Lessons Learned

Lama, Joseph, me, Hassan, and Swaray with calculus books sent from UWRF.

Ann and I are closing in on ten months in Sierra Leone and in less than a month we will be flying to Morocco for a ten-day tour of that country.  Then it’s back home in mid-July.  Time now to reflect on what Sierra Leone has taught us at this point in our lives. Here are just a few final observations from our experiences here.  This will be my final post.  Thanks for reading.  The blog has been very therapeutic for me.

1. Mama Salone has 2 toes in the twenty-first century and 8 toes back in the early 1900s.  As in America, cell phones abound.  My students at Eastern Polytechnic are as enamored with their phones as  students  in River Falls are.  Head phones are also popular for those who can afford them.  A few homes and business have satellite dishes that beam in programming from West Africa and Europe.  Internet cafes are thriving businesses in the major cities.  It seems that wireless technology is a boon for developing countries like Sierra Leone.  Yet, basic services: running water, sewer, and electricity, are woefully lacking everywhere, big cities as well as the rural areas.  Improving infrastructure takes time, money and will.  I am not sure that this country is up to the task.  Salone has trouble enough holding on to what it currently has.  Existing buildings are crumbling faster than new buildings can be built.  As an example, the roofs on campus here are rusting out and leaking, the once useful water tower keeps a silent vigil over all, and electric lines to classrooms have long since become nonoperational.  Everything seems to be slowly falling apart even as newer buildings like the library and science building are being built.  My fear is that this part of Africa has fallen further behind the western world in the 40 years since we were last here.  As the rest of the world zooms ahead via a technology revolution, Africa is very much in danger of being left further behind.

2. The human body has a tremendous capacity to sweat.  Ann and I gave up trying to keep dry long ago.  The best we can do is try to cope with the dampness that comes with sweltering temperatures.  We thought that after a few weeks our bodies would adjust to the climate, but they never did.  The Sierra Leoneans love the heat and are not bothered by sweat.  I have walking around town shirts (in other words, sweat soaked) that I keep separate from my in-house shirts.  Ann has the same.  Laundry could be a problem, but we have long ago learned to live with a certain lack of crispness to our clothes.  Also, when everything must be hand-washed, standards for cleanliness drop a few notches.  I am continually amazed at my colleagues and students here at the college who look sharp in their clean, pressed clothes and impeccably shined shoes.  I don’t know how they do it.  A great part of everyone’s weekend is devoted to washing and ironing.  Without readily available electricity, washboards and charcoal-heated irons are the tools of the day.  The washing machine has got to be rated in the top ten list of modern inventions. 

3. Change promoted by outside sources is extremely difficult.  Peace Corps titled our jobs here as teacher trainers.  We thought we would be bringing our ideas about teaching to future teachers attending the college here: Ann in English, me in math.  The main problem was that the education programs here were not interested in hearing our ideas.  Our colleagues barely had a clue about what our presence meant.  This mix-up was primarily caused by a lack of communication between the Peace Corps administration and the administrators at Eastern Polytechnic.  But, it also could be predicted because it is just part of human nature to be skeptical of change, especially when it is suggested from outside the community.  This scenario is played out all over Sierra Leone as goodwill oriented NGOs try to help this country change for what they think is the better. Initial efforts may seem to be fruitful, but it is very difficult to sustain that effort from within.  Sierra Leone, like many West African countries, has built foreign aid into its national budget.  The country has become dependent on this money.  No one can blame Sierra Leone for taking the aid that is offered.  However, it takes a concerted effort from both parties, donor nation and recipient, to think long-term about the consequences of their actions.  All too often, the focus is on the immediate, short-term, results with little regard to how a project will be sustained.  It is a tough problem - how to help a country improve without it becoming addicted to the aid. 

4. Ramen with added ingredients is a decent meal. Forty years ago, Ann and I had a cook who made us native dishes.  This time around we (I should say Ann) did the cooking.  The national diet, rice & cassava leaf sauce, or rice & potato leaf sauce, or rice & peanut sauce, were not in her repertoire, so we ate curried rice, black beans & rice, pasta salad, spaghetti with meat sauce, grilled cheese sandwiches, and yaki-soba prepared in one pot on one burner which is all we had.  Who’d have thought that ramen noodles, the cheap meal of college students that never graced the table in our adult life, would became our “goto” meal for ease and nutrition (with added veggies and an egg) and for the affordable price which helped stretch our meager Peace Corps living allowance.

