Pictures!

My Christmas gift to you all is another round of Salone photos!  Enjoy!

Nana carrying Nana on her back.  Normal way for children to be toted around.

Sid attacking a giant spider

Nana--quite possibly my favorite Sierra Leonean child

Cat and Michael doing dishes after Thanksgiving dinner

Neighbor girls going through my trash.  Thanks...

One of my JSS2 exams--definitely not English

My cats think it's fun to play on the top of my mosquito net.  I think it's cute too, as long as they don't break my net.  I need that.

Bridge to cross to get to the beach outing on Christmas

Local village: Manowo.  I went there for a hospital opening.  Cool little village.

Manowo.  Pretty typical image of village houses.

The river (Teya River) where we had the Christmas outing

Neighbor girls at the outing

Beach at the outing!

Let it Dew! Let it Dew! Let it Dew!

I know what you're thinking: "Erica, isn't the song 'let it snow'?"  Yes, the traditional song uses the word snow, but unfortunately that doesn't really translate here.  Literally, it does not translate.  Last week I was at IST (our In Service Training to regroup after the first 3 months at site) and part of our training are some language classes.  In Temne class we learned the Sierra Leonean national anthem in Temne which gave us the great idea of trying to learn some Christmas carols in Temne!  Our first one was "Let it Snow."  As our teacher (Sallu) was translating our teacher paused at the word snow with a somewhat quizzical look.  Not surprisingly, they have never seen snow in Sierra Leone, (I don't think Sierra Leone even got snow during the ice age, that's how hot it is here) hence the confusion with the word.  The closest he could translate snow was in to 'dew.'  So, we had a group of white kids singing "let it dew, let it dew, let it dew" at the top of our lungs.  I found it rather amusing.  (Side note on the snow/dew translation: one of my teachers came to school the other day and asked me if I saw the snow that morning.  Excuse me, what?  SNOW?  Something definitely got lost in translation, and it turns out we just had a little dew that morning.  It was rather cruel though, for a split second I thought I was actually going to see snow.)  Our second carol was Jingle Bells and we hit a hurdle at the first word.  Sallu wasn't familiar with the word 'dashing' so we told him it means to go quickly.  The Temne translation is "kone lemp lemp" which literally means 'to go fast.'

Also, wanted to say Merry Christmas to everyone!  It doesn't really feel like Christmas to me since it's 95 degrees outside, which is probably good because otherwise I think I'd be painfully homesick.  As is, I miss everyone, but I managed to not spend the day in the fetal position bawling my eyes out. :-)  Ok, so cultural stuff about Christmas here: first, Christmas seems to be a pretty big holiday here, which I thought was pretty interesting because over half of my community is Muslim.  They have their own holidays that they celebrate, but usually the Christians don't join in.  Christmas, however, is an all inclusive event.  The Christmas Day event is the outing, where everyone goes to the beach on the river and hangs out.  Leading up to Christmas I had images of a nice picnic with everyone socializing.  Wrong.  Turns out it's just an excuse for everyone to get drunk and dance.  Kinda like the celebrating Cinco de Mayo in the U.S.  So not quite the chance to connect with my community that I was anticipating.  Oh well.  Other than that not a lot of Christmas traditions here.  I went to midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the Catholic mission.  At least 60% of the people fell asleep during the sermon.  Always a good sign.

In other Sierra Leone news, I've been away from my village for the past few weeks.  First was the trip to Bo for IST, which was desperately needed.  It was really really nice for me to see other PCVs and talk about the things that are making me constantly frustrated.  I feel much more ready to go back to my village after talking through some of these issues with other people.  And just spending some time with other Americans was I think a big help in recharging my batteries.  After IST I went to the Banana Islands for 2 days.  It was amazing.  Super secluded, but really beautiful and the guesthouse we stayed in was fairly nice (at least for us, who are all now used to Peace Corps standards of living).  I took pictures, but unfortunately they are on my high quality disposable camera.  I took my digital camera, but it ran out of battery.  Good thing I had a back up.  Hopefully next time I get in to Freetown or Makeni I'll have a chance to develop them.

My next goal is to upload some pictures for y'all to see, so I'm off to go check that off my list!  Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and looking forward to the new year!

Sending all my love.

Eating Cyanide

Last week I made plans with Ma Nakama (the Paramount Chiefs' wife and the lady who cooks for me) to come over during the weekend to learn how to cook.  I'm at school during the time she's normally cooking so weekends are the only time I can partake in the cooking extravaganza.  I have been repeatedly asked by the teachers at my school if I know how to cook yet so I figured it was time to do some Sierra Leonean cooking.  I had previously helped my host sisters (albeit minimally) cook during training but hadn't yet done much since arriving in Yele.  Time to don an apron and do some cooking!
Saturday morning, after a leisurely few hours of drinking tea and reading on my porch, I traipsed over to Nakama's to begin cooking.  My first task was to separate the cassava leaves from their stems--it could be compared to preparing lettuce or any other leafy green.  Once de-stemmed the leaves were put into a large wooden bowl thing (I don't know how to describe it, hence the use of the word 'thing') where two girls promptly began pounding them with 10 foot long wooden poles.  Cassava leaves contain cyanide so they literally beat the poison out of them.  Seems odd to me that you would even consider eating something with cyanide, but they've figured out how to do it.  Props to the Sierra Leoneans.  Some time in their past they must have been very desperate for food sources.  I did not take part in any of the cassava pounding but it looks like very labor intensive work.  Almost everything added to the sauce is pounded to a pulp, if possible, even if there is no cyanide to banish, such as onion and pepe.  A fellow PCV remarked the other day that cooking in Sierra Leone would take about two seconds if they had food processors.  Instead they do it all by hand so it takes a few hours.
After the cassava leaves have been sufficiently beat they are added to the already boiling pot of water and palm oil.  My next task was to help de-bone the fish.  I learned how to prepare both dried fish and raw fish (luckily I was not asked to gut the fish, I need to build up the nerves before setting on that unpleasant task-I am, however, quite proficient at breaking heads off dried fish).  While I was doing that two other girls were sifting through rice picking out pebbles, pounding the onion and pepe, grinding granat, and adding Maggie (MSG) and salt to the sauce.  Once I had finished the fish was added to the pot and all the other prep was done so the sauce was left to boil for a while.
Looking back I was a relatively small part of the cooking process with my measly two jobs, but it's a start.  I certainly understand the basic concept of cooking here but I don't yet have a good grasp on what proportions (water to palm oil to cassava leaves) makes for a good sauce.

