Salone Skul Dem [Salone Schools] – Part 1

Post by Lara

9/25/12

By request, I’m starting a new series on schools in Salone- similarities and differences to US schools, and hopefully I’ll be able to give you a good idea of how I spend most of my days now that the school year has begun.  Today I’ll describe the physical layout of the school property as well as the buildings and classrooms.

The view of Kevin's school (St. Joseph TVSS) from the top of the water tower

One of our fellow volunteers told me early on that schools here remind her of the schools in her hometown in California.  That being said, they look almost nothing like the schools that I attended in Ohio growing up. Something about below zero weather during part of the year seems to result in Ohio schools being built enclosed with strong roofs and heaters and well-sealable windows.  Schools here are often open campuses with classroom buildings separated by green space or gravel rather than enclosed buildings.  The buildings are built from concrete or blocks, and usually are painted (my school is not- it’s built of textured stone blocks instead).  Students meet in the middle of the school grounds for morning assembly before going to class, so the meeting space is usually big enough for a few hundred students.  In my own school which was built by Christian missionaries, the assembly takes place in the chapel.

The Chapel at Centennial Secondary School (Lara's school)

Inside the classroom, the windows seldom have glass (it’s too hot here to warrant closing the windows anyway), and the room is generally big enough to pack 50-100 students in, 3 to a bench-seat.  The chalkboard may or may not be a board—sometimes it’s just a rectangle of black paint on the wall, other times it’s a painted board nailed to the wall.  Between the not-so-freshly-painted chalkboards and the open windows, glare can be a serious issue at times. Some teachers I know bring cloth to hang over the windows when the sun is coming in directly to cut down on blackboard glare; others only use the part of the board that is readable.  This is a difficult constraint to deal with because students here seldom have textbooks, so whatever the teacher gives as notes serves as the textbook for the class. 

A senior secondary classroom at CSS

Just like in the states, schools here have a crest, school colors, a song, a motto, a uniform, and other defining characteristics. At my secondary school, Junior Secondary [junior high] girls wear a blue dress trimmed with white and boys wear a white button-down shirt and khaki shorts.  Senior Secondary [high school] girls wear a white button-down shirt and a blue skirt, and boys wear white button-down shirts and khaki shorts or pants.  The white button-down shirts are stamped with the school crest.  All students wear white socks and black shoes.  At Kevin’s school, the uniform is similar but boys wear blue shorts or pants.  The uniforms are made by local tailors (almost always men) who work on foot-pedal sewing machines.  Students must come to school in proper uniforms or they risk being punished or sent home—pretty similar to my Catholic high school.  Kevin’s school has gone a step past uniforms and requires that girls not have more than 10 braids in their hair at school.

Construction of a new building at TVSS

The schools that we have seen in Sierra Leone tend to be well-cared for, though the condition of the paint and facilities varies greatly.  Some schools were clearly painted within the last year, whereas others have taken a beating from at least one rainy season, which is enough to leave buildings looking much more worn than a year of Ohio weather does.  Rainy season also causes the “bush” to grow up on the school grounds in a crazy way.  A few weeks in Salone rainy season will cause un-cut brush to grow up like a whole summer without mowing in Ohio.  Also, when they decide to clear the brush, they do so by hand with a cutlass. It’s slow-going, to say the least, but I’ve been amazed at the industrious way that Sierra Leoneans attack brush here—they are aware that tall grass provides a breeding ground for mosquitoes, so they try to stay on top of things.

A lot of schools, though not all, have a library. We are both lucky enough to have libraries at our schools, and Kevin’s has brand-spanking-new books that were donated from the states.  Our school is also working with an Engineers Without Borders group from Pennsylvania to start up a computer lab, which may be running by sometime next year.  There is no “gym” usually, but we have a football field and sports take up a significant part of the year.  Our school grounds also include space for agricultural classes to hold “practicals” and learn best practices for planting and tending crops here.  Since my school was built in the 50s, it has a number of half-century-old trees that shade the campus, many of which are mango trees.

