Thursday, September 27, 2012

Tid-bits

Hello again!  Look at me writing another update so soon. I feel all grown up.  As usual, while talking to my mother she said that some of the things we talked about would be good blog topics (these are also things she gets questions about periodically from those curious folks back home) so I got I inspired and have decided to satisfy some curiosities.

First, a cool Sierra Leonean tid-bit I recently learned: towards the end of the wet season if you stand facing north you can tell the weather that is yet to come by looking at the moon.  If the moon leans right it means the wet season is coming to an end.  If the moon leans left it means more rains to come.  If there will be more rains it means the farmers can proceed with the second planting of granat (peanuts).  So everyone go out today and predict the weather from the moon.  I'm assuming if you love in the good ol' PNW the moon will lean heavily to the left.

On to other topics.

Students with disabilities:  Last week in our weekly chat my mother asked me about students with disabilities in my classrooms.  While I'm sure that students with learning disabilities exist in my classrooms I think in general in this country (or in any underdeveloped country with lower levels of educational standards) most of the students with severe learning disabilities end up dropping out.  I would also assume that, with the exception of maybe Freetown, all learning disabilities go unrecognized.  I also probably would have a hard time discerning here between what might be attributed to a learning disability and what would be attributed to the teaching methods.  (Most teaching here is by rote memorization.  Any education theory will teach that all students learn in different ways, so rote memorization may not work for some students.  But whether or not a student is struggling due to teaching methods or due to a learning disability is beyond my abilities to identify.)  I also am by no means an expert on learning disabilities so that may also have a small part to play in my inability to see it in my classrooms.  As for physical disabilities I have two students at my school with club foot, requiring canes to walk.  But the most common form of anything physical would be poor eyesight.  Essentially no students have glasses so the ones who can't see know to seat themselves in the front of class.

More about the student body:  every term there are always a number of students who leave school because of illness or pregnancy.  This may make me sound like a terrible teacher,  but my classes are big enough that most of the time I don't notice if a student is gone.  It is very common for students to miss a week if they get malaria but students also have to leave more long term for more serious sicknesses.  There are always a few girls every term who leave school because of a pregnancy.  Sometimes they will come back the next year, but more often after they give birth they are done with school for good.

Nutrition:  I don't have any concrete data to back up any of my observations, so take this all with a grain of salt.  In general I think most people get enough calories but I see a big problem in protein deficiency, especially in children.  Fish is about the only protein they get, and sometimes chicken/guinea fowl, goat, or other beef (bush meat--I generally prefer not to know what it is, but could be monkey or cat or cutting grass or squirrel or any other kind of meat) but anything besides fish is usually too expensive for most families, at least to eat on a regular basis.  Little kids will often eat more actual rice than I could, but they almost never get any fish or beef so while they might not have a calorie deficiency they do lack for protein.  At least 70% of the kids I see have the big bellies associated with kwashiorkor.  (Kwashiorkor is a protein deficiency while mirasmas is a lack of both protein and calories.)  It is really important for kids to get protein because it is the 'body building' nutrient, but they don't get enough, which I think probably accounts (at least somewhat) for the smaller stature of people here.

That probably didn't answer anybodies questions but it at least made me feel better about updating my blog.  Glad I could feel productive!  Miss you all!

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Awesome Electricity--or AWESOMICITY!!!!

Hi everyone!  I know it's been a while since I actually wrote a blog--my apologies.  I find it increasingly more difficult to write about my experience here because it just feels like life now, and not a news worthy experience to write about.  That being said, my lovely mother has provided me with some topics people back home frequently ask about, so I shall do my best to satisfy some curiosities.

First, a brief overview of my summer.  The summer holiday started off with a bang at the wedding of two of our Peace Corps volunteers here in Sierra Leone.  A huge congratulations to Cody and Ivy!!  I posted some pictures last week of the big night.  Afterwards the wedding I spent a few quiet days back in Yele before heading to a summer school in Port Loco.  Me and Amy volunteered for a week at this summer school run by a British group called EducAid.  Following that I was in Bo for 2 weeks to help out at the training for our new PCVs in Salone.  It seemed to be a great training and I have high expectations for their next two years of service!  After the whirl-wind event of  the swear-in ceremony for Salone 3 I headed back to Yele to check up on the town and make sure it was still there.  (Side story: when I left 3 weeks earlier one of my cats had given birth to 2 kittens; one white, one orange.  Much to my surprise I came home to 3 grey kittens.  Turns out both the original kittens didn't survive, but a neighbor's cat had kittens and then the momma cat was stolen.  My genius neighbors gave the 3 grey kittens to my mom cat to nurse.  Everything worked out well and now we're one big happy family.)  After some relaxing village time it was back to Freetown for our mid-service conference (MSC).  Overall the conference was good and it was great to see everyone as a group again.  Now I'm back in Yele getting geared up for the new school year!  School was supposed to start today, but we're still in the process of interviewing (it's more like a registration than an interview) new students for the JSS 1 class.  Actual classes will hopefully start next Monday (the 17th) but I'm not holding my breath.