My school has decided to hold end of term exams already, which feels very early to me since I only finished passing back mid-terms 3 weeks ago.  But we're in full swing finals mode, which will be over November 30.  At that point the teachers have a weekto grade their tests and hand over their scores to the C.A.R. committee.  The C.A.R. committee (which, coincidentally I am the chairman of even though I have no idea what that entails) is then responsible for transcribing the scores for each student for each subject into their report card.  With over 800 students, each taking about a dozen classes, should be a quick process (note the sarcasm).  My favorite part of the exams though is that proctoring the tests is called invigilating.  Makes me sound super cool and important when I say, "I've got some invigilating to do today." It sounds like I'm off to go fight criminals.  Proctoring exams is not quite as cool as catching criminal master-minds but at least the terminology lends to some imagination.

In other word news, my new favorite word in Temne is kabep.  It means spoon, but I like it because it's nice and jaunty.  If it was a person I'd picture it wearing a bright yellow rain hat and boots and hopping through rain puddles with exclamations of "kabep!" every time it lands in a new puddle.

Oh Teacher My Teacher

Teaching.  Oh where to begin.  A school day here is the biggest emotional roller coaster I've ever experienced.  There are certainly many problems with the education system here, which each present their own challenges, but on days when I'm struggling with those I'll have a class where a student or two will have an "ah-ha" moment and I feel like I actually taught them something.
Some of the issues I've encountered: the main one I think is time.  According to the Ministry of Education school should have started on September 19th.  During that week we had maybe 10 students show up.  The next week we had enough to fill some classrooms, but we didn't have a time-table so the school day was completely random.  That was probably fine for most of the Sierra Leoneans but I work much better with some structure.  It was at least 3 weeks after the official start of school that we had a decent amount of students and actually got our time-table.  Then, once school has actually started we have random days cancelled for cleaning (students come with their farming tools and clean the campus) or meetings.  That really throws me off kilter because then the classes I teach that day get behind.  For example, my 302 class I only see on Mondays but the last 2 Mondays we haven't had school so they are now behind my 301 class (both classes are JSS3, equivalent to 8th grade, they are split in to 2 streams: 301 and 302). I think it would go a long way towards teaching efficiently if we actually started school on time with a time-table prepared.
Another issue that creates challenges for me is students being promoted to the next grade when they should be repeating.  For example, I was helping a JSS2 student the other day when after about 30 seconds I realized she couldn't read.  I don't know how she got out of primary school, but now I'm faced with the task of teaching science to an illiterate 7th grader.  Not fun.  Also, it is possible for students to be promoted to the next grade if they pass in enough subjects but not necessarily all of them.  So it is possible for me to be teaching Biology to a student who has failed science for the last 3 years.  (Side note: here the students stay in the classroom and the teacher moves around so every class moves along together, there's no chance to repeat just one class if you fail it; it's all or nothing.)  They are certainly not at the level I want to teach and I can't go all the way back 3 years in science because the rest of the class actually passed and is ready to move on.  Sigh.  One great example is math--almost no students pass math classes, but instead of a system where they have to retake a class until they pass they just get thrown in to the next level because they did well enough in their other subjects.
Speaking of math, about a month ago we got our BECE results.  (The BECE is the exam they take after JSS, Junior Secondary School, in order to go to SSS, Senior Secondary School--it's like the SAT for high school.)  Out of 207 students who took the exam, 0 passed the math section.  Each student take the BECE in 8 subjects; 4 of the subjects are mandatory: English, Math, Integrated Science, and Social Studies.  The other 4 the student gets to choose their subject from Agricultural Science, Business, Electronics, Christian Religious Knowledge (C.R.K.), Religious Moral Education (R.M.E.), Creative Practical Arts (C.P.A.), Home Economics, Physical Health Education (P.H.E.) and others I forgot.  To go on to SSS a student has to pass in 5 subjects (a pass is any score from 1-6, and the only score for a fail is a 7).  Of the 207 test takers only 11 got enough passes for SSS.  Not exactly stellar results.
As far as actual teaching goes in the classroom a normal day for me consists of writing notes on the chalkboard, talking about them, then waiting while the students copy the notes.  I've been told by numerous people, both students and people in the community, that I still talk too fast.  I blame America for teaching me to talk at warp speed.  The materials I have at my disposal are quite numerous: chalk and a chalkboard.  The materials the students possess are: notebook and pens (although sometimes they don't have pens and have to share).  I keep thinking of activities or assignments that could be fun but then have to remind myself we don't have microscopes and most students don't have textbooks.  Fortunately my school has a library with some books; not enough books to hand out to each student, but enough that I was able to do an activity in class.  I had them read some pages that corresponded to my notes/lectures then asked them to answer the questions at the end of the chapter.  I don't think the students have much of a chance to read or answer questions that way so it was a good experience for them.  It was also a good learning experience for me--I realized that just teaching these kids how to take a test (read a question and pull out the appropriate information) could go a long way in improving their test scores.  So despite all the barriers there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
I also find it rather amusing the way the students feel compelled to take notes in a certain way.  Some things need to be in red ink, some in blue, some in pencil and God forbid you ever draw a picture on the board because that definitely has to be in pencil and only 5 students brought a pencil to class.  Frantic borrowing of pencils ensues, and there goes 20 minutes of class.  All tables and charts must be drawn with a ruler, or at least a straight edge.  Thinking back to the notes I took in middle school it makes me feel sloppy.
Mom has mentioned a couple times that some people have expressed an interest in sending school materials to me.  I love the idea and I'm definitely thinking about what would be most useful/effective.  When I come up with any good ideas I will be sure to spread the word.

