Salone on the World Wide Web

Ann and I participated in a teleconference yesterday focusing on logistics of our travel to Sierra Leone and how we would begin our service.  Six of the seven other volunteers were on the line as well as Abubakar, the Sierra Leone PCR coordinator, Tondi, a programming/training specialist, and Lonny, the acting PC director.  We learned that we would be landing at Lungi (up the coast from Freetown) and spend Monday evening at the airport hotel.  The next day we will make the one hour drive to Port Loko to begin two weeks of training.  The PC swearing in ceremony will take place in Freetown at the end of the training session.  After that our group would be distributed among three teacher's colleges in Port Loko, Makeni, or Bo, the second largest city in SL.  The description of these schools is roughly the same.  All three have programs aimed toward training primary and junior secondary teachers.  I guess I'll leave my Advanced Engineering Mathematics text book at home.

Lonny told us that internet accessibility would be unpredictable, even at our schools.  He estimated that about 1% of the country is connected to the world wide web, so don't be alarmed if next Friday's entry is missing.  While state-side, Ann and I have been trying to gather from cyberspace as much information as we can about Sierra Leone and what it will be like to live there as Peace Corps volunteers.  Our starting point was the Peace Corps Welcome Book for Sierra Leone (http://files.peacecorps.gov/manuals/welcomebooks/SLWB636.pdf) which contains a wealth of information for the new PCV.  For instance, the Welcome Book cites the following statistics that contributed to a HDI (Human Development Index) for Sierra Leone ranking it 180 out of 187 countries in 2011:

• Life expectancy at birth – 47.8 years (UNDP HDI Index, 2011)
  
• Mean years of schooling for adults – 2.9 (UNDP HDI Index, 2011)
  
• Adult (over age 15) literacy rate = 35 percent (133 out of 139 rated countries), (CIA World Factbook, 2011)
  
• Per capita income = $900 (215 out of 227 rated countries), (CIA World Factbook, 2011)
  
• Population living below U.S. $1.25/day = 62.79% (UNDP, 2011)
  
• Population with access to safe water <50% (Human Development Report, 2007)
  
• Percent of women who marry before age 15 - 25%; before age 18 - 62% (Sierra Leone Ministry of Health and Sanitation, 2007)
  
• Children under 5 who are stunted (36 percent), wasted (10 percent), underweight (21 percent), (SL MOH Demographic and Health Survey, 2008)
  
• Mothers dying in childbirth– 1 in 6,  highest in the world (HDR, 2008) 

The Peace Corps country site (https://www.peacecorps.gov/sierra-leone/) provides a few personal reflections from SL volunteers.  Know that these stories have been officially approved.  Ann and I have also read a handful of unapproved blogs that offer varied views of a twenty-something volunteer's life in Salone.  If you get bored with my blog, you might enjoy those of the younger set.  The one that I found most entertaining was sent to me by one of our fellow SL volunteers, Bill, a librarian who is going back to SL for a second time.  Jeff, a 29 year old PC aspirant in 2013, "failed" his summer training session for various reasons, but had a great time doing it.  Jeff has a wry sense of humor and includes tons of pictures of his experience during two months of training in country.  Here is the address and one excerpt.

http://jeffdepree.com/pc/   

"Day 47 (August 5th) – Aaditya Andorra   June 17th, 2013 - August 10th, 2013

Monday was our first day of summer school; we were divided into groups of three (one English with either two math or two science), and we co-taught two 105-minute classes. We had two 50-person classes – one JSS1 (6th grade) and one JSS2 (7th). We started out with class rules, a math assessment and a name game where I assigned each student a country with the same first letter as his/her name. The pre-test revealed that many of the students were doing addition and other operations by drawing hash marks on their paper and counting them, regardless of the numbers involved; the first problem, 123 + 72 + 235, took many of them the full 45 minutes. The name game was problematic because half of the students' names started with A, and there just aren't enough countries in the world that start with an A. Vendors showed up with delicious corn bread and sour cream ice cream packets during class breaks. I'm pretty sure I chipped a tooth on a rock I found in my cornbread. The ice cream is widely rumored to transmit tuberculosis. Snacking is hazardous here."

http://salonesquared.blogspot.com/ 

is by a young couple, Lara and Kevin, who served as PCV's in Sierra Leone from 2012 - 2014.  This is a great informational blog by two people who found their PC experience rewarding.  An excerpt follows.

"21 July 2014  In our two years here, we have both achieved an “advanced” mastery of Sierra Leonean Krio.  We’re a bit afraid that that level of fluency has shoved some of our English out the door…so here’s your head’s up if you’ll be seeing us upon our arrival home. Our English is Krio-ified, for sure.  As a small celebration of our impending homecoming, we want to put together some superlatives, and here, to kick it off, are some of our favorite Krio words and phrases: Fak – A rubber band of any sort. It sounds like a very bad word, and it’s often used as a transitive verb (as in, “I’m going to fak your hair”).  Gbing gbing [or bing bing] – A phrase used to add emphasis or to specify what you’re talking about.  We feel silly saying it, but love it at the same time.  Han Klin [as in “hand clean”] – A handkerchief, of course.  Astafulay – Comes from Arabic, meaning “God forbid it”.  A great word to use when bargaining for things in the market.  Bobi Wata [literally, boob water] – Breast milk. What else would you call it?.  Balans [“balance”] – To ignore.  People here do not like to be “balanced”.

Jam/Jamsi – To “jam” is to fight. A person is your “jamsi” if you had a fight and never resolved it…which means you permanently “balance” each other.  Wetin sef – Whatchamacallit (or thingamajig).  Hala hala [holler holler] – A verbal argument. Always loud. Seldom has a winner.  So so – Alternately used to mean “et cetera” or “a whole lot”.  Teeeee [pronounced “tayyyyyyy”] – It means, “untillllll….” Usually it indicates a long time or an extensive amount (as in, “cook the sauce tayyyyyyy it has boiled for an hour”).  De de de – One of the weirdest correctly-conjugated verbs we know of, in any language.  If something “de de de,” that means it “is being there”.  Poto Poto [puddle puddle] – Mud"

I'll just mention two other Salone blogs also sent to us by Bill (http://wesinsalone.blogspot.com/ and         http://african-inkblots.tumblr.com/).  Not as many pictures in these, but if you have a genuine interest in what it is like for PCV teachers in SL these blogs are not afraid to tell it like they feel it. Both of these volunteers had their service short-circuited by the Ebola crisis of 2014.  Peace Corps reentered Sierra Leone in 2015.  There are nine of us in this year's group.  Peace Corps is already recruiting for 2016 - 17.