5. Life at its core is fairly simple.  The lesson that I knew we would relearn in Africa is that, fundamentally, living can be reduced to finding food & water, clothing, and shelter.  In Sierra Leone the last two items are not great necessities.  People living in Kenema can get by with few clothes (no winter parkas required) and shelter from the rain is all one needs as the temperature rarely dips below 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  As for food, with all the rain and sunshine, it is hard for things NOT to grow.  Banana, mango, orange, grapefruit, coconut, papaya, among other trees provide plenty of fruit for everyone.  Right now there seems to be a glut of pineapples on the street.  Peanuts, cassava, plantain, avocado (called pear here) are available almost every day for pennies.  Water requires some work to haul from a well which may or may not be safe to drink.  But, pure water is affordable, 2.5 gallons cost 50 cents. Of course, staying healthy is key to enjoying life.  This is a challenge in Sierra Leone.  All sorts of tropical diseases (malaria being chief among them) must be dealt with.  Ebola was a special case, and thankfully seems to be eradicated.  No matter how complicated we think our lives are in the States, the necessities of life still boil down to these few  things with affordable basic health care being included in the list.

6. A bucket of water is all one needs to bathe.  There is no question about it, my life in the States will seem ultra-luxurious compared to my life here.  I’ll have super-equipped home, a car to go anywhere I want, plenty of light to see at night, a great bed to sleep on, a variety of food to eat, access to the internet 24/7, and a big bathtub to sit and read in.  What more could a man desire?  Yes, I will think about the all of the abundance I will have, as well as the waste.  Hopefully, I will keep my good fortune of being born in the United States in mind when I think of others who desire the same advantages as I have as an American, but for whom fate had another plan.

7. Peace Corps tests the strength of a relationship.  Before we came back to Africa, I would joke sometimes to people that the first time Ann and I were in Africa the Peace Corps put us together, this second time around perhaps the experience would tear us apart.   Well...... Living together in more Spartan conditions with primarily each other to keep us company is challenging for sure.  Conversation topics seem to exhaust themselves. Stressful situations were more common.  Our most difficult times were during the three months when we did not have any work to do. Ann discovered that she needs to keep busy doing something.  I discovered that staying physically active was difficult in this hot environment.  I had thought that I would do a lot of biking.  A case of heat-exhaustion after one two-hour venture in the morning caused me to become more cautious.  Walking has kept us fit enough and  people on our common routes are used to seeing us together.  If I happen to be walking by myself, I get asked "Where is Mum?"  If Ann is walking without me, the question is "Where is the man?" Mum and The Man both realize that we probably could not have lasted almost a year here without the support of each other.

8. Being a minor celebrity is a mixed bag.  We get recognition from children everywhere we go in Kenema.  They run out to greet us with hand slaps, never tire of saying “hello” several times and generally treat us a someone special.  I have to admit the attention is ego-building.  Ann will forever remember a little girl at her primary school who ran up to her during recess and hugged her legs looked up at her and smiled.  This was after Ann's first day at the school when absolutely no child dared to touch her.  We have, in a small way, desensitized the children we meet to the strangeness of a white person walking about town.  On the other hand, being instantly recognized does have its drawbacks.  We are identified as rich, and therefore a target for everyone who thinks we have tons of money, food and water to give out.  There is a tendency to charge us extra for things we buy just because white skin equals more money.  This is perfectly acceptable in this bargain-dominated society.  As one who does not like to argue about the price of a service, I find this disagreeable.  And, there are times when we don’t want to be recognized, but that's totally impossible here. 

9. Sierra Leone is filled with good, hard-working people.  Yesterday, as I was relaxing by reading outside my back door, I began to hear the steady sound of someone chopping wood.  I turned to see a well-muscled man attacking a 18-inch diameter log with an axe not far away.  After he separated the three-foot section from the rest of the tree, he began the slow process of splitting the log with wedges.  In an hour he had a pile of firewood.  Then he went right back to work on the next three-foot section.  I have seen this kind of work ethic all over Kenema, from construction workers making concrete block, to yard workers yielding machetes to "mow" the grass, to women who scrub away at tubs of laundry on simple washboards, to the men who push tremendous loads on two-wheeled carts constructed from the rear axle of some scrapped vehicle.  At Eastern Polytechnic, I have students who under very trying conditions (no text books, no light at night, classes in heat and humidity, sickened by malaria) continue to pursue their studies with no promise of a job at the end of it all.  And, when they get a break from school, they go back to their villages to work the fields to earn money for the next term.  Life is tougher here, but the Sierra Leoneans meet the challenge every day with humor and grace that I am afraid that I could not muster in similar circumstances.  They have been unfailingly kind and welcoming to us. My time here has been inspirational in this respect and from now on any image of or reference to West Africa will remind us of these good people.

Sports Day

Sports Day is a big event for most schools in Sierra Leone.  Primary, junior and senior secondary schools, and colleges usually dedicate one or several days (and hence cancel classes) in the spring to athletic events of all kinds.  Ann and I have witnessed a few of these activities as they have occurred at sports fields all over town.  One of the more popular fields is at the Government Secondary School just across the street from Eastern Polytechnic.

Sierra Leoneans love parades.  Here are some primary students in their school uniforms marching down Combema Street to the Government Secondary School track for Sports Day.  Usually the students of a school divide into four "houses" of different colors and each house marches behind its banner on event day.  Parents and relatives are bringing up the rear.  Sometimes a small band accompanies the procession.   This parade was small compared to some that we have seen.  When one multi-school Sports Day let out in the evening, the crowd filled Combema Street entirely for 30 minutes, bringing traffic to a standstill.