My other cool cultural experience recently was going with my neighbor to harvest rice.  I realized a few weeks ago that with the amount of rice I eat I have an appalling lack of knowledge about the plant--namely how it's harvested.  So when Mary--my friend/house helper--mentioned she was going to her farm to harvest rice I jumped on the opportunity and invited myself along.  For some reason Sierra Leoneans think white women can't work or do physical activity, so it was very hard to convince Mary to actually let me help with the harvest instead of just sitting in the shade all day.  I didn't hike 3 miles into the bush to sit on my butt all day!  However, I eventually got to help and earned my rice education.  In short: the top of the rice stalk holds the grains (it's a lot like wheat) and to harvest it I simply cut off the stalk 4-5 inches below the grain.  I gathered as much as I could in one hand, until I had a nice little bouquet of rice stalks, then Mary would tie them into small bundles.  I'd suggest you go try it in the states, but we have machines that do all that work.

Now for your monthly list of Erica's cultural exchanges.  This one is titled "Things I thought I'd never get used to, but did":
-The crispy feeling of clothes not dried in a machine.  At first I hated my clothes being crispy (especially my socks) after taking them out of the sun but now I hardly notice it.
-Eating raw peanuts: sounds weird, and it was a little weird at first, but now I love it.
-Eating raw rice: no way around it, this just is plain ol' weird.  First time I saw someone take a handful of raw rice and pop it in their mouth I didn't understand the appeal.  Sometimes they soak the rice in some water and add sugar, sometimes they pound the rice into little pieces, and sometimes they just plain eat it.  At first I thought this was very strange, but, call me an African, now I quite enjoy it.
-Spiders: the big ones still cause me the jump in shock but the little ones now seem like childs play.  When I come back home I don't think any insect will be able to scare me (knock on wood).

Miss you all loads!!!

More Photogs!

Sid passed out on my shoes.  Awwww.

My parlor/kitchen room

Looking out my front door

My sleeping haven!

View out my front door

Neighbor girls: Effie and Gbassay (pronounced Beshey)

She Did What?!?

There are many things I do here that completely baffle Sierra Leoneans (and to be fair they do many a thing that baffle me, it's all part of the cultural exchange).  I've already mentioned that I spend copious amounts of time reading, for fun, which is a relatively odd activity here.  This is not a reading culture; partly, I would assume, due to the lack of materials--functioning libraries and bookstores are few and far between.  Whenever a Sierra Leonean refers to my reading they call it studying, which is indicative of the fact that when they read it is usually to study notes from class (although from the blank stares I get at school they're not reading notes from my class). 
To further confuse people, I do not get cold.  Somehow they can't understand how I'm never cold, even though the temperature never drops below 80 and is generally in the 90s.  Apparently December and January get cold from the Harmattan, winds off the Sahara, which causes people to walk around in winter hats and snow suits.  I will be interested to see if 'cold' means 50s-60s, or if it will actually mean cold as I know it.
Baffling activity #3: I pet/kiss/dote on my kittens.  Granted, in the states I probably coddle cats more than I should (feed them too much, don't kick them off my bed, etc.) but here it's a community event to watch me pick up a kitten and cuddle it.  People literally stop in the street and watch me if I do this on my front porch.  To give you and idea of how Sierra Leoneans, in general, view pets, a couple weeks ago one of my neighbor girls asked me if I was going to eat my cats.  The answer, for any of you in doubt, is emphatically 'no.'
Another thing I do that confuses Sierra Leoneans is eat pitifully small amounts of food.  When I say 'pitifully small' I mean by their standards.  I can't eat 5 cups of rice in one sitting.  I've gotten several lectures from my neighbor, Pa Kanu, about how Africans love rice.  For another example, I had Nana (Pa Kanu's wife) boil a bunch of plantains for me, with the intent to share most of it with them.  About an hour later I got presented with a plate with the equivalent of 3 boiled plantains.  These plantains were not small, and I had already eaten a healthy portion of rice, so I only at about 2/3 of a plantain before I foisted the leftovers back on to Nana.  Nana's puzzled looks led me to explain that I was full, promptly followed by a round of raucous laughter from Nana.  For those of you who know me I by no means am a shy eater, so being told I don't eat enough is a new experience for me.
Baffling activity #5: I'm white.  This is not so much an activity as a state of being, but it will never cease to amuse the children in my community.  Last week I was walking through town when I had a heard of children run up to me, furiously rub their arm with one finger, then wipe it on me.  Pretty sure they were trying to turn me black.  Also, whenever I get a sunburn I tell people I'm trying to turn black like them, which is highly entertaining.  Sunburns in themselves are baffling--my host sisters in Makeni were very upset the first time they saw my sunburn.  Oh, to be a pale white girl in Africa.

