(Written on 9/24)
Hard to believe that it has already been near a month that I’ve been at site. The
pace of time has steadily increased since the first week or two here where it
seemed to drag a bit. I’m sure as I continue to feel more comfortable here time
will continue its expedited pace.
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| Skeptical child is skeptical |
A lot has happened within this month despite how quickly it
has flown by. The first two weeks or so were filled with lots of downtime and a
myriad of small frustrations as I adjusted to the community and they adjusted
to me. It was quite a change of pace as PST was filled with a perpetually busy
schedule and by the time it was over, I was rather comfortable with the pace.
Leaving my host family and Bo to come to a much smaller village with a lot less
accommodations and things to do was a big transition. However, as I developed a
routine here things got easier. I started going to the market on a near daily
basis to get things to cook, I've spent much of my time with Mohamed – a teacher’s
nephew who is also new to the village – who has been extremely helpful in
navigating my integration, and I've spent some time hanging out with my fellow
teachers.
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| A typical bag of groceries |
At first, school was scheduled to start the second week at
site but the government for some odd reason decided to push it back a week.
When that week rolled around, as is typical in Sierra Leone, students and staff
showed up sporadically and there was little in the way of teaching going on.
The students that did show up mostly spent the day cleaning and preparing the
classrooms while I helped with what I could (but mostly passed the time by
browsing the internet and reading Game of Thrones). This week has been the
effective start of school though it is still quite chaotic. The principal has
been quite busy and has yet to come up with the time table so we as teachers
don’t have defined times for when we are to teach. Instead we are to introduce
our subject and ourselves this week to the classes we will be teaching so real
teaching can begin next week. The problems of the Sierra Leone education system
are definitely becoming more and more apparent as time goes on. In addition to
attendance issues, one of the classes I’ll be teaching – SSS1 (or the
equivalent of 9
th grade) – has yet to show up to school. This is due
to the BECE; the entrance exam to high school that the government takes an
inordinate amount of time to officially grade. The test is extremely tedious
and, in my opinion, a terrible judge of where students should be in terms of
their education. I’m not sure exactly where the blame lies but the fact that
grading the exam cuts into the precious little time that students do have to
attend class seems a bit ridiculous.
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| Mohamed messing around with my camera |
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| Rice paddies at my site |
Things aren’t all bad though. During this first month, many
people have approached me about potential projects in which I could pursue in
my two years here. This has been a major relief as I falsely believed that
Eric’s prolific body of work had left me little to accomplish here. The ideas
have ranged from animal husbandry, building a clinic and latrines, expanding
the teachers living quarters, helping the school expand into SSS3 and SSS4,
bringing internet to the library, helping to restore the nonfunctioning
hydroelectric dam in town, and a lot more. I hope that in my two years here I
can help the community realize some of these dreams.
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