The younger students participate in events like ball toss, and three-legged, sack, and wheel-barrow races.   The junior and senior secondary Sports Days include most of the regular track & field events plus some more entertaining ones like "Musical Chairs." "Fill the Basket" is a race where runners sprint to pick up eggs spaced 10 yards apart and return them individually to a basket (this one is reminiscent of a popular tennis drill).  "Needle and Thread" is a two-person shuttle relay in which one person carries a thread to a partner 50-yards away who holds a needle to be threaded.  Once the needle is threaded the partner races back to the starting point.  A popular girls' race is one in which a bottle must be kept balanced on the participant's head as she runs 50 yards. 

Last Saturday Ann and I spent the afternoon watching Eastern Polytechnic's Sports Day.  The athletes from our college competed in traditional track and field events and one not so traditional one.  We found seating  in the "big wigs" tent with the principal, registrar and other lecturers.  The shade was much appreciated for the four hours that we managed to stay.  We watched 20 out of the 32 scheduled events.

This runner seemed to dominate all of the women's middle distance running events.  She had a runner's build, unlike a lot of her competition. The track is made of dirt and gravel.  The oval had a slight uphill tilt at the start of the race which the athletes were compensated for on the downhill back stretch, Most of the runners wore running shoes, but some went barefoot (ouch) and others ran in stocking feet. Unfortunately, this particular day was the first day of Ramadan, so the Muslims fast from sun up to sun down.  This includes not drinking water.  Some Muslim athletes decided to delay their start of Ramadan, others chose not to participate.

Here is a photo taken during a strategically run 1500 meter race. The men were cautious to not over-extend themselves until the bell lap. This probably was a good strategy because it was a hot day.  A first aid team waited at the finish line to help cool off over-heated runners by vigorously waving a towel in front of their faces. Many times a stretcher was brought out.  Maybe this was mostly for show, since only one athlete was taken off the field lying down.

The four "houses" of Eastern Polytechnic were competing for trophies and individual prizes.  The most coveted trophy went to the overall winner, Green House.  I coincidentally was wearing a green shirt so it looked like I was supporting the winning team. Individuals could purchase a house T-shirt or go for the more expensive polo shirt (30,000 Leones - $4.00). The individual prizes were wrapped so we could not see what they were, but were probably books - a very welcome award in SL.  These prizes were awarded throughout the competition by the principal, his wife, the vice-principal, and the registrar who all sat at the table of distinction.  They were served a meal and drinks for their six-hour service.  Ann and I were offered some cookies and water.  We also had our names read over the PA system as distinguished attendees.

The climax of the competition was the "Tug of Peace."  I seem to recall that this was an Olympic event back in the day, only it was called something else not so politically correct in Sierra Leone now.  I think it a nice gesture for a country that has been wracked by a ten-year civil war. Eight members to a team struggled to pull the other team over the line.  The longest battle took about four minutes to determine the winner.

Ann and I left before the entire competition was over.  There seemed to be an endless number of invitational races that were unscheduled and lots of down time between events.  Maybe it is a rule that Sports Day can't end until the sun sets. All in all, Sports Day was a pleasant Saturday afternoon diversion for us.  It was nice to see collegiate athletics put into proper perspective.  One day out of the entire school year seems to be about right for this academically and financially struggling institution.

Things They Carry

One of the many differences between Sierra Leone and the U.S. is the way things are transported. From a cucumber to a cow, Sierra Leoneans have interesting ways to move things from here to there.

Why use your hand to carry a small package when your head works just as well?
 

These folks are on their way to the market to sell their goods. They might walk for miles this way.

Young children are often enlisted to carry heavy items for their parents.  This wood is destined for cooking fires.  Their faces often show the strain of the load they are carrying, but they never give up on the task.

Heads are often mobile shops.  This woman has the equivalent of the health and beauty aids section of a store on her head.

Here's the towel and sheet store walking through town hoping to make a sale.

Need a bag or a backpack?  This man also had several purses around his neck and hanging in front of him.

Omolankes are hired to transport loads too heavy for a head.  This man had a long hill to climb ahead of him on his way to deliver mayonnaise and soft drinks to our college.

This little sister (about 8 years old) is in charge of her brother.  All babies are carried this way, and it is very common for young girls to be given the responsibility of tending to their younger siblings.

There are baby strollers in Sierra Leone, but they are never used for carrying babies.  The cooler being pushed around the streets probably contains cold water bags, bottles of soda or juice or frozen yogurt for sale.

Okadas are the main form of motorized transport.  They carry everything from passengers to mattresses to pigs to furniture.

Probably this passenger had been to a village and purchased the wood for cooking fires and is bringing it back to Kenema.

The driver had just pulled up and is letting off his passengers.  Just think what a law enforcement official in the U.S. would do if he/she saw four people riding on one motorcycle.