As for life in Yele the biggest thing here that has happened recently was the opening of the hydro dam which has provided the town with electricity--my house included!  Unfortunately it has been a very heavy wet season with tons of rainfall, which means the river is at unprecedented high levels.  The overflowing river is dangerous for the hydro equipment, so they turn off the dam to protect it.  Sadly for me that has meant intermittent electricity in the past few weeks (although I feel like a wimp complaining about it after a year with no electricity at all).  The purpose of mentioning the electricity, however, was not to talk about my own personal benefit but how it has affected the life of people in Yele.  The electricity to houses runs off of prepaid meters so the first step to getting electrified is to buy the meter box.  When I bought mine (over 6 months ago) I paid 135,000 leones (about $30).  Not a ridiculous sum, but certainly a high price for the average villager.  Last I checked about 150-200 people had bought meters and many more are hoping to in the near future.  As for the effect this electricity has had on those who have it, I'm not convinced yet that it has radically changed anyone's life here.  I think it certainly has the potential to improve the standard of living, but it's going to take a few more years of development to get there.  While electricity is great, to take full advantage of it requires electronic items.  This is great for me (I can charge my phone, iPod, camera, kindle, and I recently bought an electric burner and water heater) but the only item most Sierra Leoneans have to charge is a phone.  Eventually it would be great if women could use the electricity to cook over electric burners (thus reducing the health risks of cooking over a wood fire every day)  but the cost of an electric burner, on top of buying a meter box, is currently too steep for the average person in Yele.  Those who have not yet been able to buy a meter box can also benefit from the hydro dam because it also powers street lights for Yele (of course this also requires the dam to actually be working).  Another great benefit I see is the environmental aspect.  A hydro dam produces much cleaner energy than the current option, a generator.  Right now, actually, the hydro is producing more energy than is being used.  That extra energy goes back in to the river by heating up the water.  This is not good because increased temperatures kill the fish, which is a source of livelihood for many villagers.  That said, it would actually be better if more energy were being used.  Thus, I consider it a civic duty every time I plug in an appliance.  The electricity has been great for people who own and run businesses (especially those that sell cold drinks or play football games) and eventually I think the benefits will increase for the common villager, but it may take a while.  The good news is that the first step is here allowing for improvements in the future!

Alright, I'm blogged-out now, but I will do my best to make sure it is not another 3 months before the next post.  Miss you all and hope you're fully enjoying the conveniences of first world living (like electricity)!

