Site Visit

(Written on 8/9/13)

I was able to spend the last four days my site and I wanted to give a quick reflection on it for those who are interested.

Barina Agricultural Secondary School

The week started with two days in Bo where we met our principals/head teachers and went over some basics about what the Peace Corps expects of both the volunteer and the school. After these two days we all spent the next four at our individual sites. Our principals helped us navigate to site as we don’t yet have extensive experience working with the haphazard public transport system here in Sierra Leone. They recommended we take the long, paved route to town which is about a 7 hour trek from Bo. After switching poda-podas (which are basically big minivans with far too many benches welded to the floor) a few times, I was dropped off at site without my principal who had to stop at his house in Makeni before heading to town later that day. I didn’t yet know anyone in town as the volunteer I am replacing hadn’t yet arrived. I was escorted by a person standing by the road where I happened to be dropped off at to the head teacher’s house. We chatted for a bit and walked around the school before Eric – the PCV before me – arrived.

The road to town

Eric is an exemplar of a good Peace Corps Volunteer. He’s done a ton for the town and school and is universally adored by the town. Literally everyone knows his name from the young children to the elders. A few couples in town have gone so far as to name their children “Eric” in his honor. He is one of the few remaining Salone 1 volunteers left as he extended for the additional year. In that time he has painted a map of the world on the side of the secondary school, helped to build an apartment building for the majority of the school’s teachers, built two separate rain water collection systems for both the school and the teacher apartment, helped to expand the school into the high school level, brought electricity to the school with solar panels which is in turn used to generate money for the school as a charging station, and is currently putting the finishing touches on the school library which will include a computer lab while simultaneously working for an NGO in Freetown to build another rainwater collection system for another school.

Some of the hills around site

He has also gone out of his way to pay a large number of students’ school fees as education at the middle school level and beyond in Sierra Leone have user fees in place (the primary level is supposed to be free but still typically costs students some money). A number of people we met during the visit stated that they know I will be able to accomplish more than Eric was able to, but I’m not nearly as certain. He has quite the legacy to live up to and I will be more than content to accomplish even a portion of what he was able to do. I cannot thank him enough for coming back from Freetown to introduce me to the village. His experience was invaluable in both meeting those in town and generating ideas on what I can work on when I take over.

An abandoned building

The town itself is beautiful. Its set in what seems like a valley as it’s surrounded by a number of large hills. It also is home to a number of rice paddies and its rugged dirt road makes the town look like what one would expect an African town to look like. I had the chance to jog a bit while there and got to explore some of the smaller villages which surround the town which were just as breathtaking – if not more so. The town experienced a big boom in the 70s and 80s due to being a hotbed of mining activity – which still quite common just outside of the main town. Around this time the Chinese government funded the construction of a hydroelectric dam that provided the town with running water and electricity. They also used the dam to provide irrigation to rice paddies between the school and town and create a pond for raising fish. Unfortunately most of the infrastructure built during this time was destroyed in Sierra Leone’s civil war.

The road home

The town is relatively small – less than 2,000 people and feels quiet and relaxing compared to the hustle and bustle of Bo and Freetown. I’m looking forward to the slower pace of life that the denizens of village seem to enjoy. My house in town is right next to the school which is about half a mile from the main downtown. I was worried about this at first as I thought it might isolate me from the community and make getting to know everyone in town a bit more difficult but Eric seems to have managed it well. There is a big market every Saturday where I can go to buy provisions. I am looking forward to spending the next two years here. The only downside that I was able to find was a riff in local politics that has made some projects difficult to pursue.

My apartment complex (I live on the right)

Other than that, I can’t wait to move in and get started on whatever it is that I can help the community with. I also talked a bit with my principal and it seems like I’ll be teaching the equivalent of 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th grade English as well as 9^th grade Geography which is largely not what it sounds like; it involves climate, topography, and oddly enough – astronomy. It seems like a lot to teach and I hope I can handle lesson planning for the different levels that each grade requires.

All in all it was a really productive visit and has me extremely excited for when I move in at the end of August if all goes according to plan. Hope everything is going well back in the States. Again, feel free to leave comments, I would love to hear what you've all been up to this past month.

A sign above a neighbors door