"No Justice for the Poor" [Friday, July 20]
The apprentice had to compete with the music blasting out of the poda as he shouted out the poda's destination with the standard "Lum-Lum-Lum-Lum-Lumley!" A nod of my head and a few seconds later the poda pulled over and screeched to a halt. I clambered into the back seat by the open window, leaving the middle three steel and wooden bench seats for someone else - most people don't seem to mind being squeezed into the middle of an airless, stuffy poda, but I'm a big fan of the open window (which often means feeling the rain on my face as well).
I looked around a poda filled with people, staring straight ahead or off into space. No one talked unless it was to tell the apprentice to stop the poda and let them out.
A rosary and a palm tree shaped air freshener in American flag stripes and stars both twisted around each other as they dangled from the rear view mirror. Behind them, the windshield was covered with spidery fractures into the far corners of the glass emanating from a rock-windshield collision.
A "No food for lazy man" sticker shared space above the door with a "No justice for the poor" sticker. Through the window just below the stickers, a crippled hobbled about, eyes silently pleading at me as I gazed behind him at the rest of the busy street. Someone threw a coin out the window and the cripple crawled over to it, his hands pouncing on the 100 leone coin just before it rolled into the sewer.
Trees sprouted up from seemingly vacant grounds in between houses and businesses. Nothing unusual, until I saw the trees were growing inside the concrete shells of buildings scarred black by the rebel invasion almost a decade ago. Sometimes it is difficult to believe that Sierra Leone has received millions of dollars of funding for reconstruction when isolated parts of the city look as if civilization departed years ago, leaving its remnants to be slowly recaptured by nature's unchallenged growth.
The poda finally left congestion of town behind and we flew by Africell billboards proclaiming "yu fri fo tok til yu taya!" as we traversed the "Peace Bridge" over the Congo Valley River, which is not really a river but rather an aqueous mixture of trash and humanity clinging on for life as the torrential rain washes everything out to the sea.
We reached the more affluent western portion of town, where an influx of NGO spending on their Freetown country headquarter offices has largely masked the impact of the war. We went past concrete walls, graffied with "Stick no bill" and sprawling invitations for house parties of last year and plastered with campaign posters. We reached Aberdeen Junction, where I handed the apprentice Le 800 and ventured out into the rain for my walk to the Health Unlimited office, where we are safely isolated from the people we're trying to help with looming concrete walls painted with the HU logo and the EU, our principle donor, and topped with rolls of razor wire.
- - - - - - -
After a morning at HU and an egg sandwich at Marianella, I spent the afternoon to iEARN for the afternoon. The new intern, Leigh, a law student from the UK, walked into the center - somehow his arrival details never reached anyone at iEARN and so no one went to the airport to pick him up. Despite that, he managed to successfully navigate his way to iEARN by himself. My project is progressing ever so slowly - I expected to be where we are today five weeks ago - but hopefully I'll be able to pull the loose ends together in time for an exhibition, although the election chaos isn't exactly beneficial. I've spent the last week working with my students to select five pictures that they want to print, and barring any other complications, we should have an exhibition the first or second week of August.
Alpha sorting his pictures
Dabney and I ended up walking home to iEARN with two of our students, although it did pour for a bit, so we had to wait under an overhang for a bit. We went to Choitram's to buy Ramen noodles, juice and milk for Adam, who had just returned from the hospital and wanted . Osman, my running partner, visited me at the Y and gave me a picture of him from his 10th place finish at the race the previous weekend. He also brought a map of the race - I was trying to find out how far it was - but the map was just a list of street names, not the color-coded geographical course map I was expecting - but I guess they both serve the same purpose. Anyways, he joined us for a candlelit dinner of vegetable sandwiches at the Y, as the generator decided to give up in a giant cloud of black smoke.
I looked around a poda filled with people, staring straight ahead or off into space. No one talked unless it was to tell the apprentice to stop the poda and let them out.
A rosary and a palm tree shaped air freshener in American flag stripes and stars both twisted around each other as they dangled from the rear view mirror. Behind them, the windshield was covered with spidery fractures into the far corners of the glass emanating from a rock-windshield collision.
A "No food for lazy man" sticker shared space above the door with a "No justice for the poor" sticker. Through the window just below the stickers, a crippled hobbled about, eyes silently pleading at me as I gazed behind him at the rest of the busy street. Someone threw a coin out the window and the cripple crawled over to it, his hands pouncing on the 100 leone coin just before it rolled into the sewer.
Trees sprouted up from seemingly vacant grounds in between houses and businesses. Nothing unusual, until I saw the trees were growing inside the concrete shells of buildings scarred black by the rebel invasion almost a decade ago. Sometimes it is difficult to believe that Sierra Leone has received millions of dollars of funding for reconstruction when isolated parts of the city look as if civilization departed years ago, leaving its remnants to be slowly recaptured by nature's unchallenged growth.
The poda finally left congestion of town behind and we flew by Africell billboards proclaiming "yu fri fo tok til yu taya!" as we traversed the "Peace Bridge" over the Congo Valley River, which is not really a river but rather an aqueous mixture of trash and humanity clinging on for life as the torrential rain washes everything out to the sea.
We reached the more affluent western portion of town, where an influx of NGO spending on their Freetown country headquarter offices has largely masked the impact of the war. We went past concrete walls, graffied with "Stick no bill" and sprawling invitations for house parties of last year and plastered with campaign posters. We reached Aberdeen Junction, where I handed the apprentice Le 800 and ventured out into the rain for my walk to the Health Unlimited office, where we are safely isolated from the people we're trying to help with looming concrete walls painted with the HU logo and the EU, our principle donor, and topped with rolls of razor wire.
- - - - - - -
After a morning at HU and an egg sandwich at Marianella, I spent the afternoon to iEARN for the afternoon. The new intern, Leigh, a law student from the UK, walked into the center - somehow his arrival details never reached anyone at iEARN and so no one went to the airport to pick him up. Despite that, he managed to successfully navigate his way to iEARN by himself. My project is progressing ever so slowly - I expected to be where we are today five weeks ago - but hopefully I'll be able to pull the loose ends together in time for an exhibition, although the election chaos isn't exactly beneficial. I've spent the last week working with my students to select five pictures that they want to print, and barring any other complications, we should have an exhibition the first or second week of August.
Alpha sorting his pictures
Dabney and I ended up walking home to iEARN with two of our students, although it did pour for a bit, so we had to wait under an overhang for a bit. We went to Choitram's to buy Ramen noodles, juice and milk for Adam, who had just returned from the hospital and wanted . Osman, my running partner, visited me at the Y and gave me a picture of him from his 10th place finish at the race the previous weekend. He also brought a map of the race - I was trying to find out how far it was - but the map was just a list of street names, not the color-coded geographical course map I was expecting - but I guess they both serve the same purpose. Anyways, he joined us for a candlelit dinner of vegetable sandwiches at the Y, as the generator decided to give up in a giant cloud of black smoke.
posted by Paul at
11:51 AM
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