Friday, June 8, 2012

Year One

Last Saturday Salone 2 had our 1-year anniversary of stepping foot in Sierra Leone.  One year!  That's crazy.  As per some suggestions from friends and family, now seems like a good time to do some reflection on the first year of my Peace Corps service.  So here goes:
TIME: time has flown.  It does not feel like a year since I left home.  In general, the days and hours here can go by pretty slowly, but overall time seems to pass quickly.  I think that's an observation Peace Corps Volunteers in countries all over the world would agree with (at least from the small sampling of other PCVs I've talked to).  I have also gotten to the point where I have a routine in the village, so the slow parts don't bother me as much anymore, they're just a part of my day.  I spend pretty much all of my down time reading.  As of now I've read about 60-70 books (not including the rereading of the HP series).  Yes, I'm keeping a list.  That's the other activity I do when things are slow: make lists.  It's great fun.  Some days the only thing on my to-do list is sweep and shower.  Now that's a jam-packed day.
TEACHING: I've made it through one complete year of teaching.  Technically term 3 isn't over yet (we don't officially close until July 13) but classes are done and we are now taking final exams.  The last 4 weeks of term will be spent grading exams and filling out report cards.  I only got 4 weeks of teaching in term 3, which, out of a 12 week term, is not a whole lot.  I did start teaching my JSS2 kids about atoms though, so that felt productive.  Hopefully I'll move up with them and teach them in JSS3 next year so I'm laying some groundwork this year.  Now that I've got a year of the school system under my belt I'm excited for next year (after a nice long summer break, though).  I've already got ideas about activities and classes I want to teach next year, and I'll have a better understanding of how to get that done in a class with 70 students.  I'll also have a better understanding of how school works: when it will be open, when it won't, etc.  The only wild card is that this November Sierra Leone is having their next presidential elections (just like us!) so things at the schools might come to a standstill.  I'm still not sure how exactly that's going to work out.
PEOPLE/CULTURE: my mother asked me recently in a letter, now that I've been here for a while, what my thoughts were on the state of poverty of the village people.  To be honest, it's not something I notice.  Yes, people here are very poor, but they don't live in a world where everyone has laptop computers and ipads and constant internet access, so everybody lives at the same level as their neighbor.  Even if you gave them those things I doubt it would improve the quality of their life.  People here just live their life and in general seem quite happy to me.  People are able to eat every day, buy clothes, sleep indoors.  They don't make a ton of money, but they're still able to live life.  I would say the biggest area that needs improvement would be health care, but there are a whole load of issues where that's concerned.  I don't work in health care in any way, but from what I've observed one of the biggest problems is simply education about health issues.  Obviously prevention would be a great first step, but nobody sleeps under mosquito nets--they use all the government issued mosquito nets to make fishing nets.  And there's education out there, workshops on malaria, advertisements about malaria prevention, etc. but people still don't change their behavior.  You can send as much medicine into a village as you want, but if the village people still believe more in the traditional healing techniques, the medicine won't be used.  Or when some one needs medicine they have an idea of what they want/need so if they get pills instead of an injection they don't think it will work (despite what the doctor says).  So there's a lot of education and behavior change that needs to happen with regards to health care.
BEING A PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER: I realized in the past few weeks that the most important thing I need to do is decide what I need to do or accomplish to feel like a successful volunteer or to feel like I did something in my two years.  It does not necessarily need to be something tangible (build a school, write a grant, etc.), it can be small things, but the point is I need to decide now what I personally will define as a successful service so I can give myself some direction in the next year.  As a PCV I pretty much always feel like there is something more I could or should be doing, but I can't do everything, and I can't feel bad about everything I don't do, so I need to figure out what will be enough for me.
Recently at site I made lists of things I liked and didn't like about being a volunteers, so I wanted to share some of those with you:
Top 3 hardest parts of being a volunteers:
     1. Being lonely--I wrote that write after the April break when I had spent 2 weeks with other volunteers then went back to my village and felt particularly lonely (we affectionately call those Freetown hangovers).  Right now though I'm actually quite comfortable with being alone in the village.  One of the biggest lessons I'll learn in the Peace Corps is how to be by myself.
     2. Loss of anonymity--everybody talks about me all the time in the village.  I wouldn't be surprised if I got to school and one of my teachers said, "So I heard you ate oatmeal for breakfast today."  Everybody knows everything I do.  Apparently I'm very exciting because apparently they all talk about me non stop.  Sometimes it can be amusing, other times I just wish I wasn't always the center of attention.  This experience has made me realize I would in no way enjoy being a celebrity.
     3. Being a woman in Sierra Leone.  It's just not that easy.  Women in general don't get a lot of respect.  I'm ready for the gender rights movement to sweep through Sierra Leone, but that will probably take another 50 years.
Top 3 favorite things/things I like:
     1. My neighbors--the Kanu family takes good care of me.  They leave me alone when I'm in my house, but they're always willing to let me sit and chat when I'm feeling social.  Gbassay, the 8 year old, might be my favorite person in my village.
     2. Learning about food--I've learned so many things about how food actually grows.  I know now what peanuts look like and how to harvest them.  Pineapples look super cool when they grow.  I know how to harvest rice.  Did you know cashew nuts come on top of little red fruits (oddly known as cashew fruits)?  So many things to learn about the natural world here because everything is so natural.
     3. Kids at play--kids entertain themselves in the most simple ways here.  I remember the first time I saw my little 1 year old neighbor just having the time of her life by putting sand in a calabash and pretending like she was soaking rice (they way she watches her mom do it).  I'm pretty sure she was playing "house."  She's also getting to the point where she's learning to carry things on her head, and she just has a ball whenever someone puts something on top of her head for her to carry.  I've also witnessed little toddlers, barely able to walk, practicing for sports.  Sports are like track and field, so these little kids line up, get in a starting crouch, then race for the 10 yards to the next tree.  It's pretty adorable.  Especially since their motor skills aren't quite developed yet.  Not the most coordinated.