There is almost no such thing as a car that isn't overloaded.  This taxi is heading out of town and in addition to the goods packed in the trunk, there are six passengers inside with the driver.

Natural History of Kenema

Ann and I have seen many plants and animals that are not in the natural environment of Wisconsin. Here are a few of the flora and fauna that we see almost every day when walking about Eastern Polytechnic and Kenema.

Agama Lizard (Agama agama).  Perhaps the most entertaining animals for us are the agama lizards that live near our house. There are 37 different species of agama in Africa, but we see only one. These 6 - 12 inch reptiles have striking blue bodies, yellow heads and tails of blue and gold. Agama means "not married."  The male will defend his territory in which there may be many females for breeding.  It is a good thing that he is not married because he is definitely not faithful.  He courts in the same manner in which he warns possible usurpers to his kingdom, by bobbing his head and body up and down. We think he looks like he is doing push-ups, so we call them all Arnold after the famous body-builder turned governor.

Arnold's love interest.

The female agamas are smaller and like a lot of females of a species, drabber.  [The photo here is from Wandering Danny in Kenya's Lake Nakuru National Park.] They are mottled brown.  It is fun to watch them gobble up a column of ants marching toward some food source. Our agamas are not shy at all and often will zoom under our chairs as we sit behind our house.

Internet photo of mangoes hanging.

Mango Tree.  Mango season in Sierra Leone begins in April.  By mid-May the country is inundated with this ubiquitous fruit.  At the market we can buy a dozen good-sized ones for less than $1. Wikipedia says that the word "mango" derives from the Malayalam word manna, and this fruit is truly food from heaven.   No one goes hungry during mango season.  Kids will climb trees or use long poles to knock the fruit off the tree. Others will try to catch the mango fruit before it hits the ground.  The mangoes hang from stems about a foot long making the fruit look like Christmas tree ornaments.   

A pair of chickens are camping out in the roots.

Sierra Leoneans eat green mangoes as well as the ripe ones.  The mango, like a lot of the fruit here (banana, pineapple, papaya), is not indigenous to Africa.  They have been planted. Apparently someone a long time ago was very industrious in cultivating mangoes in Kenema because the trees can be found everywhere.  I was surprised to read that mango trees 300 years old still have the capability of bearing fruit.  I love mangoes, but the big flat clinging fibrous seed in the middle makes it difficult to pare them efficiently.  We don't eat the skin either which can cause dermatitis. Ann snapped this photo of a mango tree because of the intricate anchor root structure that is clinging to what is basically rock.

Can you see the drumstick pods?

Moringa Tree (Moringa oleifera) We have a tree in our backyard that has lovely delicate foliage with sweet smelling flowers.  We were surprised in the fall when a colleague of ours at Eastern Polytechnic asked if he could pick some of the leaves from this tree.  It turns out that the leaves of the moringa tree are very nutritious, loaded with essential vitamins, calcium, iron, and magnesium. The seeds that are found in the 18 inch long pods the tree produces are believed to be medicinal. The pods give the tree the nickname "Drumstick Tree." A student of mine brought some of the seeds to a tutoring session recently and offered a few to me.  Initially, the taste seemed to me like a hazelnut, but the finish is definitely bitter, like a lot of medicines.  The medicinal effects of moringa seeds have not been studied well, but I imagine they would be useful just for the placebo effect.  One thing unusual about the moringa tree is that it can flower twice in a year or sometimes all year long given the right conditions..

Termite Mound.  Here is a termite mound on the campus.  The primary school where Ann volunteers her time is in the background.  The mound contains vertical shafts that serve as ventilation conduits for the subterranean nest. On the road to Bo we have also seen termite mounds that looks like toadstools.  They are only about a foot or two high.  This one is about five feet tall.

Another photo taken from the internet.

Egrets of a smaller variety come to feed on the campus soccer field almost every morning.  I have counted up to 40 at a time.  They are rather shy creatures, so I did not get a good picture of them with Ann's i-phone.  Sometimes around happy hour they will venture toward our house in search of bugs in the grass.  They are stealthy hunters with sharp eyes.  At dusk they all take off for their common gathering place in the rice fields north of town. 








Pied crow compliments of the internet again.


Pied Crows (Corvus albus).  All of the crows that I have seen in Africa are of the pied variety.  These black and white birds are the most wide-spread members of the crow family in Africa. At Eastern Polytechnic they are very social and gather in the evening in a tall dead tree.  I have counted up to 15 at once.  Wikipedia says that they prefer living next to people.

Banana tree, trash pile, mango tree.

Banana Tree.  Of course there are lots of banana trees around.  Here is a snap of one that we pass on our walk to the Peace Corps office.  It never ceases to amaze me all of the energy that the tree puts into making its enormous leaves.  The banana leaf starts out as a tightly coiled vertical shaft then gradually unravels.  The bananas here are by and large smaller than the ones we buy in River Falls grocery stores, but they taste just as sweet.  Ann prefers the short stubby red variety when she can find them.  The going rate is about 15 cents for 5 bananas.

