daily life

 

I have finished my first week of work, and have settled into some idea of the lifestyle I will live here.  The mornings have been cool and breezy (at least in comparison to the rest of the day) giving me the little incentive I need to start my day with a sunrise run.  I am not the only one to wake up with the sun, many are already out and busily starting their day.

Daily chores take on a whole new meaning here.  Even in my home, with it’s fairly modern westernized appliances.  To wash the dishes requires washing in a bucket of tap water and rinsing with water that has been boiled to be clean.  Although we do have a washing machine, it is small and must be filled with water for each load.  The laundry is then hung out to dry (which in this humidity and during the rainy season is a relative determination).  Then every article of clothing must be ironed to kill the fly eggs that have been laid in the clothing, so they don’t hatch into your skin.  And unfortunately, contrary to my usual behavior, clothes must be washed every time they’re worn unless sweat stains become a new fashion statement and body odor the new perfume.  Sweeping and mopping the dust and dirt that get tracked in or falls from the ceiling as the ceiling ants nibble away must be done every day and food for the guards prepared from scratch. I was a little uncomfortable at first with the idea of having Marie, our wonderful house help, come every day to do the things I feel should be household responsibilities.  But I have quickly discovered that if she did not, we would spend the extent of our days cleaning, instead of working for and loving on the people we have come to this country to serve.  Also, for Marie this is much-needed employment.  A job that means life for her and her family, although it costs us little.

And while we are so taken care of by Marie, we are also protected by Mohammad, the day guard, and Ali and Jr., the night guards.  Our house is considered a compound because it is surrounded with high walls and barbed wire.  We have a very large iron gate with a little door to walk through.  The guards are wonderfully friendly.  I feel extremely safe.  There is a compound just up the road that has been abandoned since the war.  Over the wall, you can see bullet holes in the upstairs windows.  Reminders of the war are everywhere, although it’s hard to know what was destroyed by the rebels and what has been destroyed by this harsh climate.  The heat, humidity and heavy rains make it difficult for anything to last.

When I leave the house for work at 8:15 I take the path less traveled, at least by vehicles.  The road is so steep and broken leading down, I don’t think a car would make it if it tried.  I have begun to recognize the same faces I will pass every morning with a ‘good morning!’ and a ‘how de bodi?’  ‘Fine, fine’ or ‘to go tanki’ is the correct reply.  When I get down to Wilkinson Road, it is busy with traffic and people with places to go.  The market stands have started to open up selling fruit, vegetables, bread, eggs, candy, soda, phone credit and other random things.  And the day is filled with horns that interrupt the voices and street sounds.  The roads may be dirty, but they are so colorful.  Women wrapped in lapas of every shade and pattern with bright bowls filled with anything and everything atop their heads.  Market stalls painted in bright orange, pink, yellow and blue. Taxis and poda podas (old van-like mini-buses) with mismatched doors, bright yellow hoods and hand painted sayings scribbled across the back usually claiming praises to Jesus, Allah or Manchester United. 

The colorful street is matched by the colorful voices that sing shamelessly out at the start of each day in the office, a beautiful dissonance of clanging voices calling out praises to God.  We meet at the FAAST (Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking) staff at our office just off Wilkinson Road at 8:30 am for devotions.  It is a time of singing praises and listening to the Word brought by a different staff member each morning.  It has been a time of learning about my colleagues and their own, sometimes different, cultural perspectives of the same God whom we love and serve. 

I have mixed feelings about being back in an office environment.  While it is not quite the business suit professional high-rise office experience that I had in DC, it is very customary for Sierra Leoneans to dress quite “smart” for their jobs and although the atmosphere is relaxed, I still find it hard to be indoors all day sitting on possibly the least comfortable chairs possible until the work day ends at 5.

I have started organizing my thoughts and ideas about the work I will do throughout my time here.  While I will be writing alot of stories and have started talking with the staff about some ideas, I am also recognizing the importance of the communications training I will be doing.  I am thinking that to best benefit the program long-term I want to develop the training manual and conduct the training early on in my time so that the staff can work on writing stories themselves while I’m here to coach them and edit.

During my workday I have also started Kiro lessons.  The language seems relatively easy since it has so many similarities to a sort of pidgin English.  It was created when Freetown was the British colony of Freedom, where slaves who were pardoned from the Americas and Britain were taken.  These slaves brought back broken American English and broken British English, which mixed with the local tribal languages.  It actually seems much more practical and simple than the English we speak, using more phonetic ways of spelling and speaking and structuring sentences.  For example, the common greeting ‘how are you?’ is asked ‘ow de bodi?’ (how is your body) And verbs and nouns never change tense, just a tense indicator before it.  For example, ‘a don go to Freetown’ is ‘I went to Freetown.’ Simple, beautiful, messy, chaos. 