Teaching update: I finally have a time-table with a schedule of classes to teach!  Some semblance of structure is very exciting for me.  So far my classes have been ok.  I have assumed the first term will mostly be an adjustment period--the students getting used to me and me figuring out how to most effectively teach.  Students in Sierra Leone learn differently than how we're taught in America.  Mostly they learn through rote memorization--teachers put notes up on the board and they memorize it word for word.  However, in my experience, they rarely understand the concept or the words they are repeating.  Whereas in America we are hit over the head with analyzing and processing information.  Teaching, here, for me, will have to be a compromise between giving them information to memorize and coaxing out some analytical thought or brainpower.  Although, after years of being taught to learn this way I've got my work cut out for me.  Should be fun!  I will at some point (hopefully soon) do an entire blog update on teaching: what the classes are like, what I'm learning, what the environment is like, etc.

A shout-out to Annie and Keri: you guys are the best friends a girl in Africa could hope for!  Your packages are manna from the bowels of God himself.  (Bowels may not be where you want your manna to originate, but it's the first thing I thought of, so bowels it will stay.  Plus, God's bowel's can't be that bad, right?)

Ants in my Pants

This morning I literally got ants in my pants (which is not as bad as the time Allison got a cockroach in her pants, but that's a different story).  I was sitting on my veranda with a bag of roasted granat (peanuts) on my lap.  Unbeknkownst to me the bag had been infested with ants, who then promplty migrated from the bag of granat to my pants.  It might seem odd that I didn't notice the ant infestation until I felt them crawling on my legs, but these are really tiny red ants--so tiny in fact that they infiltrated every can/jar/container in my kitchen.  I now, for the most part, have the ant problem under control, but I first noticed them on about night 2 at site.  It took a little innovative thought, but I have now outsmarted the ants that are about the size of one of my neurons.  Here are a few unsuspecting places I have found these ants:

-My mayo jar.  I assumed that a water-tight container would also be ant-tight.  Apparently I was wrong.  My solution: I add an extra layer of plastic bag between the jar and the lid, and that seems to do the trick.

-My Laughing Cow.  Laughing Cow is a type of packaged cheese that comes in a wheel with 8 individually wrapped wedges of cheese.  Imagine my surprise when I opened one wheel to find the little buggers inside.  Even more shocking was finding them inside the individually packaged wedges.  Gone was my faith in the Western world's packaging ability.  I used to think something packed by a machine was impenetrable.  I still don't understand how they found an opening in the foil, but they did.  My solution: store the Laughing Cow in ziploc bags.  Somehow ziploc is able to keep them out where Laughing Cow packing procedures are not.

-My water filter.  Really?  My water filter!?!  Now this one doesn't baffle me as to how, but why.  I literally have open buckets of water on the floor 5 feet away.  It's like the greyhound that jumps over the fence when there is an open gate 5 feet away.  I will never understand the inner workings of an ant's mind.

-My toothbrush.  I have only found about a half dozen here.  Guess they like the residual toothpaste.  I haven't come up with a defense mechanism for this one yet, I just kill them when I see them.

Despite the annoyance, these ants don't seem as bad as the carniverous ones found in the south.  That's my 'glass half full' approach.  I have also gotten to the point where I just eat them if they're on my food.  I figure it's my form of revenge: you get into my food, I eat you.  Seems fair to me.

School has now technically started.  I have not yet taught a class, but it's on my to-do list.  Right behind 'Find out what classes I'm teaching.'  My future as a teacher looks bright.

I'm aware that people are also probably interested in things like the culture and the language here, but it is so much more fun to write about ants in pants.  If you have something in particular you are curious about, let me know, and I'll either write you an email or dedicate and entire blog entry to you.  Just imagine the honor.  I'm sure a personally dedicated 'Frenchie Takes Freetown' blog entry is what most of you see in the Mirror of Erised.  (Alright, I'll admit it, I'm a Harry Potter nerd.)

Sending my love to all back home!

Dump 'um out

I have no overarching theme for this blog post, so I have decided to make use of the timeless writers tool, utilized by all the great authors: the bullet-point. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the bullet-point. Now You may view this as a weakness in my writing skill--my inability to seamlessly thread these thoughts together--but really it's a sign of my capabilities (and many years as a student). Without further ado, the long awaited for points, by bullet:

-A quick note on comfort, and how perspectives change: Last Thursday I was traveling home from Makeni when about 2 minutes into the ride I thought to myself, 'this is pretty comfortable.' Two  more minutes into the ride and I start to ponder how my standards for comfort have changed, because I realize that I'm sitting in the front seat of this car with 3 other people!! (That's 4 people, total, for the mathematically impaired.) Mind you this is not some big spacious SUV. Imagine a small (...well I'm not very god with cars, so insert any make and model of a small 4 door sedan) car not some big (...again the dearth of car knowledge-thanks dad-so pick your favorite style) house on wheels, piled high with 9 full grown humans. Yet I find the amazing thing, in all this, is that I genuinely felt comfortable in that car. Welcome to Africa.

-Overall village life is treating me well. For those of you who wonder what I do with my days, the answer is: not a whole lot. This morning I woke up, read for a while, went for a jog (still a huge source of entertainment for the town), boiled some water to make oatmeal and tea (which I promptly expelled via copious amounts of sweat-hot drinks and tropical climates don't mix), and read some more. I would estimate that 90% of my days are spent either sleeping or reading. The other 10% is eating, thinking about foods I wish I were eating, and talking to my neighbors. I assume once school starts these figures will change, but for now my days are mostly sleeping and reading-my two favorite activities.

