Anywho, there is a lot to catch you all up on from the past few months, but I’ll do my best to update everyone on what’s been happening in Sierra Leone since the holidays.
Part 1:
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| View of Tokeh Beach from across River No. 2 |
Term 2 Break
After Christmas break, I didn’t do a whole lot of traveling. Instead, I tried
to focus on teaching and staying at my site. I love my site – it’s a great
place to spend time, but sadly it doesn't illicit stories that are interesting
as leaving site which will be most of the focus in the post below.
At the
end of March, I headed to Bo to participate in a behavior change workshop put
on by STOMP Out Malaria. The workshop focused on how those around us shape our
behaviors and what prevents us from changing said behaviors. While it was
specific to malaria, the program applied broadly to all types of behavior
change that we might pursue within our communities. In addition to being an
interesting topic in general, the structure of the program was rather unique.
Instead of simply having one person lecture the entire time about BCC, we
worked in small groups to develop our own programs based around the concepts we
were talking about. In doing so we immediately applied these ideas and concepts
which helped to concretize the abstract elements we were discussing. In turn,
making these ideas much more memorable and applicable to our sites.
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| "Picturesque" Bureh Beach |
After the behavior change conference term 2 had ended so I headed out to Freetown to celebrate a volunteers 30th birthday. The celebration was ridiculous but a ton of fun. It was interesting to see the nightlife in Freetown which obviously is a bit different than the nightlife in the smaller villages… A few friends and I decided to head out to Bureh beach the morning after the party. I’ve written about Bureh beach in the past on this blog but the place still blows me away every time I go. Anyway, we took a different way around to get to Bureh beach this time which gave me the chance to explore some of the other beaches along the Freetown peninsula. First stop was in River No. 2 which is one of Sierra Leone’s better known beaches. It’s a beautiful white sand beach but it seemed a bit touristy (as touristy as a place like Sierra Leone can get). The place was mostly full of people from abroad. Likely because of this, the place was also far more expensive than some of Sierra Leone’s other beaches. From River No. 2, we took a boat across the river to Tokeh beach, which is basically just a long extension of River No. 2. It too is a white sand beach and was a bit more reasonable in terms of prices. The place was largely empty however. Beaches here are a bit different than they are in the US in that they’re typically empty outside of big holidays. Anyway, we walked the length of Tokeh beach to a village where we got transport to Bureh beach. While at Bureh, we spent a good amount of time playing jenga with the local surf club guys and hanging out with friends who also decided to spend the holidays at Bureh.
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| Enjoying a Star beer as the sun goes down at Bureh |
After
Bureh I was convinced to check out a friend’s site out in Kono. If you don’t
know, Kono is the region in which the vast majority of diamond mining took
place before and during the war (and were some still takes place today, though
on a much smaller scale). My friend’s site was a rather stark reminder of the
war and the effects of the diamond trade. The place was a ghost town as the
vast majority of the diamond mining had dried up. The one bright spot of the
village was an extremely nice school, which I later came to learn was actually
a RUF training ground. Sadly, I forgot my camera at home and thus couldn’t take
any pictures. I only spent a couple days out there and then returned back to my
site to spend some time with my friends here. Overall, it was a nice, relaxing
break from school, but I was ready to get back to classes for term 3.
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| Chris (our helmet specialist) and I getting our bikes transported after the tour |
Bike Tour
Term 3
turned out to be much busier than I expected. In early May, the STOMP Out
Malaria committee organized their yearly sensitization bike tour in a number of
towns in the south. The idea was to put on a number of skits and informal talks
about malaria in an effort to dispel some of the persistent rumors and
misconceptions about malaria. Malaria is by far Sierra Leone’s biggest killer –
40% of child mortality in Sierra Leone is attributed to the disease. In
addition, malaria has untold effects on cognitive development and missed workdays
that continue to hinder economic growth throughout the country.
Within many communities in Sierra Leone, malaria is largely seen as a mild annoyance. Many adults have been exposed to the disease numerous times throughout their lives and thus have built up a limited amount of resistance. Whereas their parasite load may kill a small child, elderly adult, or those not previously exposed to the disease, adults tend to develop mild to severe symptoms that they typically overcome with a few days of rest. Malaria is treated much in the same way that the common flu is treated America in terms of severity. However, this is a huge mistake as it results in adults going untreated who then pass the disease onto children, the elderly, or the otherwise immunocompromised which can have serious consequences for them.
