Family [Friday, July 6]
I just got back from a weekend upcountry, and so am a bit behind in posting...I'll try to catch up tonight. Here's a post from last Friday to tide you over:
- - -
During our run this morning, Osman stopped by his parent's house and introduced me to his family. He doesn't live with them, but instead with his relatives about a half mile away, which is a very common practice.
His father runs a small mini-market, where they sell the normal goods - freshly baked bread, Laughing Cow Cheese, top up cards for the cell phone companies, FOM! laundry detergent ("Dirts are not attached back!") and palm oil, just to name a few. These stores - the Sierra Leonean equivalent of a gas station convenience store - are everywhere and sell the exact same goods for identical prices - there is very little differentiation. This morning Osman's father sat inside the store surrounded by children as he worked with them on the Arabic alphabet. He teaches Arabic to the neighborhood youth in the mornings; Osman said that if I put my "heart into it and had patience" I could learn Arabic too. I never expected to need Arabic in Sierra Leone, but it would be incredibly useful with the large Islamic and Lebanese populations here. His father doesn't speak English, so it was rather difficult to converse, but I did get to meet the rest of his family. I had to promise to come back soon and visit more, as his mom was dissapointed I didn't stay very long.
Although I had little desire to start running again, Osman dragged me along behind him through the chaos of eastern Freetown's streets. A brand new, very out-of-place Land Cruiser flew down the road (it's more of a market that happens to have cars travel through than a road), sending people scrambling out of the way and scattering their loads of rice, charcoal, cassava, sunglasses, bread, and just about every other good imaginable, all precariously balanced on their heads. We both fell into a pile of sand on the side of the road. Osman just turned around with a grin and said "this is Africa" - as if being in Africa made it all ok.
After breakfast and a taxi ride to HU, I stared at Excel and made spreadsheets to log fuel for the generators and vehicles. We're also trying to track the progress we've made towards the one of the project indicators; specifically, the amount of time it takes between initial radio call for the ambulance and the arrival of the patient at the clinic, so I'm trying to set up a database to monitor if we're succeeding in lowering that time.
HU is usually a quiet office with little of the usual hustle and bustle so common on the streets. However, the upcoming elections have changed our peace into a continuous raucous. The APC (All People's Congress) nominated their vice-presidential candidate yesterday, who happens to live next door to the HU office. In a combination of celebration and campaigning, he has been throwing a non-stop house party for the last two days and blaring music into the neighborhood.
I went to iEARN for the afternoon and sat in on a discussion Andrew led about the digital divide - it was interesting to see the problem from the "other" side of the divide.
Below a very quick panorama I did of iEARN. Sorry for the terrible stitching together, but it gives a good idea of what the center is like, at least when the generator is not on - as soon as it is fired up, the kids all dash to the computers and the Playstation.
After sending two of the boys to buy batteries since I had forgotten to bring my rechargeables, I taught the writing portion of the family subject. As this blog is about Sierra Leone and not me (well, at least in theory...) I thought I'd include some of the writing my students are doing. The two I've included below are fairly typical stories and are in their original, unedited form:
What makes these kids so amazing is that they go on with life as if everything at home - if they even have one - is perfectly normal. They laugh, they smile, they tell jokes, they read novels, they study biology for their exams and they even ask me about my family - even though they, at the age of 19, might be the only surviving person in their family or are living on the streets, kicked out of the house by their step-mother.
- - -
During our run this morning, Osman stopped by his parent's house and introduced me to his family. He doesn't live with them, but instead with his relatives about a half mile away, which is a very common practice.
His father runs a small mini-market, where they sell the normal goods - freshly baked bread, Laughing Cow Cheese, top up cards for the cell phone companies, FOM! laundry detergent ("Dirts are not attached back!") and palm oil, just to name a few. These stores - the Sierra Leonean equivalent of a gas station convenience store - are everywhere and sell the exact same goods for identical prices - there is very little differentiation. This morning Osman's father sat inside the store surrounded by children as he worked with them on the Arabic alphabet. He teaches Arabic to the neighborhood youth in the mornings; Osman said that if I put my "heart into it and had patience" I could learn Arabic too. I never expected to need Arabic in Sierra Leone, but it would be incredibly useful with the large Islamic and Lebanese populations here. His father doesn't speak English, so it was rather difficult to converse, but I did get to meet the rest of his family. I had to promise to come back soon and visit more, as his mom was dissapointed I didn't stay very long.
Although I had little desire to start running again, Osman dragged me along behind him through the chaos of eastern Freetown's streets. A brand new, very out-of-place Land Cruiser flew down the road (it's more of a market that happens to have cars travel through than a road), sending people scrambling out of the way and scattering their loads of rice, charcoal, cassava, sunglasses, bread, and just about every other good imaginable, all precariously balanced on their heads. We both fell into a pile of sand on the side of the road. Osman just turned around with a grin and said "this is Africa" - as if being in Africa made it all ok.
After breakfast and a taxi ride to HU, I stared at Excel and made spreadsheets to log fuel for the generators and vehicles. We're also trying to track the progress we've made towards the one of the project indicators; specifically, the amount of time it takes between initial radio call for the ambulance and the arrival of the patient at the clinic, so I'm trying to set up a database to monitor if we're succeeding in lowering that time.
HU is usually a quiet office with little of the usual hustle and bustle so common on the streets. However, the upcoming elections have changed our peace into a continuous raucous. The APC (All People's Congress) nominated their vice-presidential candidate yesterday, who happens to live next door to the HU office. In a combination of celebration and campaigning, he has been throwing a non-stop house party for the last two days and blaring music into the neighborhood.
I went to iEARN for the afternoon and sat in on a discussion Andrew led about the digital divide - it was interesting to see the problem from the "other" side of the divide.
Below a very quick panorama I did of iEARN. Sorry for the terrible stitching together, but it gives a good idea of what the center is like, at least when the generator is not on - as soon as it is fired up, the kids all dash to the computers and the Playstation.
After sending two of the boys to buy batteries since I had forgotten to bring my rechargeables, I taught the writing portion of the family subject. As this blog is about Sierra Leone and not me (well, at least in theory...) I thought I'd include some of the writing my students are doing. The two I've included below are fairly typical stories and are in their original, unedited form:
The name of my Family is called the Kamara Family. We are four in numbers. I have two sisters and a brother. One of my sister is a student and she is in Class 6. We are not living together in the same place. I live with my aunty who take good care of me and always wanted me to be a better person in the future. I sometime wish to be together with my mother and father but because of some circumstances we are not together. But am really happy with the way my aunt treat me and I wish she could have been my mother.
- Gbasssay Zealous, Age 22
I am feeling very angry when people ask me about my family because of i have lose them by killing them during the war.
I have 3(three) brothers and 1(one) sister. all of us are not stay together. I am depend on my friend who call Ibrahim Kamara both of are attending the same school, sleeping together and want out to fine our living.
-Musa, 18 years
What makes these kids so amazing is that they go on with life as if everything at home - if they even have one - is perfectly normal. They laugh, they smile, they tell jokes, they read novels, they study biology for their exams and they even ask me about my family - even though they, at the age of 19, might be the only surviving person in their family or are living on the streets, kicked out of the house by their step-mother.
posted by Paul at
1:14 PM
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