Walking the rock requires careful steps.

Volcanic Rocks ?  There are only a few paved streets in Kenema.  Some are sandy, but many are like this one, solid hard rock.  I don't know what kind of rock it is, but it is reddish in color and resists erosion.  It is pitted and looks like lava put down by an ancient volcano.  Maybe one of my readers can identify it for me.

Justice in the Streets

Ann and I were not looking forward to our trip back to Kenema from Bureh Beach.    Last time we visited the beach, we took a cab to Freetown, stayed two nights, and bought government bus tickets home from there (50,000 Leones total).  This time the government bus was not an option as it only leaves from Freetown.   Brittany's  family had solved the problem of getting from Bureh to her site by hiring a minivan for $100 (~ 750,000 L).  Anywhere else in the world this would be a fantastically reasonable charge for a 200-mile trip for four people with luggage, but Brittany admitted that they had paid too much.

Charles, the helpful proprietor and chef at Maroon View, had found us a driver who would take us to the main highway for 50,000 L and all the way to Kenema for 800,000 L.  We told him thanks, but no thanks, knowing that 6,000 L was the regular price for a Sierra Leonean to get from Bureh to the highway. And therein lies the problem.  White people in Salone are almost invariably asked to pay more for transportation costs than a native. Transportation costs are somewhat fixed, but there is always room for negotiation in this country. It was up to us to bargain for a more reasonable fare.  At least we had an idea of an upper bound for the entire trip.

After  breakfast, we bade farewell to the Atlantic Ocean and hiked the quarter-mile up to the main road where we could catch a passing taxi.  After only 15 minutes of waiting, along came a taxi with six other occupants, two in the front (besides the driver) and four in the back.  Fortunately for us, we could replace two in the back as Bureh was their destination.  It’s a tight fit for four adults to sit in a compact sedan (think Toyota Corolla) but that is why it only costs 6,000 L. per person.  Ann and I knew we could not do this for the four hour trip all the way back to Kenema, but we could put up with a little inconvenience for the 20 minutes it would take to get us to Waterloo.

As we drove to Waterloo, I mentally broke down the remainder of our trip into four parts, each part taking roughly an hour. I thought 10,000 L per leg was reasonable. In Kenema I had been offered a ride all the way to Freetown for 40,000 L in a crowded minivan.  In my mind 200,000 L should be able to buy us an entire taxi (five seats) from Waterloo to Kenema.  When we got to the car park at Waterloo again we were offered ridiculous prices of 500,000 – 800,000 L to hire a taxi to Kenema.   A helpful man came up and talked to Alfred, our driver, and us about  a reasonable taxi fare.  The man suggested that 200,000 L was a fair price.  Since we could not strike a deal at this one car park, we asked Alfred to drive us to another car park two miles away on the highway to Kenema.  Alfred agreed to drive us there.

By the time we got to the second car park we thought that Alfred had decided he could drive us all the way to Kenema and also that he agreed to the payment of 200,000 L  for Ann and me to have the whole back seat.  He had the ability to pick up extra fares for the front seat.  Alfred wanted to buy a new spare tire for the long trip and needed 120,000 L for gas ahead of time.  We had never paid for gas in all of our other taxi rides, so we naturally thought that this was a prepayment for part of our 200,000 L fare, so we handed it over.  Once the spare was purchased and inflated, Alfred found  a young woman who was traveling to Bo to take the front seat .  She paid 30,000 L for her seat.

The trip was long, but fine riding with the ability to stretch out our legs a bit.  One fly in the ointment happened just before we got to Bo when we encountered a police barrier.  There are police barriers outside every major city.  Usually we breeze through these barriers (really just a cord across the road) without having to stop.  This time we had to stop.  An immigration officer looked over our immigration cards and other documents, but the main concern of the police was checking to see if Alfred had a current taxi license and insurance.  He did not.  A 15-minute discussion between Alfred and the officials ended with Alfred going back behind a building with one official.  As it turned out, Alfred  was free to leave after paying a 50,000 L fine (bribe?).  As we traveled from Bo to Kenema, I conjectured that Alfred was thinking about how he could recoup that money.  Sure enough, when we arrived at the Eastern Polytechnic gate, he wanted us to pay a total of 320,000 L instead of the 200,000 L that had previously (we thought) been agreed on plus 20,000 L (for the ride between Bureh and Waterloo).

A big argument between Alfred and me ensued with yelling on both sides.  I accused him of trying to get more money out of us.  This happened to us before in our trip to Tokeh, where the taxi driver started complaining about the previously agreed upon price of the ride about halfway to our destination.  I pointed out to Alfred that he only charged the girl 30,000 L for her seat and accused him of trying to get us to pay his fine money.  He said that we had agreed to 200,000 L for him and 120,000 L for the gas. Ann tried to mollify him by adding another 20,000 L to our offer.  That put it at 240,000 L but he dramatically refused saying he'd rather have NO money than too little.