A CSS volleyball match

Hopefully that gives you a fairly good idea of the physical aspect of Salone schools. I want to write some more posts describing policies and procedures, the syllabi, standardized exams, and other notable similarities and differences between schools in the US and Salone.  I hope to post a photo or two of the schools sometime.  Feel free to post any questions you’ve got. Thanks!

Tek Tem Book Review #2: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Post by Lara

12 September 2012

Since we moved to site on August 19^th, I have read 6 books front to back. I’m not sure I’m going to manage to write a review for each of them, but I’ll do my best.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson is the first book I read here at site, and it certainly was a fun read.  I feel like this is one of those books that everyone managed to read before me. I remember my college bookstore was full of Stieg Larsson novels during my time there, and I always planned to read it, but just never got around to it until I found myself living in Africa with a wealth of time on my hands.

The setting and plot of the novel differ with my current situation in just about every way: it takes place in Sweden, where the weather is cold and days get way longer and shorter depending on the time of year, and it involves a twisted and dangerous mystery with violent crime at its center.  Being about 7 degrees from the equator, our days hardly shorten or lengthen at all, and obviously it’s generally hot here. Also, we don’t have a grocer within walking distance or a train to take us to a major city in a matter of a few hours [quick side note: our most recent trip to Bo, 54 miles away, took us 28 hours one way!]   Also, life here in our small town in Mende land, Sierra Leone is pretty far from dangerous. It’s not that crime doesn’t exist, but most of the people here spend a very large portion of their time doing things like washing clothes by hand, keeping track of livestock, and cooking their next meal over a fire. There’s no local newspaper that I’m aware of, and the local police seem to spend a lot of their time waiting for something interesting to happen.  That being said, much of the action in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo takes place in a small island community where nearly everyone belongs to the same family, which is not far from the reality in our town.   Furthermore, the male main character, Mikael Blomkvist, is an outsider in this small community— needless to say, I felt like we had some things in common as I read the novel.

Beyond the setting of the novel, the plot is complex, violent, and intriguing.  Mr. Larsson gives different sections of the novel their own title pages, and on these pages he lists a fact about sexual violence in Sweden, such as the percentage of Swedish women who say they have been threatened by a man.  Without going into too much detail, I’ll point out that at least two of the female main characters are victims of sexual abuse, and the novel does not shy away from detailing their suffering.  In this sphere, I would like to point out a few parallels to life here in Salone and at home in the states.  Sexual abuse and rape are considered important topics here in Sierra Leone, especially in the wake of a violent civil war where rape was used as a weapon against many women and girls.  Now, a decade after the official end of the war, the focus has shifted to teenage pregnancy, which often prevents girls from finishing school or sitting exams.  The issues that face girls and women in Sierra Leone in this sphere are really quite similar to those that plague Swedish and American girls as well. 

Another interesting thing about reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in Sierra Leone is that the internet plays a vital role in the movement of the plot, and numerous characters rely on the constant availability of the web.  This is something I may not have noticed if I read the book in the states, but here where I have to pay Le 8,000-16,000 per hour as well as cross all my fingers and toes in order to be able to check my email and possibly my Facebook page, I was acutely aware that the way the characters relied on being able to search the web or access a bank account online, etc. was quite different from the range of things I am able to do online here. 

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and look forward to reading the next two books in the series.  For anyone who is considering reading it, please bear in mind that I may have glossed over the depth of the violence that the novel contains, and also being a murder mystery it tended to bring out a bit of paranoia in me while I was reading it. That being said, it’s a very well-written book and in my opinion the author has done a fantastic job of tying the fictitious events of the novel to the real-life threats that face women in Sweden—and everywhere—with regard to sexual health and freedom. 

Mende Language Post #2

Post by Lara

25 August 2012

One of the first things we learned in Mende class proved to be one of the hardest things for me to get used to about the language, and that is how to say “yes” and “no”.  In Mende, the vowel sounds “ah,” and “oh,” as well as the consonant sound “mm” all function as “yes”.  To say “no,” just double the sound: “Ah-ah,” “oh-oh,” “mm-mm”.  So when asked a yes-or-no question, you can simply respond with either one syllable or two:

“Bi hinii mia?”                    [“Is that your husband?”]