-Sleep: I can't believe I ever poked fun at Robin and Whitney for going to bed at 9pm. Here I'm in bed by 7:30 and lucky to still be awake by 8:30. I have adopted new ideals on an acceptable bed time.

-School: school is technically supposed to start in a week, but the government hasn't paid the teachers in months, so rumors are flying a out a teachers strike. I have decided to adopt an African frame of mind and not worry a out it. School will start when it starts. If that means I have to crunch all of biology down into 3 weeks, then so be it.

-A shout out to the Visalia French's: I've identified my first bird! Well, I've tried at least. I've seen some pretty cool birds so far, but I picked 3 of my favorites to look up in my bird book. The first is either a Bar-Breasted Firefinch, a Red-Billed Firefinch, or a Blue-Billed Firefinch. When I first saw it I thought, 'small red bird, the female is grayish, shouldn't be hard to identify.' Wrong! There are apparently a lot more small red birds in Sierra Leone than I had anticipated. There's a similar story for my next identification, which is either a Yellow-Mantled Widowbird or a Red-Shouldered Cuckoo-Shrike, but the variety with a yellow shoulder, not red (or if I'm really honest with myself there's a good chance my birding skills are so poor that it was neither of those birds). When I saw the bird I was pretty confident in what I saw, but by the time I got out my bird book I couldn't quite remember how long the tail actually was nor could I recall if there was a slight fleck of yellow on the bill. My first lesson in attentiveness to detail in bird watching. The third bird I decided to look up I'm pretty sure is a Pin-Tailed Whydah--at least it's black and white and has a really long tail.

-Spiders: I promised my mom no snake or spider stories, so all I'll say is: eeeek!

I'm happy here and enjoying African life, but I still miss ya'll back home. Hope everyone is happy and healthy!

Toiletpaper for Pillows

Last night I had the pleasure of using 4 rolls of toiletpaper as my pillow.  Only in Africa, right?!?  It was, as you might imagine, not that comfortable, but I've found ways to sleep in almost any conditions here (particularly the weather being hot and muggy).

Right now I am at the Peace Corps hostel in Freetown.  We are very lucky to have a hostel for volunteers to use because not every PC country gets one.  It is fully furnished with beds, running water, electricity, internet (wireless too!!), computers, couches, and at this particular juncture, tons of friends.  I have now been at site (Yele for those who need a small reminder) for 3 weeks and these are my first nights spent away from home.  My mother has expressed to me that there might be some interest in hearing about my current living conditions, now that I'm at my permanent house for my service, so I will do my best to provide ya'll with a picture of my house and my village.

My house in Yele is actually really really nice.  All the floors are tiled, which is very uncommon, especially once you get out towards the villages and the bush.  I have an indoor toilet and washing area, which are also tiled, and very clean.  I do not have running water, so the toilet is a pour flush, but I'm not complaining.  I think I've finally got the hang of the pour flush toilets.  I never realized how much water it takes to flush a toilet until I was physically pumping the water and lugging it back to my house.  In the beginning I thought if I poured a few cups of water into the toilet that would suffice.  But no, it takes a good bucket full of water to flush those puppies.  (Which probably lead to a fair few half-flushed toilets at the beginning of my homestay--sorry host family.)  Never fear though, I now know what I'm doing; some might go so far as to say I'm a toilet flushing master.

Ok, enough about the toilet.  My house is more of an apartment than a freestanding house.  I share a wall with another family, although the wall between us actually goes all the way up to the roof, so the sound proofing is not too bad.  My roof is tin, which provides for some great white noise when it rains at night and I'm trying to go to sleep.  My house consists of 3 rooms: the front parlor area where I keep all my food, my bathroom, and then my bedroom.  It's the perfect size for one person.  I've got about 6 windows that let in tons of light, so my house is very well lit, at least until the sun goes down.  I've only got 1 door to the outside world, and it leads out on to my covered veranda, also tiled, where I spend a majority of my day reading and being oogled by passerbys.  My daily routine consists of waking up in the morning, going for a run, cleaning my house, then sitting and reading.  Occasionally I'll walk around, but mostly people who want to see me come to me.  Every other day or so I walk over to my paramount chief's house, which is right across the road, and say hello.  I thought that when I got to site there was the potential of me getting bored, but I have not yet tired of reading, nor do I feel like I will any time soon.  I also recently got a couple packages with boku reading material, so good work mom, sister, and sister-in-law.

I'd love to write more but it's time to go feed the beast that's living in my stomach.  It's been growling at me since I typed out the first line, and I don't think it's going to stop until it gets fed.

Sending all my love!

Photogs! 3

KITTENS!!!!!!  No more need be said.  Oh, except their names are Mo and Sid.

Simply precious

Photogs! 2

This is a group of us that hiked up Wusum Hill in Makeni.  It was quite the climb, and not really what I was expecting, but lets be honest, what in Africa isn't unexpected??  In the picture are Dylan, Sherry, Rachel, and Chris (along with a few tag-alongs on our hike).

This is Bob the baby, the 10 month old that was at my home stay house.  He's adorable.  His nic-name in the house was 'scatta-rampo' because he liked to 'scatter' or try to escape constantly.

Michael Jalloh!  He's the general manager for the Peace Corps in Freetown, but he's originally from Yele (my new home for the next 2 years) and he's very excited about a Peace Corps being sent there.  He's been very very nice and welcoming and making sure that plenty of people in Yele are cooking for me.

The Spice Girls!  I don't think the internet here could handle trying to upload the video of our awe-inspiring performance at the talent show, so that will be a little treat waiting in store for ya'll when I get home (or access to better internet).  From the left we have: Baby (Elizabeth), Scary (Amy), Ginger (Christina), Posh (Chelsea), and Me (Sporty-duh).