While proper English is spoken and taught in all schools, anyone with even a little education knows English.  But learning Krio will help me to understand everyday talk and will help me establish mutual respect with people.  They love it when I try, although they think it’s pretty funny.  Everyone here truly is extremely friendly and always wears a smile.  

Well, except maybe all the people crammed into the tiny taxi cab I take home. Transportation in Freetown is a crazy experience in and of itself that I will try my best to explain, but to be honest, it is an experience you just need to have someday.  You will never complain about traffic, bad drivers or road rage ever again. The taxis run more as public transportation than taxis we are used to, on specific routes yet not always so specific, more like specific directions.  They will cram in as many people as possible and pick more up on the way who are going in the same direction.  There is one-way transport, which will take you a specific distance (although you can get out anywhere along the way but you still pay the 800 leones one-way fare approximately 25 cents).  Then you catch another taxi to go the next leg of the journey, unless the driver is willing to take you two-way (for an additional 800 leones) which usually only happens if someone else is traveling that direction as well, if there is someone else to pick up or if you offer him more money.  In other words, lots of people cram into cars that drive way too fast on extremely crowded streets yelling and pointing in different directions, driving on every side of the road, and never looking to see if someone is coming before weaving in and out of the mess.  I heard someone say that you just worry about what’s in front of you and honk to let anyone and everyone know you're there.  You never worry about what’s behind you because they will worry about you. I just hope and pray to get in the general area of where I am going.  Poda-podas are similar, except they are vans that cram even more people in making the driver have an even harder time hearing.  It is an experience I have not had yet, and may try to avoid.  They may be cheaper, but for 50 cents, a taxi ride home is enough of an adventure for me. 

Whew!  I’ll save the after work adventures for another time.  But as promised, here are a few pictures of my daily life in Sierra Leone. (I added some photos to the previous post as well)

 

 

The FAAST office and Anti-slavery advocacy posters.

 

 

 

Beautiful beaches (River #2)...

 

 

 

and beautiful new friends.

i take a breath

...further excerpts from my journal the past few days...

I am standing at the front of this little cement building, one room filled with plastic lawn chairs.  About twenty or so faces stare back at me, half of them children.  I am the only white face.  It is the end of the service at Wilberforce Christian Church.  We have sung, clapped, prayed and praised the Lord with Alleluias and Amen’s!  The children are a bit fidgety in the front row, but they are quiet.  The baby suckling at her mother’s bare breast hasn’t made a sound the entire three hours we have been here.  Now all eyes are on me.  The only white girl, the only visitor.  The pastor’s wife (who has presumptuously taken over the role of pastor) introduces me and praises the Lord that I am there.  She prays and then proceeds to make the entire congregation come up row by row and shake my hand.  I am an outsider.  But I feel welcome.

Letty takes my hand as we walk outside.  Gwen (my house mate) helped round up the neighbor kids she has been trying to get to come with her to church.  Gwen had another church commitment this morning, but the children knew where to go.  Aminata, Katiatu, Letty, Elizabet, Salina, Isaac and Tomba.  Isaac and Tomba I knew already because they come to our compound to work on their homework with Mohammad, the day guard. But the others didn’t seem to mind that this was our first meeting.  I feel so much more comfortable walking down the road hand in hand with them.  It is as if I have been accepted.  As if I am known.

We come back to my house as has become the routine after church with "Auntie Gwen," as they call her.  The children sit and read the only books most of them ever get to hold and read themselves.  Old, ripped, discarded and donated.  Books kids in America deemed unfit. 

Me and some of the neighbor kids.

***

Right now I sit and am mesmerized by my surroundings.  I am on the balcony of my home, a palace in comparison to the many small tin and dirt shacks that paint the hill side brilliant shades of yellow, red, and blue—nestled between the lush deep green collage of the rainy season.  I am not in the only palace on this hill, the west side of town, and not a palace by any stretch of the word in western terms—but a palace, nonetheless, in this country.

The sun is setting out over the expanse of ocean beyond the foliage collage.  Caribbean music is playing from somewhere below me and I can smell something cooking over an open fire.  The thermometer reads a pleasant 83 degrees and a nice cool breeze sways the branches of the tree that hints a smell of lavender.  It feels good on my cool, freshly showered skin and wet hair.  I do not mind having no hot water, I wouldn’t use it if I did.  Especially after the run Gwen and I went on this evening.  Living on the hill creates a beautifully breathtaking view, but makes for a killer hill to run up.  The people we pass give greetings of kushe or how de bodi? Kiro for hello, how's your body? Some even join in for a few steps.  The cars passing by come frighteningly close, giving only a honk as fair warning as to evade any responsibility if they swipe you with a mirror.  I will learn this community.  The faces.  The names.  The lives.