“Oh.”                                     [“Yes”]

“Ndengaa lo wu yeya?” [“Do you have children?”]

“Ah-ah”                                                [“No”]

Seems simple enough, right?  But for whatever reason, that has taken me about a month to figure out and be able to use on the streets. Now comes the actual tough part. While it has such simple ways to say the words “yes” and “no,” Mende is not so easy when it comes to making positive and negative versions of a sentence. For one, the entire pronoun/verb changes based on whether it’s positive or negative, but to make things even more confusing for us learners, the change in pronouns/verbs is often just the doubling of a vowel sound [“Ngi” vs. “Ngii” for “I am” and “I am not,” for instance].  To make sure that the person you are talking to knows whether you are speaking in positive or negative terms, you can either nod your head “yes” while you speak or shake your head “no”.  As an example, check out the two sentences below:

“Ngi ko lo”                           [“I know it”]

“Ngii ko”                              [I don’t know]

I’m fairly certain that Mende is the first language I’ve ever studied where you use more syllables to say that you don’t know something than to say that you know it.  Very interesting indeed. We’re still working our way through figuring out positives and negatives, and in the meantime we’re practicing our “oh”s and “oh-oh”s in the marketplace.  When we take our [awesome, shiny, new] Trek bikes out into town, we have to do a lot of “oh-oh”s as people left and right ask us to give them our bikes. We’ve been moderately successful at explaining that since Peace Corps doesn’t let us ride motorbikes, they give us very nice bicycles to compensate. It’s still a bit strange to be asked to give someone your very expensive bicycle every time you take it for a ride.

Thanks for reading! If anyone has any requests for blog topics, please leave them in the comments section or email them to one of us. We’ve got a few in the works, but it’s becoming a bit more difficult to decide what to write about as life here in Salone becomes more normal for us. 

Our neighbor kid, Musa, who always has a smile on

Review of Electronics (3 Months)

 Post By Kevin

Acer Aspire One

This computer has been the greatest thing we have brought to Africa in my opinion.  As far as capabilities, this computer is great for watching movies and writing blog posts.  By American standards, the processing power is not great, but by African standards, it serves just fine.  We are able to get on Skype in the internet cafes (kind of) and it’s great to have the integrated camera.  The battery has been phenomenal.  We have been able to get around 6 hours of video watching out of one full charge.  I’m slightly concerned about the humidity here.  I have noticed that most of my other rechargeable batteries have been not working so well, and I think that’s to blame.  But after two months, I have noticed no problems. 

Kindle

Having a way to read 1600 books without having a massive book shelf is so wonderful.  The Peace Corps group before us has been generous enough to put all of the books on a flash drive and share them with us.  This has given me quick access to all the books I wanted to read but was never able to.  There has been one hiccup that we have not been able to figure out yet.  The E-Ink seems to have been bleeding and making it quite difficult to read (and getting worse).  I have heard that humidity could be to blame, but it could also be something that has pushed on the screen.  We have not figured it out yet though.  Lara called Amazon about the e-ink and they sent her a replacement Kindle, since it was still under warranty.  We are awaiting the replacement soon, at which point we’ll get back to chipping away at the giant pile of books waiting for us.  In the meantime, if you are wanting to send us an expensive present (pending that we receive packages safely), I would love to have more than one Kindle here.  For anyone looking to bring a Kindle on a trip to Sub-Saharan Africa or anywhere with high humidity, we recommend keeping it in a Ziplock bag (with silica gel packets if possible) or if you’re really fancy, a Pelican case that can be bought at R.E.I. whenever you’re not reading it. That’s our plan, and we’ll update in a few months on how it’s going.

Hybridlight (Solar Flashlight)

This solar flashlight is a great idea, but I am unsure of its practicality.  First things first, it claims to be waterproof, however when I tried to open the battery case, the plastic that protects the solar panel pulled away from the case and seems to have opened the “waterproof” part of the case.  Now when I place it in the sun you can see the condensation build up on the clear plastic.  Secondly, I’m not sure how long the battery is supposed to last on 8 hours of full sun, but it does not seem to last very long (possible humidity problem since it’s obviously not waterproof).  Lastly, the backup batteries that come with the flashlight are the very expensive, very hard to come by, flat batteries.  This is not very feasible for Africa where they only get their batteries from China.

