Kissy and Grafton [Tuesday, July 17]
My malaria medication-enhanced dreams were interrupted by an intense pounding on my door. I had no desire to move, although the streets outside my window were coming alive. I groggily fought the hinges to open the door to see the ever faithful Osman ready to run. He lives about a mile away, and while we are supposed to meet every morning at the cotton tree, he ususally ends up coming up to my room to wake me up. Today he was a bubble of excitement, as he had proudly told me he had placed tenth in the "marathon" (As the winning time was just under an hour, it was certainly not a full 26.2 mile traditional marathon) last Saturday - he's not a joking around with his running and I'm amazed he puts up with me tagging along every morning.
After panting around the city for 50 minutes, I took a deligtfully cold shower and had the usual bread and tea breakfast. I gave Mohamed money to purchase water and postcards (now I just have to write them - I promise I'll send them eventually, but if they every reach the USA is another matter entirely...). That's one person I'll miss about Sierra Leone - Mohamed does everything for me - he'll shop, do laundry, exchange money, body guard, be a dinner buddy, and a best friend who always has a smile on his face - all at the same time. Whenever he sees me he greets me with a massive "It'sssssssss Paul!" and I shout back "Mohamed!" He's hoping to attend Fouray Bay Collage, but his english score wasn't high enough to qualify him for political science, which is what he wants to study (although he could just read for one of the natural sciences instead) Either way, Fouray Bay costs $900 a semester for classes, not including room and board or books. While that seems practically free compared to college in the United States, Mohamed's family died during the war and the only relative he has left in his aunt, who is in no position herself to assist him with his education. Right now he's works at the YMCA, manning the front desk and cleaning the halls in exchange for a place to sleep every night - he receives no salary, although hopefully that will change when his year-long probationary period ends next month.
Moses arrived at the YMCA around 8 and led Dabney and myself out to Kissy, as I had promised the MCW construction team I would visit the site sometime soon. The three of us walked over to PZ, where there is no disctinction between market and road but rather one chaotic mass of humanity. We bought some frozen yogurt from a young boy pushing a stroller carrying not a baby, but a cooler full of clear plastic bags filled with frozen yoghurt and tied by hand. It tastes so good and only cost Le 500. I also bought a CD called "World Peace" by a artist named Culture...it's the music I expected to hear when coming to Sierra Leone, not the American hip-hop influenced fusion that dominates radio. Anyways, after pushing our way through the terrible congestion of PZ, we relaxed in the poda for the slow ride out to KIssy.
At the MCW site we hung out with the workers and talked with Alfred, the foreman. The construction team is one of the nicest groups of men I've met here - they were making blocks today and they even let Dabney and I make a few with them. They are only making Le 6000 a day - that's $2 - and yet they are quite happy and simply enjoy life. They were all very sad that Nick, the MCW engineer from the US who was supervising the construction, had returned home on Monday, so I promised to come visit again before I left.
Unfortunately, Amanda is running low on money for the Community Center due to a few complications with the donor organizations, so construction effectively halted around 11:30, as Alfred was out of materials and so sent the workers home for the day. Dabney, Moses and I then walked around Kissy and had just bought some roasted corn when the skies opened up and it began to pour. We squeezed under an awning watching the streets fill with water and waiting for the rains to stop, just like everyone else.
We then grabbed a taxi out to Kabala Town and ate lunch before heading out to Grafton to visit the Grafton Polio Orphans home. We interviewed all the kids on video and took a portrait of each of them. I'm always impressed by the children there - they all want to grow up and do normal things - taxi driver, nurse, teacher, pastor, doctor - and if they were in the US, they'd be able to do that. But here in Salone, it's unlikely they will ever be able even go to college. Although there's very little institutionalized, legal support for the disabled, it seems that people - or at least their close friends - here will do what little they can to help them.
I talked about the orphanage more in a entry a few weeks back. Anyways, I'll upload the pictures and video when I get a chance.
Dabney had brought a bag of Starburst from the US so she gave all the children one of the delicious little sweet chewy pieces of happiness before we then returned to Kabala Town and met with Victor. Victor runs two NGO's here in SL - the National Youth Awareness Forum, which is small organization that runs 20 informal schools in the villages upcountry, and is the Sierra Leonean director for IFFDO, a Canadian group that is hoping to fund orphanages for the disabled (Melrose's ophanage is their first project). Victor is an amazingly dedicated Sierra Leoneans who's working to bring Sierra Leone out of the war's devastation, and while the NYAF and IFFDO office is just two bare rooms that seem incredibly lacking by UN / INGO standards, Victor makes his impact felt upcountry. With a three year grant of only $30,000, he has enabled hundreds of village children to complete the first three years of school and learn to read, something they would never have been able to do on their own.