The crowd would double in size as I awaited the street court decision.

As often happens in Sierra Leone an argument draws a crowd and soon we were surrounded by about 20 interested bystanders all wanting know what the yelling was about.  It was a typical street justice scene that I have witnessed before in this country.  (Usually these impromptu courts are a result of some minor motorcycle accident.)  A couple of Eastern Polytechnic lecturers acted as judges, hearing out the stories of Alfred and myself.  Alfred pleaded his case, but to no avail.  It was hard for him to convince the crowd (jury) that he had been short-changed when he had collected a total of 270,000 L for the trip.  After about 30 minutes of argument, Ann and I disappeared. When I came back to check on the situation 15 minutes later, a colleague told me that Alfred had accepted the money.

It is hard for me to say whether this situation was precipitated by a true lack of communication or whether it was another example of us being treated as rich white people in this country.  From my previous experience in Africa, I expected a certain amount of prejudice because of the color of my skin.  Usually, this was to my advantage.  For example, hitch-hiking in Kenya 40 years ago was a snap because any vehicle that saw a white person at the side of the road would pick them up, wondering why this foreigner didn’t have his own vehicle and sure in their mind that the foreigner could not walk for miles like the natives.  Even here in Sierra Leone I have noted before  in this blog being called back into the air-conditioned comfort of the bank offices while the average Sierra Leonean sweats it out front in a line.  That’s one example of white privilege here.  The opposite side of the coin is manifested every time we are out walking about town.  Invariably, Ann and I will be asked for money by kids who call us auntie and uncle and street beggars who hang out around the grocery stores where we shop who call us friend.  It is the price people pay when they are seen as being rich.  I am looking forward to just being an average Joe in a couple of months.  I don’t think I am cut out to be a rich person, at least not a recognizable one.

Bureh Beach

Looking north from Maroon View

Bureh Beach at the southern tip of the Freetown peninsula is known as the most beautiful beach in Sierra Leone. It has been adopted by the Peace Corps volunteers because the accommodations are affordable, the ocean waves surfable, and the food is tasty.  Most of the PCVs rent a tent ($10/night) at one of three places: Maroon View (owned by a French woman and a Rasta man), Nathaniel’s (run by a Sierra Leonean who serves the largest potion dinners), and Australeone (owned by an absentee Australian and a Sierra Leonean named Prince).  Ann and I had heard good things about the Maroon View, so we rented a small ocean view cabin at ($30/night) ten yards from the high tide mark.  The very basic shared shower/toilet facilities were 30 feet behind.  We knew  it would be difficult to return to steamy Kenema once we experienced the cool gentle breezes of the Atlantic Ocean.

The trip getting the beach was similar to our Tokeh adventure in December.  Get up at 4:15 in the morning to get to the ticket window at the bus station by 5:15. The government bus left an hour later.  Again we were treated to sermons by preachers, taking advantage of their captive audiences, but this time it was equal opportunity, one Christian, one Muslim.  At our third stop a medicine peddler boarded for the rest of the ride to Freetown.  Surprisingly to me, he did a brisk business selling diarrhea pills, energy capsules, cold tablets and skin rash cream.  After five hours on the bus we were left at Tombo Junction for a short taxi ride to Bureh.  The advantage of our early departure was that we were on the beach before noon.

Bureh Beach

From a distance the beach at Bureh is the picture of paradise.  The bay has a gentle curve of about a mile in length, and like Tokeh Beach is protected from the east by hills.  As we looked north from our bungalow, we could see golden sands gently arching toward a point about a half a mile away.  At low tide there is a sizable sand bar between the ocean proper and a small river that flows into the bay from the north.  In the river the current tugs at your feet, but the water is safe for the non-swimmer as it stays about knee depth.  At high tide the waves are rougher, the sand bar disappears and the surfers come out.  We saw quite a few accomplished Sierra Leonean boarders.

Maroon Island

The beach extends to the south another half mile, but his part is largely ignored.  A few fishing boats were moored there.  Banana Island, the departure point of many a slave ship could be seen clearly in the distance.  Tiny Maroon Island is within swimming distance.  Big black basalt boulders dotted parts of the shore, evidence of volcanic activity long, long, ago.  The locals call these “man rocks” because of their durability and strength.  Ann and I pictured elephants, whales, and seals as the rocks changed appearances with the tide.

Spot with his eye on the prize.

The beach loses some of its luster up close.  Trash inevitably floats in, but not to the extent that we witnessed in Freetown.  Some of the resort owners make an attempt to clear the shore directly in front of their businesses, but there is no team effort to do the same for the collective beach.  It would be a chore, but manageable by a group of ten trash pickers working for an hour or two each morning, to clear the beach of debris.  We found  a few interesting shells, but they were scarce.  Almost every time we went for a walk we were accompanied by 4 or 5 dogs.  As everywhere in Salone, dogs are mostly ownerless and have free reign.  At Bureh they seem to deeply crave human interaction lying under our beach chairs and hanging around to be scratched on the head.  After a while we began to see them as a bit of a nuisance.  We also made friends with a striped cat, incongruously named Spot.  I suspect the friendship grew from our tendency to feed it bits of fish and cheese from our meals.

