Cleanliness Next to Godliness

Today we get sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers at the embassy in Freetown, an event which we are honored to be doing again.  We will spend the night in the capital city, then it is off to our post – at a college in Kenema.  We are excited about our assignment and living situation in Kenema.  There will be five regular PCVs close by when the school year starts.  Ann has already invited them for Thanksgiving dinner.

Our first weekend featured two activities that the people of Salone regularly engage in.  On Saturday Zainab, our host mother, showed us how to wash our clothes in buckets.  Not too hard – one bucket for washing, one for the first rinse, and the last for the second rinse.  Then its hang them up to dry on a clothes line like my mom used to do when I was growing up.  (Zainab suggested that Ann’s underwear be hung indoors to dry, while my boxers were fine to show to all the world.) You can press your things with a charcoal-fired iron, but Ann and I will just let the wrinkles dissipate in the humidity.

Sunday, we attended a 2.5 hour evangelical church service with Zainab. The Holy Deliverance International Church of God is a small start-up which attracted about 50 people that day.  We were treated as guests of honor with front-row seats.  Mercifully, the new church could not afford a building, so the service was carried out in a tarp-covered stick-frame enclosure that let the morning breeze waft through.  Of course, those free-range chickens, got a chance to “clap for Jesus” also.  I marveled at the way the small children in attendance were able to sit through the whole service without fidgeting though the sight of us sitting about five feet away kept them gape-mouthed for about the first hour.  We were given the opportunity to pray, sing, and listen to the sermon, but the dirt ground did not allow us to get down on our knees.  The homily was to be given in Krio, but one  member took it upon himself to translate into English for our benefit. In the end the preacher gave most of the message in English, so the translator had to search his mind quickly for synonyms to have it look like he was doing his job.  

We had been warned that we would be expected to introduce ourselves, so I worked on a little speech in Krio that I could do after only one day of study.  Our opportunity came at the end of the service just after evil spirits had been cast out of some of the members by the laying on of hands of the preacher.  The text follows, using the spelling conventions of our language manual.  See if you can translate.  Hint: think talking like a Jamaican-mon.

Kushe-o.  A nem Don.  A komot Amerika. Mi na Pisko ticha.  Na mi uman.  I nem Ann.  Mi mama Sierra Leone, Zainab.  Wi tap os Zainab.  Wi gladi fo sabi una.

Amen.