The other exciting thing about reaching our year mark is that we get our newbies!  Salone 3 just landed in Sierra Leone last night, so we officially have 45 new trainees in country.  I'm going to work at their training, but not until the very end.  I'm excited to interact with them though because I think it will make me realize how far I've come in the last year.  It is difficult to remember all the things I struggled with at the beginning, but watching the new kids go through it all will be about the closest I can get to reliving my first 3 months.

Hope everything is going well stateside.  Miss you and love you all!

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Pictures!

The primary school at sunrise on my walk to school.

The S.D.A. Secondary School crest.  Motto: Training for Time and Eternity.
(Sierra Leoneans love mottos)

My JSS2, JSS3, and SS class building.  We have another building for the JSS1 classes.  Having a two story school building is pretty rare.  Go S.D.A.

School compound.  This is where they hold chapel on Wednesdays.

A tall Sierra Leonean.  Say what!?!

One of my JSS2 classrooms.  This is the nicer of the classrooms.

My students marching for the arrival of the president.  My students are the ones in the white shirts and khaki bottoms.  The yellow and green uniforms are for the S.D.A. primary students.

Village pics.  This is Florences house/kitchen (the outdoor huts are the kitchens).  Florence runs the radio station in Yele.  She's pretty cool.

The ever present burned out buildings from the war.

Typical Yele home.

Another kitchen.

This is the path I walk on every day to go to school.

The court barrie.  This is where all the village meeting stuff goes down.

The primary school.

This is the eLuma construction site

The Teya river.  It's super low right now because it's the end of the dry season.  Hopefully it'll fill back up soon.

Possibly my favorite spot in Yele.  The NGO workers in town have a hammock and I periodically go over to read in it.  It's great.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Shmorgashborg

Note on the title: Not sure if that's really how you spell shmorgashborg, then again, I'm pretty sure it's not actually a word so I can't really spell it wrong.  I chose that title for this blog because there's not really a central theme, I've just got a lot of random stories (a shmorgashborg if you will).  Also, I owe apologies to my faithful readers (scratch that, reader, singular, thanks mom).  I know it has been a while since I have written a blog update and I sincerely apologize.  Africa happened and I just hadn't gotten around to it.  So, on to the cornucopia of plentiful stories for y'all.

First: guess what I ate last week?  Anybody?  Guesses? No?  Ok fine, I'll tell you: crocodile soup!!  It may have actually been alligator, but who can really tell anyways.  I actually quite liked the croc soup.  Crocodile is fairly chewy white meat, but it might be my favorite meat here.  Mainly because it didn't have bones, skin, scales, feathers, or hair still attached.  I suppose then what I liked was that it was well prepared.  Really though, it wasn't that bad.  I can now add it to my growing list of new meats I've eaten here: monkey (unintentionally on my part), goat, guinea fowl, and now croc.  (Funny story about meats: in my JSS2 classes I taught food chains.  When coming up with examples I make the students participate and tell me what might eat something.  Invariably every time we get cats or dogs up there and I ask, 'what might eat a cat?' they reply with, 'man.'. To which I say, 'I don't eat cat, but if you do I guess we can put it up there.' They think it's funny I find it gross to eat cat.)

We are now in March (stating the obvious award: goes to me) which in Sierra Leone means heat.  Not any of this pansy 90 degree weather I've been complaining about previously, but I'm talking about baking alive if I'm outside for more than 10 minutes.  I don't have a thermometer, but it is well over 100 degrees for at least 4-5 hours a day.  Someone told me it got to 122 the other day.  Not sure if I totally believe that, but it's probably not far off for the hottest days.  In conjunction with the heat, March is the end of dry season.  We have not had a single drop of precipitation for at least 4 months.  That's the longest I've ever gone without rain.  Growing up in the PNW, that has never happened to me; rain is so much a part of life that going without for 4 months feels like someone is slowly cutting off my appendages.  This also means the well by my house has dried up.  Luckily I have some house help, and once a week Mary goes to the nearest working pump and fills up a giant bucket in my house.  It usually lasts about a week.  My little neighbor girls have all of a sudden become fond of fetching water so I gave my bucket to Effie yesterday to go get water.  Back comes the bucket with some truly disgusting looking river water.  Not wanting to hurt Effie's feelings I acted very grateful and continue to let her get my water.  I don't tell her I only use that water to flush my toilet.  Talking to my parents last weekend we came to the realization that this lack of water is why so many people have written songs about rains in Africa.  If I could sing (or write songs) I'm pretty sure the first rain of the wet season would cause me to burst into the next hit Africa song.