At Bureh there were seven PCVs still hanging around since Easter and Sean and Rob, fellow Response volunteers  to share experiences with.  Everyone is trying to find things to do with the month off between second and third terms (one volunteer is bicycling all over the country).  The conversation invariably veered toward three topics: maladies that the volunteers had suffered (typhoid, malaria, dental problems), transportation challenges (how to get from the more rural areas without taking a motorcycle taxi, which is forbidden by the Peace Corps), and the improprieties of many teachers in the Sierra Leone schools.  

Flogging (beating with a small cane) is a typical form of punishment here and it is used liberally.  However, the main concern of the volunteers is that many teachers will extort money from students by making them come to classes after school for which they have to pay extra or organizing events like a soccer match between teachers which the students have to attend (and pay) or else get flogged.  One justification for this behavior is that many of the teachers are not officially paid by the government.  They must get by on community contributions and additional fees that they can collect from the students.  The “volunteer” teachers are necessary as the school system is overloaded with children while Sierra Leone continues its program to ramp up “free” education for everyone through eighth grade.  Of course, this is why the Peace Corps is helping out in this area.  Indeed, up to 50 new volunteers will be arriving in July to join the 15 that came over for this academic year. On the positive side the volunteers told us about a handful of their students who are currently attending a leadership conference in the US sponsored by the embassy here.  The PCVs had a hand in nominating candidates from their schools for what must be a life-changing experience for these future leaders.  At that moment the students were flying from Washington DC where the conference began to Dallas.  They would continue on to Chicago.  Students from all over Africa were invited. 

Our bungalow.

Our daily routine: eat a leisurely breakfast, stroll the beach shell-hunting while it was still cool, read a little, do a crossword, snack on peanut butter and crackers, take a dip in the ocean then hide from the sun until 4 o’clock to come out for another swim.  On the weekend, especially on Sunday, Sierra Leoneans descend on the beach for fun in the rough waves. In the evening we ate delicious fresh fish  and watched the sun set.  The Maroon View turned on its generator when it got dark and ran it way past our bedtime.    The first night the PCVs taught the game Mafia to Rob and me.  It is a game that requires a fair amount of deceit and outright lying.  It turns out that I am not too good at it, but it was fun see the young volunteers enjoying each other’s company as the beer flowed freely.

Another benefit to our travels is meeting interesting people. A German couple, Volkmar and Gerta, were staying in the bungalow next to ours.  They, like us, were retired and had lived in Africa before.  Volkmar is an engineer with a specialty in bridge building.  They had spent five years in Burundi and some time in Burkina Faso.  This time around Volkmar was helping to build three bridges south of Bo.  The last one will be three football fields long and cross the Mano River into Liberia.  This is all part of a European Union project to build a highway linking all of the West African countries.  France is supplying the bridge materials and most of the skilled workers come from Senegal.  We also spent a pleasant evening in conversation with Philippe, a French national who works for the EU and has been in SL for two years, but who has spent his career in many interesting countries.  He was most interested in the U.S. retirement system and health care costs.

We also got to meet the father, mother and sister of PCV Brittany who had  flown in from Rhode Island for a week in Salone.  After two days in Freetown, they were spending the night at Bureh.  Then it was off to Brittany’s village in southeastern Sierra Leone. Don, the father, seemed genuinely excited by the adventure of traveling in Salone. He confided to us that Louise, the mother, had felt the umbilical cord stretch too far.  The stretching was enough for her to overcome her hesitancy to “tough” it out traveling to West Africa to see that her "baby" was fine.  Brittany was making it as smooth as possible for them.  Their bungalow was equipped with indoor plumbing.  They, like we, thought Bureh a hidden treasure.

Ann and I decided to stay one additional night at Bureh.  We had the beach to ourselves as everyone had vacated Monday morning.  It was a welcome end to a restful and rejuvenating stay.  Our only problem was hop-scotching our way back to Kenama via public transportation.  We did not look forward to the trip which we knew would be longer than getting to Bureh.  As it turned out it was fairly easy getting home until the very end.  That turmoil will be discussed in next week’s blog.

One Village Partners

As Ann and I walk about Kenema, we see numerous land-rovers with NGO (non-governmental organization) insignia on their doors.  What do these organizations do exactly?  How are they helping?  Are they making a bigger impact than Peace Corps?  After recently reading The Africans, by David Lamb, an account of the first generation of sub-Saharan African independent states (1960 – 1980), I know that it is easy to make mistakes in foreign aid to this part of the world.  Donate some rice to a starving country, the government sells it cheap, knocking the fair market price down so much that the indigenous rice farmer can’t make a profit.  Build a road, hospital, school without community buy-in and watch them crumble as soon as the NGO support leaves.  There are countless stories of millions of dollars of foreign aid siphoned off into European bank accounts by unscrupulous African leaders and villagers looking for the quick fix of Western money.  As we prepare to leave Sierra Leone in a few months, Ann and I are searching for legitimate endeavors that truly are helping Sierra Leone get back on its feet and stay there.