Me and Amy at swearning in.

Mi padi!  From the left: Jared (also hailing from the great state of Oregon), Drew, Elizabeth, me, and Josh.

Photogs!

This is a ferry we took on our optional outing adventure (see previous entry about this trip: I think it's the second or third blog)

This is our 4th of July celebration day.  Here a few of my fellow trainees (then, now we are full fledged volunteers) dyeing their own gara cloth.  I made one and have had it made into a dress.

Acheke

For probably the last 5 out of 6 days I have eaten acheke.  It’s become an obsession.  If there was an award for 'most love of acheke,' I would win.  I am now known in my training group for my love of acheke, and get many nods of understanding whenever I say “All I want right now is acheke.”  What is acheke you ask?  Well, prepare yourself for a food explosion.  Acheke begins with gari.  Side note on gari: Gari is made from cassava root (a white tuber) that has been crushed, then dried, then fermented.  Other than that I don’t really know how to describe it.  So, you start with some gari at the bottom of a bowl.  Add a little gravy (I’m never really sure what’s in this gravy sauce.  Pretty sure it changes from person to person.  My tactic is to never ask if it tastes good.).  Next, pile on top some spaghetti noodles; not too many, just enough to make it good.  Then sprinkle on a little magi (MSG), for good flavor.  Nothing in Sierra Leone is cooked without magi.  (Another side note: I saw a kid the other day put some magi on his hand and start licking it straight out of his hand.  I almost vomited for him.)  On top of the gari, gravy, pasta, and magi, you add one sliced hard boiled egg, tomato, and cucumber.  You may wonder how you fit so many random things in a bowl and make it taste alright, but we haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.  On top of everything, the final touch is a healthy portion of mayonnaise and ketchup.  No, not one or the other, but both.  And not just a little dollop, but a hearty scoop from the jar.  I understand that this amalgamation of foods may seem odd, and utterly revolting, when looking merely at the recipe, but let me tell you, it may be the best thing in the world and I’m making every one of you try it when I get home.  You may be skeptical now, but I vow to convert you all.

Other notes on food in Sierra Leone:

-I have already commented on the magi, so no more need be said there (other than the fact that the two flavors are shrimp and fish, when everything already tastes like fish.  Seems unnecessary to me.)

-Everything here is boiled into oblivion.  I’m pretty sure all the sauces they make to put on rice are cooked over a coal pot for at least 4 hours.  I don’t know what it is, but maybe Africa makes it harder to cook things.

-There is not a dish in Sierra Leone that doesn’t include palm oil.  I think the copious amounts of palm oil have to do with the bowel issues for the first few weeks; my body just didn’t know what to do with so much yellow oil in my body.  It’s also pretty funny because you can tell whenever someone has eaten something with palm oil because there’s a yellowy film all around their mouth.  It’s the Salone equivalent to a milk moustache.

-Fish balls: sounds good?  Well, I would say it might, if I didn’t watch how they’re prepared.  Here’s how you make a fish ball: put a whole fish (skin, bones, eyes, and all) into a bowl, then pound it to a pulp.  Then form little balls.  Easy.  Except not so easy to eat because it takes 20 minutes to get all the fish bones out of each bite.  In all honesty, they’re pretty disgusting.

-A bit of a continuation on the last one, but there are fish bones in pretty much everything that is cooked in Salone.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find a fish bone in a mango.

We’ve got a week and a half left of training, then we swear in as real volunteers on August 12!!  We then spend the next few days being carted out to our sites in groups of two on the Peace Corps vehicles.  They graciously offered to transport us to site with all our belongings (which are rapidly growing as we buy pots, pans, beds, mattresses, and buckets for our sites).  Peace Corps doesn’t usually take people to site, but since PC is new back in Salone they decided to be nice and help us on this one.

Hope everything is going well back in the states.  I love hearing from you all, so keep up the comments and emails!  Sending my love.

Wait, what, I'm in Africa??

Hello gang!  I am at the internet right now for 2 hours!  Seems like a wealth of riches (or time, which is riches when internet access is sketchy).

Last week we went on our site visits, which is 4 days of each trainee visiting their village that will be home for the next 2 years.  My home away from home is Yele, a town of about 4,000 in the center of Sierra Leone.  Apparently when you look up Yele, Sierra Leone, on google maps it shows up as an island in the south of Sierra Leone.  As cool as it would be to live on the Turtle Islands for the next two years, that is not, alas, where my village is actually located.  If you look at a map of Sierra Leone it's about dead center.  I was actually reading a middle school kid's social studies notes the other day and there was a sentence that read: 'The town in the middle of Sierra Leone is Yele.'  That might explain why every time I tell someone I'm going to Yele they excitedly exclaim, "Oh, the center of Sierra Leone!'  And for most people that's the extent of their knowledge about Yele.