The view from my balcony...this picture does not do justice - I will take another

***

I am taking a breath.  Slow and deep, after a wonderfully full four days.  My spirit is overwhelmed, maybe overflowing is a better way of saying it.

I have already seen many faces of Sierra Leone and I am basking in the warm glow of it. Friday was filled with the joys of children singing, contrasting the harsh noisy reality of life in the city of Freetown.  I will not officially start work until Tuesday, after Ramada, the Muslim holiday.  My housemate Gwen, a women who has committed her young adult life to the mission field, seeking to bring transformation into the lives of Sierra Leoneans through transformation of their education system (her organization is called Transformation Education), has introduced me to this life, to the city, to its people.  But she is more than a guide, she has become a friend.  

I traveled with her to Freetown proper and the east side of the city.  This is where the ex-pats do not live, or at merely a few at most.  Where the famous cotton tree stands, the once symbol of freedom.  Where industry meets primitive living just as the hillside meets the coast, tumbling over itself and spilling into the murky depths. 

The streets are filled with cars and busses.  People selling anything and everything they can balance atop their heads. As we leave the main road and head up into the hills, we enter into village life.  Children bathing in the natural spring, rejoicing in the cool water that will soon dry up forcing them to seek another water source at the bottom of the mountain.  The sounds of joyful splashing will be muted by the long treck to the bottom and an even longer treck back up with full buckets of waters balanced a top the heads of women and children.  A bucket to wash, drink and cook.  A bucket to sustain life.  The ground is littered in trash, runoff from those living above.  As we climb, the road becomes less road and more pot hole, the area between the holes getting thinner and thinner.  Gwen’s 4x4 bounds along until we can go no further, so we get out to walk.

We are visiting Mother Ester’s Preparatory School, one of the schools Gwen works with.  We are greeted by a welcome of praise songs and chants as the children open their day with an “assembly.”  Each one can steal my heart away with a simple smile or touch of my hand. 

I taught in Prep III.  Just a simple book and song about storms.  They love to sing and to raise their hands regardless of whether they know the answer.  Mother Ester is an incredible women who has transformed this community.  She and her husband pastor a church and have started this school.  They are beautiful pictures of hope and of promise. 

***

As I sit and think back over these last few days, it sinks in more and more that this is the lifestyle I have always found myself daydreaming about living.  A lifestyle I have felt both excited and fearful to live.  Not admittedly fearful of the lack of amenities, the color of my skin, cultural differences, political instability, safety risks or any of the unknown—but under the surface, fearful of these very things which excite me.

from my journal...day one

...taken from my journal, Thursday morning...

The rooster is crowing and I can hear children playing outside—shouting things I can’t understand.  But laughter, the sound of happiness, is universal.

It takes me a moment to realize the white cloud I’m enshrouded in is just my mosquito netting.  My face is a little damp.  My whole body is a little damp.  I think dampness must become my friend.  Otherwise it will be a constant unwelcome companion—and who wants someone annoying hanging around all the time?  The dampness does bring the mosquitoes, which are annoying—which reminds me, malaria meds time.  The sooner I take it in the AM on an empty stomach, the sooner I can eat breaky.  Sometimes it makes me think my body is fighting the war against the malaria right then and there.  But my body will win, the nausea will pass.  It’s amazing to me how the one tiny tablet, seemingly insignificant, smaller than a frosted flake, could protect me from the #1 cause of death in Africa. 

And I have it. 

I paid fifty cents a day for it.  I fundraised and got donations for it.  But why me?  Why me and not the feverous boy on the streets just on the other side of town?  Why me and not the mother of five who can no longer work because of her violent fever shakes so strong sometimes she can't stand to fold the laundry.  Why me and not the millions more who deserve it just as much?  This is the first of many of these questions.  Questions that will be strung together like heavy beads on a frail chain.  Brilliantly colorful beads that reflect light and create dancing images of different colors flying through the room.  Beads that are so old, their origin is unknown.  Beads that are sometimes seen as a nuisance because of their heaviness, the weight they carry.

Those that have, those that have not.  Those that are healthy, those that are not.  Those that are safe, those that are not.  Those that welcome destiny, dreams, futures…and those that welcome food on the table and can’t see past that which will sustain them one more day.  Why me?

