"I am Sierra Leonean" [Thursday, June 28]

Having finished up her work at iEARN, Sara traveled with Amanda to Lakka Beach, which she described as "rainy, but filled with delicious, fresh seafood and adorable puppies."

While Sara ate barracuda and played with puppies, I went to iEARN and did some teaching before bringing the two new interns, Jyoti and Tamra, back to the YMCA where we met Amanda, Sara and Nick for dinner at Kiemans. Jyoti is originally from Nepal and is a studying at Connenticut College in the US. Tamra, from Australia, is a grad student in the UK.

As I am now doing work for three different NGOs (iEARN, HU, and a third one which I'll write about tomorrow) , I've fallen a bit behind in the blog posts. I'll have those this weekend, complete with an investigation of the hottest rumor on the streets of Freetown: embezzled Libyan rice.

In the meantime, I'll satisfy your ravenous appetite for news from Sierra Leone with a post from Sara:

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I leave Sweet Salone on Saturday, and it’s crazy to think my month here is over already. A few weeks ago I posted a general outline of the national identity project I was doing with the kids at iEARN, and Paul asked me to write a follow-up of how it all went. Overall, I am really happy with the entire process and am impressed both with what the kids produced and their willingness to follow through all the way. I had 15 kids finish the entire poem, down from the original 30 that began the project, which was better than the fall out I had anticipated. Below is just one of the poems that was created. The rest will all be posted, along with pictures and audio footage of the kids reciting their poems in various languages, on a website (that’s my project for the rest of the summer). But for now…

I Am

I am courageous with people.
I am my mother’s son.
I am Fullah.
I am freedom of speech.
I am changing seasons.
I am, blue, white, and green.
I am Sierra Leonean.

-Mamadu Bah, age 19, Freetown

And here’s a little breakdown:

I am courageous with my people
The first day was a lot of free writing, answering questions like “what do you like to do for fun?” “what are your hobbies?” “what are you proud of yourself for?” “what do you like about yourself?”. Over the course of the discussions and the writings the kids narrowed down one sentence; this was supposed to be the way they would like to be recognized as an individual. In a more concrete sense, I framed it as the first thing they would want to tell a stranger about themselves.

I am my mother’s son
The first day also included free writing on the family – we talked about the different roles people play in a family and varying family structures (many of these kids are living with friends or distant family members as the result of deaths or displacement during the war.) The free writing exercise encouraged them to think about the role they were most proud of in their family, and then we manipulated the sentences to show that specific relationship. In Mamadu’s writing he talked about how he respected his mother for all her hard work, and how she cared for him and his brothers,; he chose the sentence “I am my mother’s son” to emphasize how important this relationship is to him.

I am Fullah
The second day we talked about both race and ethnicity, and dissected the dictionary definitions of both words to pinpoint their differences. I gave the kids a scenario of talking on the phone to a stranger, and told them to write down whichever of these identities they would want to tell this stranger. Mamadu chose not to include his race but to include his ethnicity, and did some free writing on the role his ethnicity plays in his life. Some kids chose to include their race and not their ethnicity, and many chose to include just one of their many ethnicities. I was excited to see the variety in this section, as it seemed to me that at this point they really understood the concept of identifying or not identifying with different aspects of themselves.

I am freedom of speech
I am changing seasons
This session we brainstormed in large groups what the kids love about Sierra Leone; the list included everything, from the landscape to the way people treat each other to the jobs people do. Each kid then wrote down two sentences that showed what they love most about their country. For example, Mamadu wrote “I love Sierra Leone because we have freedom of speech” and “I love the changing seasons, the wet season and the dry season, in Sierra Leone.” Then, we turned those sentences into “I am” sentences, and talked about how this showed ownership of, or inclusion of the self, in these positive characteristics. Mamadu loves that his country has freedom of speech, and he is an individual that contributes to that freedom of speech every day; it is a characteristic of his country that can reflect back on his individual identity such that it may become a source of pride.

I am blue, white, and green
This was perhaps the most abstract session of the series, and I was surprisingly pleased with how well the kids responded to it. Blue, white, and green are the colors of the Sierra Leonean flag, and we began with a discussion about what each color stands for. The blue symbolizes the natural harbor of Freetown and it’s potential for importing and exporting, the white stands for unity and peace, and the green stands for the importance of agriculture and natural resources to the country. Then, each kid chose the color that they felt was most significant or important to them, and wrote about why. Mamadu’s first color was blue, and he wrote about how much he eats fish as well as the traditional blue robes that the men of the Fullah tribe wear. This same exercise was done for the second color, and then the third, so that each person had ordered their colors differently and were also given a chance to reflect back on how each relates to their individual lives. I was impressed with how Mamadu saw the blue in the symbolic manner that we talked about, but he was also able to go beyond that and find connections to his life that weren’t part of the main discussion.

I am Sierra Leonean
The final series of the workshop was the only time when everyone wrote down the same sentence; each poem ends with “I am Sierra Leonean”. The kids received back everything they had written, and we reviewed the topics of each line. Finally, we talked again about what a National Identity is and the significance of all of their poems ending this way; the structure of the poem is designed to increase in scope by identifying the individual and then placing him or her in the context of other people and the country as a whole. As such, the repetition of the final line shows that each individual is a part of the same construct, and is meant to create a sense of pride in that identity. Or at least, that was my intention.

Below is the video of Mamadu reciting his poem, first in English and then in Fullah:



Each of the poems is incredibly unique, and on a personal level I loved how well I got to know the kids through each of these exercises. It was a personal challenge on a lot of days to adapt my lessons to the number of kids that were present, or to abandon one way of explanation that was clearly not reaching them for an entirely different one.
I’m excited to put their words together with their voices and pictures, and to put them all side by side in the same format; I think that a lot of what can be taken from this project comes from the compilation of all the poems, by highlighting the diversity of who these kids are and what they are proud of.