A few facts about Yele:
1. It is in the center of Sierra Leone (did I say that already?)
2. It is part of the Gbonkolenken Chiefdom (Gbonkolenken pronounced without the 'g' although technically it changes the way the 'b' sounds.  Still haven't mastered that in Temne.)
3. Gbonkolenken means 'behind or beyond the forest,' which if you look on the map Yele is right next to the Kangan Hills Forest Reserve.  There's also, apparently, a pretty cool wildlife sanctuary not far from Yele.
4.  Yele is the main village in the Gbonkolenken Chiefdom (comprised of 300 villages in the surrounding area) which means that the Paramount Chief lives in Yele.  My P.C. is awesome.  He studied as a mechanical engineer in Scotland and loves to joke.  He has some pretty high expectations for me and mentioned something when I first met him about staying for 5 years.  Yikes!  We'll see if I can easily let him down on that one.
5.  There is a major river that runs through Yele called the Teya River.  It runs all the way to Freetown.  They're working on building a hydro-electric dam on it right now, which they're hoping will be operational by September.  In Sierra Leone time that means probably September of next year, but there's still a chance that I'll get electricity at some point in my service!
6.  My supervisor's name is Abdulai Jalloh.  He's also great.  He loves to laugh and is a pretty popular man around town.  He kept introducing me to people by saying, "So, this is your stranger for the next 2 years." In Sierra Leone, a stranger is anyone who is not originally from that town or village.  It's just a little odd to be introduced as a stranger 50 times in a day.
7. Yele is known for having a palm oil plant, which supplies palm oil to most of Sierra Leone.
8.  It's pretty cool.

If I forgot anything I'll be sure to add it in my next post.  I got to see the house I will be staying in when I get to site and it's a very nice apartment right across the street (and by street I mean dirt path) from my chief.  They were originally going to put me in this awesome house right on the river, but it's on the edge of town so the Peace Corps told them it was too isolated.  So now I have about 100,000 neighbors within a 10 foot radius.  At least I'll be making lots of friends.  The inside of the apartment is really nice; I think my village has been putting a lot of effort in to making it nice for me.  It consists of a parlor, the first room when you enter, an indoor latrine with a tiled bathing area, and a bedroom in the back.  The bedroom has a little cut out section that's going to be made into a closet area.  I've always wanted to have a walk-in closet, who knew I'd have to move to Africa to get it!

During the site visit I got to visit my school a few times.  I will be teaching at the Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) secondary school.  It was built in the 50s by SDA missionaries.  It's a pretty nice school and all the teachers I met seemed very happy to have me there.  I'm a little overwhelmed at the idea of teaching a class of 70 students when I don't have any teaching experience.  They're doing their best to give us a lot of teaching experience during training (we start summer school this week), but it's still going to be totally different once we get to site.  I'm sure I'll learn fast, at least as soon as the spitballs start flying.

Once we got back from site visits, and after talking to my fellow trainess about their sites, I started getting really excited about traveling around Sierra Leone to visit people.  There are a couple people about an hour from me by car (and one about an hour by bike) that I'm sure I'll see frequently, but I'm also looking forward to trips down south and up north.  I'm also excited to go to some beaches, and climb some mountains.  So many things to do!  Good thing I've got 2 years.

Time to go mentally prepare myself, my host sisters are having me cook rice tonight.  They seem so shocked that I don't know how to do domestic activities here as much as try to explain to them that cooking over a coal stove is completely different from cooking over a gas stove.  They constantly ask me "Yu sabi kuk?" Which translates to "Do you know how to cook?" To which I respond, "I do in America."  But then my sisters fling a flood of Krio at me, most of which I don't understand, but the jist is I need to know how to cook in Salone.  Needless to say this will be an adventure.  My task is to cook 1 cup of rice.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you heard my right, just 1 cup of rice.  We'll see if I pass...

You can either laugh or cry

Hello everyone!  I know it’s been a while, I thought I’d be getting
more internet access during training, but it turns out that the hours
for the internet café are not ideal.  There are about a million things
I could/want to write about, unfortunately there is not time for that,
so for now I’ll stick with one story.

This is the saga of the optional outing:

Last Saturday we (the trainees) were offered an optional trip to go up
north to a national forest park where they are suppose to have lots of
cool animals (pigmy hippos, chimps, birds, alligators, etc.).  Of
course everyone took the PC up on this offer, who would want to miss
out on pigmy hippos?!?  We were told it was a 3-4 hour drive from
Makeni so we planned to leave at 7:30am, get there by noon, and leave
by 3-4pm.  That is no where near how the day turned out.

Surprisingly, we met the 7:30am leave time.  A good start to the day.
There were 48 trainees, along with a handful of Peace Corps drivers
and staff, and we were all piled in to 3 PC vehicles and 2 poda podas.
 Quick note on poda podas: they are slightly larger than a VW bus (but
not much) with metal benches welded to the inside of the car.  We
squished about 20 people into each of the 2 poda podas.  The four of
us sitting in the back row had to alternate who sat forward and back
because there wasn’t enough room across for us to all sit with our
shoulders straight.  Not only do we have 20 people crammed into a VW
bus, but the roads we were driving on were riddled with potholes every
10 yards; meaning every 10 seconds we’d have to slow down (or not
depending on how the driver felt) as everyone went flying over the
bumps.  I guess the good news is we were packed so tightly there was
nowhere for anyone to go.

After driving for 4 hours the 2 poda podas reached a town up north,
but there were no PC vehicles to be found.  We all got out, asking
what was going on, but got no response or indication as to what we
were doing in this town.  So, making the best of the situation, we
bought a bunch of binch balls (fried balls made from ground up beans)
to satisfy our craving for lunch.  I also got to participate in a game
of pick-up street soccer with the local kids: PC vs local children.
Not sure what the score was, but pretty sure they kicked our butts.
Eventually we found out that the deal was the poda podas would drive
only as far as this town, where the PC vehicles would then ferry
everyone back and forth to the park.  Somehow it got lost in the
planning that it took an additional hour to hour and a half to get to
the park from that village.

Quick timeline recap: leave 7:30am.  Drive for 4 hours.  Spend 2 hours
in random town.  We are now at 1:30pm.