One day early in March an agricultural student at EP saw me reading outside our back door and came up to greet me.  His name was Karim and he wanted to be my “friend.”  This is a common request we hear on the street.  It usually means that telephone numbers are exchanged and financial support could be possible.  While chatting with him, Karim told me of an NGO, One Village Partners, that had helped his village recover from the destruction of the war.  It also helped him go to school.  When he told me that the headquarters of OVP was in Minneapolis, I was interested in learning more about it.

OVP planning session.

One Village Partners was started by Jeff Hall, a Peace Corps volunteer in eastern Sierra Leone from 1987-89.  In 2004, after the war was over, Jeff returned to visit the villages he served (Jokibu, Foindu, Pujehun) in the Kailahun District of eastern Sierra Leone. Jeff wanted to help the villages rebuild, so he turned to his church, the Plymouth Congregational Church in suburban Minneapolis, for assistance, and the Sierra Leone Plymouth Partnership was established in 2006.  In 2010 the partnership became the independent non-profit organization One Village Partners (OVP).  

Hand-washing station and latrine models.

We happened upon the OVP Land Rover one day and introduced ourselves to Chad, the program director and his wife, Jen, who is the country director.  We met Chad a week later to chat more about his NGO.  Chad grew up in Africa.  His parents raised three sons in the country Chad where they worked as missionaries.  Sent off to boarding school in Kenya for his secondary school education, Chad was convinced that he was never coming back to Africa once he went to college back in his parents’ home country of Canada.  After graduating with a degree in English literature, he found himself teaching English as a Second Language in South Korea.  There, he met fellow ESL teacher Jen, and together they embarked on a young career of world-wide travel and work.  After another stint of ESL in Kenya, they realized that work in community development was what inspired them the most.  So, for over five years now they have been managing community development projects in sub-Saharan Africa, first in Ghana and since 2013 in Sierra Leone working for OVP, an organization dedicated to thoughtful, sustainable community development with maximal community involvement and minimal donor dependence.

  

Villagers voting on action list.

Chad explained the guiding metaphor that he uses to help village members understand OVP’s assistance.  OVP provides the ‘stone’ with which the community can sharpen its tools for work.  Just as a sharp machete can clear a field for planting faster than a dull one, OVP can help improve the overall efficiency of work in the community.  Once a village of appropriate size and location is identified, OVP will train about a dozen volunteers from the community, young and old, men and women, skilled and unskilled, to compile a vision action list which the community prioritizes by voting. The OVP website gives a sample of action list items: clean water sources, basic sanitation, improved hygiene and health practices, access to primary and secondary education or a library, improved agricultural practices, starting a new business, improving food processing, construction of needed community buildings. OVP provides workshops, training, guidance, and some materials, but the villagers play the central role in prioritizing, planning, providing materials and labor for each project and monitoring afterwards.  In short it seeks to serve only as a catalyst, not a driving force, for community development. 

NOW women with workbooks.

In addition to community action, OVP has introduced a new program called Nurturing Opportunities for Women (NOW).  Not just a micro-loan clearinghouse of which there are already plenty in existence, this program focuses on helping women make decisions on how to run their businesses, from numeracy education to figuring expenses on loans, to day-to-day operations.  Chad said that one unforeseen consequence of this program is that women are talking to their husbands in a different way.  He reported that a village chief told him that he found it necessary to resolve fewer marital disputes once NOW had come to his village.

OVP’s impact has expanded from 3 to 13 villages and hopes to increase its number to 50 by 2020.  It is a tremendous commitment and Chad knows it will involve major grant approval, something that is more feasible now that OVP has established a solid record of over its ten years of existence.  Chad and Jen plan to stay with OVP at least until 2019 as they both played instrumental roles in developing the long-range planning document.  Jen recently wrote a blog entitled “Traditional vs Community-Led Development.”  Here is a paragraph that I think nicely sums up the unique approach that One Village Partners has taken toward community development.

“This is how OVP works. This is why we participate in Community-Led Development (CLD); 'the process of working together to achieve locally owned visions and goals… focusing not on projects but on systemic change.' To have truly sustainable change, OVP and other organizations cannot just simply construct a water well, or hand out money, food or goods. We must build deep long-lasting skills. To do this successfully, we must listen to the community, we must let the communities lead and truly participate in every step of development so they can fullfil their own self-defined goals.  It is not easy and it takes a lot of time and work. But we believe it is essential to create sustainable change.”

You can find out more about One Village Partners at onevillagepartners.org.  Jen’s entire article can be found in the blog section. All photos in this blog were generously supplied by Chad.

Note to readers.  Ann and I will be taking a break at the beach again, Bureh this time.  Look for the next blog posting the first week of May.