Independence [Sunday, June 24]

I sat on the wooden bench as Jokella's father worked at the hand-made wooden table covered with a plastic Thanksgiving-themed tablecloth. In khaki shorts and a tattered green shirt, he was drawing up an estimate for a new client from his electrical business. The dirt floor had long since succumbed to the rainy season and turned into mud as the rain came in unimpeded through almost non-existent walls supporting a rusting zinc roof.

Jokella returned wearing an extravagant African dress with her five-year-old brother Kelvin in tow. After telling her father goodbye, she led me up the muddy road into the hills above Freetown. Everyone else seemed to navigate the mud without dirtying their clothes. It wasn't long before I heard the usual "white man!" which could be anything from a demand for money or food to simply just shouting to say hello. Rather, today they merely pointed out my mud splattered pants that only minutes before had been immaculate.

When Jokella had asked me last week to go to church with her, I assumed her parents would be coming as well, but it was only the three of us trekking up the hill.

"Are your parents coming?"
"Nope. They're Muslim."
"Oh. So why do you go to church?"
"I like church better."
"But what do your parents think about that?"
"I told them it was my decision and not to interfere."

Silence.

"Do you go to mosque on Fridays with them?'
"Sometimes."

We arrived at St. Augustine's to find hundreds of people in their best African dress. Colorful tie-dye like dresses and wraps competed with elaborate white laces for dominance. A man intoning the prayers of the rosary was joined by some of the churchgoers while others whispered quietly to their neighbors.

The church is built into the side of the hills just outside Freetown in an area called Dwarzak:

The walls were covered in the stations of the cross (with an all-African cast) and also had a painting of the globe - with Sierra Leone at the center. The parish is run by Salesian missionaries from all over the world - the UK, India, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. Today, Fr. Lionel from India celebrated mass but Fr. Cyril from Nigeria gave the sermon, talking about the traditional proverb "blood is thicker than water" - i.e. dangers of tribalism in the upcoming elections. They sang a variety of songs - some I was familiar with, others were in Krio and I could only pretend to sing along.

After a blissfully short two hour church service (as opposed to the four hour marathon I went to a few weeks back), I walked back to the YMCA and spent most of the afternoon meandering around Freetown in search of food (nearly impossible on Sundays) before returning to the YMCA and eating a cucumber, tomato and avocado sandwich on the porch with Adam, a grad student from Texas working upcountry at Mile 91 for the NGO Timap for Justice. The view was even more fantastical than ususal:

The Salesians had invited me to come visit their orphanage in central Freetown, so in the evening I walked over to The Don Bosco Fambul Orphanage. They house about 80 young boys who they've found on the streets. After keeping them for a few months, the Salesians attempt to locate their families and resolve the orginal problem that led the boys to leave their family for the streets - which could be anything from domestic disputes to simple starvation. Ideally, the family will accept the boy back, but if that fails, the boys are sent over to Lungi where the Salesians have a school and job training. The Salesian website for Sierra Leone is over at boscohall.org.

Some of the local volunteers were busy planning for a summer camp they were hosting next month, so I sat in on their meeting as they discussed everything from cleaning the streets to the necessity of serving the students some sort of food during the day. 

It was very impressive as there were perhaps twenty teenagers and university students, all volunteers, planning the summer camp for the younger boys and girls without any supervision from the Salesians. After the meeting, the boys from the orphanage all wanted to talk to me and demanded that I come play with them and hang out, as they were having a goodbye celebration for one of the Salesians from Nigeria who is being sent to Darfur to assist with humanitarian aid. Although I would have loved to stay, I told a mob of very disappointed ten-year-olds that I'd come back some other time, as I still hadn't had a decent meal all day. I went back to the Y and found Mohammed, who took me over to Noreskar at St. John's, the only place in town that seems to serve on Sundays.