We returned to town via a relaxing poda ride, but traffic was so bad that we ended up just walking the last mile or so though the rain. We went for dinner at Kiemans and then I had a very interesting discussion with Amanda and Adam about development and democracy. As I know there's some people reading this with much more development knowledge & experience than I, I'll pose a question: Is democracy best for development, considering that in Sierra Leone the majority of the people voting - and therefore determining policy (at least in theory) - in that democracy haven't finished primary school?
After panting around the city for 50 minutes, I took a deligtfully cold shower and had the usual bread and tea breakfast. I gave Mohamed money to purchase water and postcards (now I just have to write them - I promise I'll send them eventually, but if they every reach the USA is another matter entirely...). That's one person I'll miss about Sierra Leone - Mohamed does everything for me - he'll shop, do laundry, exchange money, body guard, be a dinner buddy, and a best friend who always has a smile on his face - all at the same time. Whenever he sees me he greets me with a massive "It'sssssssss Paul!" and I shout back "Mohamed!" He's hoping to attend Fouray Bay Collage, but his english score wasn't high enough to qualify him for political science, which is what he wants to study (although he could just read for one of the natural sciences instead) Either way, Fouray Bay costs $900 a semester for classes, not including room and board or books. While that seems practically free compared to college in the United States, Mohamed's family died during the war and the only relative he has left in his aunt, who is in no position herself to assist him with his education. Right now he's works at the YMCA, manning the front desk and cleaning the halls in exchange for a place to sleep every night - he receives no salary, although hopefully that will change when his year-long probationary period ends next month.
Moses arrived at the YMCA around 8 and led Dabney and myself out to Kissy, as I had promised the MCW construction team I would visit the site sometime soon. The three of us walked over to PZ, where there is no disctinction between market and road but rather one chaotic mass of humanity. We bought some frozen yogurt from a young boy pushing a stroller carrying not a baby, but a cooler full of clear plastic bags filled with frozen yoghurt and tied by hand. It tastes so good and only cost Le 500. I also bought a CD called "World Peace" by a artist named Culture...it's the music I expected to hear when coming to Sierra Leone, not the American hip-hop influenced fusion that dominates radio. Anyways, after pushing our way through the terrible congestion of PZ, we relaxed in the poda for the slow ride out to KIssy.
At the MCW site we hung out with the workers and talked with Alfred, the foreman. The construction team is one of the nicest groups of men I've met here - they were making blocks today and they even let Dabney and I make a few with them. They are only making Le 6000 a day - that's $2 - and yet they are quite happy and simply enjoy life. They were all very sad that Nick, the MCW engineer from the US who was supervising the construction, had returned home on Monday, so I promised to come visit again before I left.
Unfortunately, Amanda is running low on money for the Community Center due to a few complications with the donor organizations, so construction effectively halted around 11:30, as Alfred was out of materials and so sent the workers home for the day. Dabney, Moses and I then walked around Kissy and had just bought some roasted corn when the skies opened up and it began to pour. We squeezed under an awning watching the streets fill with water and waiting for the rains to stop, just like everyone else.
We then grabbed a taxi out to Kabala Town and ate lunch before heading out to Grafton to visit the Grafton Polio Orphans home. We interviewed all the kids on video and took a portrait of each of them. I'm always impressed by the children there - they all want to grow up and do normal things - taxi driver, nurse, teacher, pastor, doctor - and if they were in the US, they'd be able to do that. But here in Salone, it's unlikely they will ever be able even go to college. Although there's very little institutionalized, legal support for the disabled, it seems that people - or at least their close friends - here will do what little they can to help them.
I talked about the orphanage more in a entry a few weeks back. Anyways, I'll upload the pictures and video when I get a chance.
Dabney had brought a bag of Starburst from the US so she gave all the children one of the delicious little sweet chewy pieces of happiness before we then returned to Kabala Town and met with Victor. Victor runs two NGO's here in SL - the National Youth Awareness Forum, which is small organization that runs 20 informal schools in the villages upcountry, and is the Sierra Leonean director for IFFDO, a Canadian group that is hoping to fund orphanages for the disabled (Melrose's ophanage is their first project). Victor is an amazingly dedicated Sierra Leoneans who's working to bring Sierra Leone out of the war's devastation, and while the NYAF and IFFDO office is just two bare rooms that seem incredibly lacking by UN / INGO standards, Victor makes his impact felt upcountry. With a three year grant of only $30,000, he has enabled hundreds of village children to complete the first three years of school and learn to read, something they would never have been able to do on their own.
We returned to town via a relaxing poda ride, but traffic was so bad that we ended up just walking the last mile or so though the rain. We went for dinner at Kiemans and then I had a very interesting discussion with Amanda and Adam about development and democracy. As I know there's some people reading this with much more development knowledge & experience than I, I'll pose a question: Is democracy best for development, considering that in Sierra Leone the majority of the people voting - and therefore determining policy (at least in theory) - in that democracy haven't finished primary school?
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1:22 PM
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