Regardless, the bike tour went well. While there were definite missteps in our approach that we will improve upon next year, communities seemed to genuinely enjoy our presentations and asked thoughtful questions throughout. We also had a few schools put on their own skits which turned out great. The kids really got into their acting roles and were much more effective at spreading the message than we could ever hope to be. Overall, we traveled about 50 miles on bike over the course of 6 days, stopping and performing in seven different volunteer villages. I attempted to bike the whole way down but only made it about a third of the way until my bike broke down which quickly became a consistent theme for me (and many others) throughout the tour. Thankfully, there are a number of skilled bike mechanics within our group who were able to keep the bikes up and running. Definitely looking forward to both improving the tour and next year’s trip.
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| Sean, Kim, and Gibbs acting out the malaria skit at school |
Within many communities in Sierra Leone, malaria is largely seen as a mild annoyance. Many adults have been exposed to the disease numerous times throughout their lives and thus have built up a limited amount of resistance. Whereas their parasite load may kill a small child, elderly adult, or those not previously exposed to the disease, adults tend to develop mild to severe symptoms that they typically overcome with a few days of rest. Malaria is treated much in the same way that the common flu is treated America in terms of severity. However, this is a huge mistake as it results in adults going untreated who then pass the disease onto children, the elderly, or the otherwise immunocompromised which can have serious consequences for them.
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| A group of JSS girl (and Sean) during the tour |
Regardless, the bike tour went well. While there were definite missteps in our approach that we will improve upon next year, communities seemed to genuinely enjoy our presentations and asked thoughtful questions throughout. We also had a few schools put on their own skits which turned out great. The kids really got into their acting roles and were much more effective at spreading the message than we could ever hope to be. Overall, we traveled about 50 miles on bike over the course of 6 days, stopping and performing in seven different volunteer villages. I attempted to bike the whole way down but only made it about a third of the way until my bike broke down which quickly became a consistent theme for me (and many others) throughout the tour. Thankfully, there are a number of skilled bike mechanics within our group who were able to keep the bikes up and running. Definitely looking forward to both improving the tour and next year’s trip.
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| Another picture of Bureh because, why not? |
Temne Training
Towards the end of May, a number of volunteers and I organized a small weekend training focused on our mutual local language. The sessions lasted two days and involved a counterpart from our communities. Thankfully, here at site, I have an awesome teacher who sets aside a good amount of time to offer me informal classes in Temne. The program itself turned out to be a bit different than what we expected, though not necessarily in a negative way. We were hoping to really dig into the grammatical “meat” of Temne but instead we focused on how to use Temne to talk about issues within our communities. We covered HIV/AIDS, malaria, teenage pregnancy, and sanitation. While this threw a lot of the volunteers off, the counterparts really got into talking over the issues and discussing the correct way to pronounce things in Temne. It was great to see them so involved and committed to teaching out and preserving their local language. Hopefully we can organize something similar again in the near future that will focus more on grammar, but overall it was a good training and it got my counterpart really excited about teaching more Temne.
Towards the end of May, a number of volunteers and I organized a small weekend training focused on our mutual local language. The sessions lasted two days and involved a counterpart from our communities. Thankfully, here at site, I have an awesome teacher who sets aside a good amount of time to offer me informal classes in Temne. The program itself turned out to be a bit different than what we expected, though not necessarily in a negative way. We were hoping to really dig into the grammatical “meat” of Temne but instead we focused on how to use Temne to talk about issues within our communities. We covered HIV/AIDS, malaria, teenage pregnancy, and sanitation. While this threw a lot of the volunteers off, the counterparts really got into talking over the issues and discussing the correct way to pronounce things in Temne. It was great to see them so involved and committed to teaching out and preserving their local language. Hopefully we can organize something similar again in the near future that will focus more on grammar, but overall it was a good training and it got my counterpart really excited about teaching more Temne.
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| Sunset Soccer at Bureh |
Marathon
Immediately
after the language training, Street Child – a NGO in Makeni – put on a marathon
to raise funds for their cause. The British NGO was founded to help children
affected by the war but as slowly transitioned to making sure kids can go to
school by paying for their school fees, uniforms, and books. The marathon draws
runners from all over the world and is known to be particularly grueling due to
the heat and humidity. Despite this, over two thousand people showed up to run.
I chose to keep it simple and ran the 5k with some other volunteers. Two
volunteers did run the full marathon (and a handful ran the half) which was
really impressive. It was fun experience. Hopefully next year I’ll be so bold
as to run a 10k or a half, but we shall see where I stand on that as time approaches.
Regardless,
thanks for reading. Looking forward to seeing you all in a few short weeks!
Stay tuned, I’ll post part 2 later today.
I'll get you to run the whole thin next year Eli.
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