didn’t finish until almost 9pm so don’t fret, I’m working hard!). There’s a lot of dancing goes on here, but I seem to be coping alright with it, given that I’m not a dancer at all back home. Most places you go are outside, and there’s something really great about dancing under the stars, I guess it doesn’t happen so much in rainy season though!

Saturday we got on with more work and we really achieved a lot, I felt, and I was really able to contribute (hopefully in a constructive way!) and there are certainly plenty of things that were written into our plan that have my name next to them! The hard thing for me over the two days was the heat, it was so hot up country and you don’t get the breeze that you get near the sea. We worked outside a lot and everyone is great at making sure I keep out of the sun and keeping me well supplied with water! It makes everyone laugh sometimes when we talk about how white I am. It’s not something I feel particularly conscious of and sometimes I walk down the street and people are staring at me, and I’m thinking, what have I got on my face and then I’m like, oh yea, it’s because I’m white! In Port Loko the kids made me laugh as there were some that kept peeking round the corner at me to see me and when I smiled at them they would run off, then be back 2 minutes later!

So I travelled back yesterday evening, the journey was easy enough and the guys dropped us girls in the city centre and made sure we got a taxi to take us to our respective homes and then all three guys who’d travelled with me called me to check I was home ok (see, I’m being so well looked after!) It was lovely actually, as last night was bonfire night and I was feeling slightly weird not to be on the Sele in Hexham watching the bonfire and seeing lots of people I knew. And I didn’t tell them any of this, but the guys here, just by being themselves, reminded me that I may only be 3 weeks old in Sierra Leone, but that I have friends here already.

Record Breaker

OK, so I'm not that great at posting this blog stuff... but i'm sure I'll get better! It's been a mad, mad week since I last wrote on here... so here goes...
I started work at CCYA last wednesday and it's such an awesome place to work I love it! The staff there have made me feel so welcome and are really helping to settle in and we have so much fun. Everyone there is pretty young and there is a great atmosphere in the office, they're all very committed and passionate about what they do and it's pretty inspiring really. And, because obviously I love to be busy, the fact there is plenty of work for me to get stuck into is a real bonus. We're going away to a small place in the North of Sierra Leone called Port Loko on Friday and doing 2 days there to work on the strategic plan for the organisation and from there I will start planning the research. I can't wait to see a bit more of the country.

Also this week, I took part in a world record breaking peformance of the Michael Jackson Thriller dance. Yes, you can stop laughing (esp you Ms Moore) I dressed up as a zombie on Saturday night and danced in a group on the stage at Paddy's which is our local nightclub. and i really enjoyed it! as soon as there are photos i will post a link! The funniest part of the night is that at the end of the dance everyone does the obligatory zombie pose, however, my friend Valentine got a bit carried away and actually bit me rather than pretending so i now have a nice bite shaped bruise on my side. I've not turned into a zombie yet and he's not turned ginger so I think we've both escaped unscathed though!

So, yea, still getting on fine here, much more used to the heat and drinking about 4 litres of water a day much to the amusement of my colleagues who seem to only need about half a litre! I'm rubbish so I still have no photos but will do soon... probably!

Thanks everyone who's been emailing and messaging me. Internet is slow here so replying can be hard but it's lush to get emails so keep sending them and i'll try to get better at replying!

Aw di body, pet?

OK, so I left the UK without too many tears and I arrived in Freetown about 10 days ago and it’s taken me this long to get started with writing my blog just because it’s all been a bit mad…

There are about 20 volunteers who arrived at the same time as me, and about another 20 already in country coming from UK, India, Canada, USA, Kenya, Uganda, Phillipines and the Netherlands (I think that’s all at the moment!) Probably around half of us are based in Freetown, the others are in other major towns across the country. So far we have spent our first ten days in training with VSO Sierra Leone, which has included getting acclimatised to life over here as there are many things that are different… travelling, money, language, living without electricity, oh and yea, the heat. It’s pretty warm (for warm read boiling!), but I have not got burnt yet, the factor 50 suncream is working well! I have freckles on my arms that I never knew I had before and I am slowly changing colour… I’m not quite as fluorescent white as I was a week ago!

So everyone wants to know my first impressions of Sierra Leone… well it’s just awesome. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, I live just a couple of miles from the sea and I can see it from my house. I’ve been to the beach a few times already to see the sun set (which happens around 6.30pm) and is amazing, it’s a really peaceful place to be. I spent several days just in a state of shock really that I was actually here… I think it took about a week to sink in, although who knows maybe it still hasn’t!

OK, despite all the talk of tropical sunsets, I have also never seen the kind of poverty that I see everyday here and I think that mix is what I am struggling to articulate. About three quarters of people here live below $2 a day, so it's everywhere. I live in a pretty nice house, I share with 3 other (lovely!) VSOs. We have running water (for most of the year apparently) but we don’t have electricity. Well we get it occasionally (about 2 hours since I got here!) when there is a mad dash to plug things in to charge! I’m getting used to spending candlelit evenings and to cooking in the dark, and never leaving home without my flashlight. On my street there are houses who can afford to run (very noisy) generators for almost 24 hours a day and there are also people who sleep in tiny metal huts. Poverty is something that is in your face everyday here, and it’s really made me realise how privileged we are in the UK.
At the same time though, life here is fun. People are friendly and welcoming and greet me every morning as I walk to the office. Although English is the official language here, in Freetown it is predominately Krio that is spoken, which is a pidgin English. I’m starting to learn it, so far I can manage to buy vegetables at the market using a mixture of Krio and English and I understand more and more everyday. (I’m listening to Krio radio at the moment too, but they’re talking about football, which I don’t understand that well in English so…!) When I start work on Wednesday I will hopefully get more immersed in it (Krio and football, as my office is right near to the national stadium!)
There are so many things that are different about daily life here, most of which I’ve probably not even found out yet, but I do feel like I’m settling in and adjusting to life here. I’m even getting used to the massive spiders and the cockroaches. I expect there are hard times to come yet though, as it’s still very much a novelty at the moment and the idea of not seeing people from home for more than a year is pretty unreal at the moment. I think the first hard day will be Wednesday when some of the other volunteers leave to go to their placements in other parts of the country. I’ve become pretty close to these guys in the last week or so and it will be strange without them, but also I’ll be starting work, which means new friends to make! And I already have a couple of plans to visit my friends up country (you know me, always a plan!)

So, I think that’s all I’m going to write for now, no pics to put up yet as I haven’t taken my camera out with me yet but I’ll try and start taking some soon. I’ve put up my cell phone number and my postal address on my facebook page in case anyone feels like writing, which would be cool. Post is quite inconsistent here so letters may not arrive but it would be nice to get the odd one (probs best not to try and post stuff tho as it prob won’t arrive). Laters…