Exciting news in Yele: the president of Sierra Leone (the honorable Ernest Bai Koroma) came to visit a few weeks ago!!  I got to stand about 10 feet from him while he ate lunch.  In all honesty it was a lot less exciting than I had anticipated.  All the preparations the week before he came got me psyched up, but politicians are just people.  Don't get me wrong, it was definitely cool he came, especially for the villagers, I just didn't get any gitters when I was around him (granted I also didn't talk to him personally).  I probably will never meet a president of a country again, so at least I can cross it off my bucket list.  Honorable president Koroma came to Yele because there are multiple development projects in the works right now.  There's a new hospital (should open in June), the palm oil factory, the water purification plant (including a huge water tower in the middle of town), the hydro dam (for electricity!!!!), and a new market structure.  So yeah, there's a lot going on here, hence the president's visit.  The elections are also coming up in November, so it was a bit of a campaigning visit too.  After visiting all the development sites he went to the school and gave a speech to the village.  Mostly it was about all the good stuff Lion Heart (the NGO in charge of most of these projects) is doing here, but he also mentioned the elections.  He is APC (All Peoples Congress), which is the political party of the north, meaning he was speaking to people who are already going to vote for him.  The other main party in Sierra Leone is the SLPP (Sierra Leone Peoples Party), which is the party of the south.  In general political affiliations in this country are based on tribes, so if you're Temne you vote APC, and if you're Mende you vote SLPP.  There are very strong tribal ties in politics and not as much idealogical identifications.  I'm interested to see what happens in the upcoming elections.  General consensus when I talk to Sierra Leoneans is that it will be peaceful.  Then again, I'm in the north, which is where the current president is from, so they're all fairly contented with him in office.  I've heard from volunteers in the south that they might get a little agitated.  But no one knows what's going to happen.  I'll keep you posted.

Enough about presidents and politics, back to the important stuff: me.  The past few weeks have been pretty busy, but good.  I have started teaching after school at the local clinic.  It's the Lion Heart clinic that is opening the hospital in June and they are training Yele locals to be nursing auxiliaries.  Nursing auxiliaries is a mouthful, but it's not any sort of official program and the students don't get any sort of certifications, so the ministry of health had problems with calling it a nursing aide training.  It's essentially a chance for the hospital to train their employees.  In the morning they do math for an hour, then medical topics (cardiovascular system, skeletal system, digestive system, diseases, infections, patient care,etc.) for two hours.  In the afternoon they do an hour of practicals.  Then enter the protagonist: moi.  I teach them either English or science for an hour every afternoon.  At the beginning I was very apprehensive about taking on extra teaching responsibilities.  Teaching is exhausting and I'm usually wiped after a day at school.  Turns out though that this extra class is actually kinda invigorating.  It's a small class, only 20 students, they are all very eager and motivated, and I have resources available if I want to print things or make copies.  In essence it is the complete antithesis of teaching at the school.  Teaching that class has reminded me that teaching can be fun.

School update: second term was tough.  The biggest problem for me was that I came back from the Christmas break feeling like things were going to be easier because I had it all figured out.  Wrong.  I didn't.  I definitely had my trials in first term, but the things I found frustrating in second term were the things I wasn't expecting.  I was prepared for the same problems as first term, but I hadn't really figured thugs out as well as I thought I did.  Sierra Leone still had a few tricks up her sleeve for me.  The biggest issue for term two is the lack of motivation in both the teachers and students.  What really irked me was teachers complaining how the students weren't serious/dedicated because they came late, when only 3 out of teachers out of 25 showed up on time (if they showed up at all).  For some reason nobody takes second term seriously, which meant lots of classrooms without teachers and reduced student attendance.  Coming from an American work ethic background this was frustrating to say the least.  Term two is now over.  We stopped teaching 2 weeks ago to hold final exams.  These next two weeks are for teachers to grade, then school officially closes April 5 (at which date I'm outta here for my break!).  Term three starts again April 23 (which means really beginning of May).  For the April break I'm going to Pujehun, Freetown, and Banana Island.  I'll write an update about all the festivities once they happen.