After hanging out in the town for 2 hours the first PC vehicle finally
showed up to start transporting us to the park.  When I finally
reached our destination it was about 3pm and it had taken a good 7
hours to get there.  It gets dark here by 7:30pm, so with another 7
hours of traveling to get home, looked like we weren’t going to be
home before dark.  For an added bonus, it turned out that the place we
arrived at wasn’t actually the park.  The park was across the river.
Except, now here’s the kicker, we couldn’t get across the river since
it was the rainy season and the river was too high.  So, not only did
it take us almost double the travel time to get there, and we weren’t
going to make it home before dark, but we couldn’t actually get to
where we were supposed to be going.  No pigmy hippos, chimps, or birds
that day.  Thus begins the trek home.

I ended up leaving the park at about 4pm for the hour and half drive
back to where the poda podas originally dropped us, where I was
promptly ushered into a poda poda.  And so began the roller coaster
ride once again.  But wait!  Then it started to rain.  These roads,
are not paved or designed to drain, so the innocent potholes on the
way up became monstrous lakes on the way home.  I was sitting in a row
with Allison when the rain started, and she just looked at me and
said, “Today was supposed to be fun.”  We just busted up laughing.
For the next 2 hours we laughed at every small detail that would
normally not be funny in the slightest, but the odd combination of
being tired and bruised seemed to bring out the humor in everything.
At about 8pm (it was now pitch black) we stopped in a village to drop
off one of the current PCVs who was helping us with training.  We were
driving through his village, so it made sense to drop him off on the
way home.  Unfortunately things are never that simple in Africa.  His
bags were in the other poda poda, which did not stop with us.  After
frantically calling people for 20 minutes trying to figure out whether
the first poda poda was going to turn around, or if we would have to
do something else, we finally climbed back in to the poda poda for the
rest of the drive home.  We were now about an hour and a half from
Makeni.  About 30 minutes into our drive from the village, our poda
poda broke down.  No joke.  At this point you can either laugh or cry.
 So we decided to laugh.  A lot.  Eventually the car got started again
(probably by the magical powers of duct tape) and we were on our way.
Low and behold, another 30 minutes later, our poda poda broke down
AGAIN.  For the second time that night we were stuck in the middle of
the bush, no cell signal, in the pitch black.  All the ingredients for
the best night ever.  Have no fear, the little poda poda that could
got going again, and by 9:45pm had us rolling in to the Makeni
training site.

A small representation of what life is like in Africa.  You’ve just
got to go with the flow (and have no expectations that any plans will
work out).

I have been getting all your emails and I love them.  Keep ‘em coming!
 I’ll try to respond to some of them as I get the chance.  I have also
gotten some letters, so a huge thanks to those of you who have written
some.  I’m in the process of writing back, so you should get a reply
semi-soonish.

Much love to everyone!


P.S. Quick post-blog note, I've been getting all your emails and
letters and I love them!  Also, I think mom updated a few people, but
I got my site placement last week and I'm headed to Yele in a month
and a half.  If you look it up on google maps it shows up as an island
on the coast of Sierra Leone.  This is not where I'm going.  The Yele
I will be going to is in the dead center of Sierra Leone, so search
for a town there.  Not sure it'll show up on google maps, but give it
a shot!  I have started learning Temne, the local language, which is
an adventure in and of itself.

Hakuna Matata: The search for Timon in Salone

First things first, I must give credit where credit is due: the title of this blog (Frenchie Takes Freetown) is not from my own creative thoughts, but rather the suggestion of one insightful friend; the ever wise and beautiful Whitney Woods.  For those of you who don't know, Freetown is the capital city of Sierra Leone.  And no, I am not of French nationality, my last name is simply French, which contributed to a whole host of nicknames throughout my childhood.  Always included in the nickname repertoire, the ever flattering "Frenchie."  For another note on the title, the heading for this specific post evolved from my never ending love of all things Disney, including The Lion King.  I had a friend last night tell me that I am ahead of the curve on travel to Africa simply because I had seen Lion King numerous times.  I've basically already been there.  And I plan on being best friends with Timon and Pumba.  I'll keep you posted on how that goes.  Come to think of it, I don't think Sierra Leone has any meerkats or warthogs, but I won't let that stop me.

I leave on Monday (3 days) to head to Sierra Leone for 27 months with the Peace Corps.  My assignment is to teach middle and high school science.  Seeing as I've never taught in a classroom before, we'll see how this goes.  I'd like to think that my college education will serve me well, at least in terms of science knowledge.  However, the first thing I did when I found out I might be teaching chemistry was to check out Chemistry for Dummies from the library.  Doesn't instill a lot of confidence.  I'm banking on the fact that my students will be too stunned/blinded by my intensely white skin that they won't pay attention to what I say (at least until I figure out what I'm doing).

I have about a bajillion things I could and want to say about Sierra Leone, my expectations, what I've read and learned so far, but I feel that may be a bit too overwhelming for a first blog.  This is essentially my enthusiasm vomiting all over the internet.  I have decided, however, to restrain myself and not blog for 500 pages.  I will attempt in the next few days before my departure to slowly divulge the contents of my knowledge on Salone (the fond nickname for Sierra Leone).  I will have limited internet access while in Sierra Leone, so the frequency of my updates may be sporadic once I get there, but I will try my very best to tell you all the best stories (although I have promised my mom to say nothing of snakes).  If you have questions, are curious about anything, or have suggestions for what I should write about please let me know!  I would be grateful for any advice or ideas.  If you have grammatical corrections, feel free to speak your mind, but expect to be promptly ignored.

For now I shall leave you with this: "He who writes and runs away lives to write another day."
(Adaptation from a quote in The Great Race)