As I rose above the clouds of London on my way here, I realized I was leaving a world of haves, a world I am used to.  A world of organization, of order.  A world I can understand and predict.  A world of $5 coffee, designer jeans, make up, do ups, whatever ups.  Street cleaners and park cleaners whose job is to make the trash and themselves invisible.  I leave my clean, pristine, organized, routine, complicated life—for one much simpler. 

It is now 7:30 am and I hear the world is alive outside, not just the rooster.

I am tired.  I don’t even know what time it is at home.  But I am excited.  To see my new life splashed with daylight, colored in—and maybe not all within the lines.  Maybe a little messier than I am used to.  The simple beauty of a painting that does not claim perfectionism—but rather realism.  Because life here is messy.  Life everywhere is messy, but here they don’t try as hard to complicate it by making it look neat and put together.  Simple, beautiful, messy, chaos.

But will my heart be content?  Will my selfish, egocentric, instant gratification seeking heart be content?

It is 8 am.  The NPA just left the country.  No, not some political group.  Just the National Power Authority which rations the country's power to different areas at different times everyday without warning.  To most in this country, they will barely notice.  Simple, beautiful, messy, chaos. 

I take off the heavy string of questions that hang inquisitively around my neck.

It is time for a cup of coffee and the beginning of a brand new day, a brand new story.

I have arrived!

11:30pm Sierra Leonean time. I stepped through the door of my new house after 24 hours of planes, airports and speed boats!  It has already proven to be a beautiful country full of beautiful and friendly people. I feel so at home already.  I promise to write more later...I just wanted to let everyone know I have arrived! 

The journey begins.

Fundraising.  I dreaded the thought of asking people for money, especially people who I know don’t have much to spare.  But when given this opportunity to do exactly what I have dreamed of doing—to help the voices of the oppressed be heard throughout the world, ringing truth about the plight so many face and so many ignore—fundraising seemed like a cowardly obstacle to let stand in my way.  Yet as my projected time of departure neared, the daunting task of fundraising grew simultaneously with my love for a country I’d never been and a people I’ve never known.

Humbling? Yes.  While most people graduate from college and get their first “real” job with a salary and benefits, here I am with my dream job trying to figure out how to raise $13,000 to support myself for the next six months.  Sure I believe the cause is good and the work is necessary.  And I truly believe God has brought me into this opportunity and therefore I truly believe, in my head, that I should trust Him to provide.  But the reality of how to actually come up with $13,000 by mid-August just seemed impossible.  Trusting God to provide meant trusting people would give me money when I asked…which meant I had to ask.

So here I was.  My job in DC had finished in June, I moved out of my cute little row house and into a backpack, and I had enough in savings to get my fund started.  Now I only had two months and $10,000 between me and Sierra Leone.

***

It is now the end of August and while I went into this summer anxious for it to be over, funds to be raised and for the journey to really begin, I have realized that it already has.  The last few months have blessed me more than I ever anticipated and prepared me in ways I didn’t realize I would come to rely on.  In an attempt to find ways of fundraising without the traditional support letter, I “cris”-crossed (as I like to call it) the US planning events that would allow me to spend time with family and friends, share about what I am setting out to do, and hopefully raise a little money.

I was excited at the idea of connecting with people from so many seasons of my life but had no preconceived notion of how blessed I would be by every one of them.  From a Farewell Fundraising Picnic in Edmonds with my dearest family and friends I’ve known my whole life, to a Freetown Field Day Fundraiser in DC with friends I’ve known less than a year, to beautiful new friends I met while speaking at churches in Edmonds and Chelan—I have been left utterly speechless at the generosity, support and encouragement I have received at each of these events.  With games and raffle tickets I expected to raise a few hundred dollars at each event and instead walked away with thousands.

My mind is left buzzing, wondering how I can ever thank my supporters for this kind of sacrifice.  And my heart is bursting with the realization of the love and faith all of these people have for me and what God will do through me in Sierra Leone.  While the monetary funds are an easy way to measure support, what is even so much more meaningful and overwhelming is the love and prayers behind these gifts.

I am not only encouraged in God’s faithfulness and His ability to provide for me, I am inspired by the faithfulness and trust my family and friends have that God will provide for them when they make this sacrifice for me.

While I am not quite to my goal, I have no doubt that the funds will come and all will be provided.  But what has really changed my heart is realizing how much more prepared I am to go, knowing that so many are praying for me with complete faith.  Where my faith falls short, it is made up for in leaps and bounds.  While packing lists and immunizations, research and fundraising are all necessary in preparing for this journey to Sierra Leone, it is this true understanding that I am not going alone, but with an army of prayer and support along side me, that has truly been my preparation.

I am going to Sierra Leone to be a voice for the voiceless, to help those who are oppressed and abandoned to tell their story.  Yet what I am realizing, is that my own story is also being written.