The only other exciting news is that I finally feel like I've found my groove.  It only took 8 months, but I got to the point where I'm content here.  That does not at all mean that living here is easy (actually, it's extremely difficult) or that I don't miss America anymore, it just means I no longer feel out of place when I walk around town.  Chatting with some other volunteers a few weeks ago we came to the conclusion that integration (the mantra of the Peace Corps is 'integrate integrate integrate!') happens when you no longer feel uncomfortable doing things: walking around, talking to people, traveling, shopping, and so on.  I don't know if I really fit the Peace Corps definition of integrated, but I feel good about my level of interaction with the community.

As always for me, I also have to include the requisite cat story.  My kittens have started to grow up some and in their development I am very happy with their hunting abilities.  However, what I'm not happy about is them bringing their hunting finds INTO the house.  I don't have mice or cockroaches in my house.  My cats apparently find this appalling because they catch mice and insects outside, then bring them inside.  Seems backwards.  Usually they eat their kills, but one morning I woke up to a mouse head on my floor.  Every other part of the mouse was eaten, but apparently my cat had to leave a souvenir for me to find.  I also end up sweeping dead cockroaches off my floor almost every morning.  Thanks cats.

Hope this satisfies some curiosities about the past few months of my life. I will also try to post some more picture in the next few weeks.  As always, love you and miss you.  Hope everything is going well back home!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Harmattan (and other dry season activities)

Last month I got to partake in one of the more exciting activities since I've been in Sierra Leone: I put on a sweater.  This may sound dull and unexciting to those of you living in cooler climates but to those of us in tropical settings it is certainly an occasion to be celebrated.  During the end of December and beginning of January we get the Harmattan, winds off the Sahara, which makes the climate here considerably more comfortable.  While the coldest it got was maybe only 60°F, a balmy day in some parts of the world, compared to the usual temperature of 95°F it felt like a Russian winter.  The Harmattan has since passed (I'm back to sweating profusely at 9 in the morning) and we are nearing the hottest time of the year: March and April.  Any time I complain about the heat right now people respond, "Just wait for a month, then it'll get really hot."  Great.  If a Sierra Leonean thinks April is hot I'll probably feel like I'm in a pottery kiln.  I've decided I'm going to live in the river for the month of March.  Maybe constant total submersion in the water will save me from melting like the wicked witch of the west.

It's been a while since I've written a blog update, so I'll try to fill you in on the past few weeks.  School started up again January 9 (technically January 2, but everything starts a week late) so I've been back at school teaching for about 3 weeks.  At the end of Term 1 I was feeling rather downtrodden about teaching but having a nice long holiday away from school did me wonders.  I've recharged my batteries and am much more optimistic about teaching.  There are still days when it all feels hopeless but for the most part things are looking up.

Exciting news around town: my school got computers!  This is both a blessing and a curse.  I think it's great that some of the teachers and students will get some exposure to computers.  However, even though our computers (3 of them) are nice, they do not have Word, Excel, or internet.  Those are the 3 reasons I use a computer, so without those programs I don't really know what to do.  I guess I can teach everyone to play solitaire and minesweeper.  In all seriousness, I hope to be able to use the computers to show my kids some cool science stuff (or at least better quality pictures than I can draw in chalk) but we'll see if all the logistics work out.

The other exciting news in Yele is that we should be getting electricity in April!  Some people from the Netherlands have been fixing the hydroelectric dam on the river here.  It was built before the war (although it was never operational) and like most things was vandalized during the fighting.  They are now rehabilitating it and if everything goes well should be running soon.  Of course nothing in this country gets done by the expected date (see above explanation of school start dates) but even if we get electricity 6 months late I'll be a happy girl.  I've already got my prepaid meter installed at my house.

In conjunction with the electricity a team of people have been here building a new market structure (called eLuma) that will make use of the electricity for business owners.  The goal is to get some businesses in Yele that would expand on what they already have (and ideally cut down on transportation costs from Freetown if products can be produced here).  The best part about the whole process (other than having white people in town to hang out with) were the shop applications.  Prospective shop owners have to fill out an application to rent a space including a question about what they would use the electricity for.  Far and away the best answer was: a generator.  Uh... I don't think you understand the concept of electricity.  The hope is that with they hydro power you won't need a generator.  Guess there's a little more education that needs to happen.

As always, love and miss you all.  I think about home every day (and you personally probably at least once, if you're lucky) and hope the good ol' American life is treating you well.