TechLite Lumen Master (Flashlight)

This is a freaking awesome flashlight.  It is the brightest thing that we have brought here and it runs on AAA batteries.  Unfortunately I have not had a chance to replace the batteries because they have been eaten up by all of the other flashlights we’ve been using.  Sometimes, I don’t want the amazing amount of bright light that it exhumes and there’s no way to tone it down unfortunately.  But all in all, it is a great thing to have in a place that does not have street lights.

Voyager Pro by Kaito (AM/FM//Weatherband/Shortwave Radio)

This radio has so many really cool options that I want to talk about.  It has a solar charger, a crank charger, charges using USB input, charges by using AC input, and lastly charges the internal batteries by using the AAA batteries (all of which can in turn charge an iPod or mp3 player [theoretically- I haven’t tried]).  On the backside of the solar panel (which flips up) there is a string of five LED lights that are perfect for eating dinner or grading papers.  There is also a flashlight that makes it easy to look for something directly.  As far as functions on the radio, there are two alarms that can be set and an auto off function that can be set for anywhere up to 1.5 hours after the alarm goes off.  There are also 100 different presets you can program if you would like, but since there is also a number pad on the front of the radio, you could just punch in the radio station you desire.  This radio transmits AM, FM, Weather Band, and Shortwave.  If there were weather band stations in Sierra Leone, I could use the “Alert” function which would make the radio turn on any time there is a weather emergency broadcasting on the weather band.  There is also really good reception where we are in the Bo area, and the radio has a thermometer and barometer on it. 

It seems like for every good thing about this radio though, there is a bad thing.  For one, the first time I used the hand-crank feature, it popped off and all four screws were stripped. I wanted to try and fix this by taking the radio apart and trying to screw them in again with some super glue, but I could not get it apart without feeling like I was breaking it further.  I bought a larger antenna for the radio and after taking the antenna out, I realized that they had soldered the wire for the antenna to it and I had pulled the wire off from where it was soldered on (still works though).  Lastly, with all my solar charging devices, they take way longer to charge than what they claim in the instructions (this could be due to the humidity, which I have yet to see below 70% in the two months I have been here. They don’t call it rainy season for nothing!).

Tecsun FM/Shortwave/MW/LW DSP Receiver [radio]

This was the radio that my father-in-law said was the nice one, and he was definitely right. It doesn’t have the fancy gadgets the other one has, but as far as picking up radio stations it’s pretty killer.  This is a tech geek’s radio, where you actually have to pull out the operations manual to figure out what the hell you are doing, but as far as operations go, it wins outright over the other SW radio.  First thing, it has an antenna that is about 4 feet long.  This would be awesome in the states because we’d probably be able to pick up stations from 50 miles away in the flat lands of Ohio where they have much more powerful transmitters.  Here in Sierra Leone that antenna doesn’t pick up a whole lot (we have 1 FM station in town. That’s all. It broadcasts 7AM-11AM and 7PM-11PM daily. Outside of those hours, silence.)  The radio also came with a 15-foot-long flexible antenna that I spent some time last week feeding up the wall and connecting to our tin roof- now we get several stations, including the BBC, which is very exciting.  The first 3 weeks we were at site we didn’t really have news to speak of. Now we can tune into the BBC and fill up on US and International news. It’s been great to have this radio and we appreciate it quite a lot.

Soladec (USB Solar Charger)

This solar charger is super awesome.  It took some trouble shooting to figure out the problem, but I figured out that the humidity in fact is killing all my batteries.  I found this out by charging it with my computer USB and then keeping it in a ziplock bag.  I have taken it out to charge my speakers from 0% to 100% and it was still showing a green charge light.  I had read that this battery was able to charge an iPod 2.5 times and still be able to use the flashlight on the back.  The flashlight is composed of five LEDs that have ballooned plastic over each of them.  This makes it possible to completely illuminate a room with no problems.  Only downside to this is using the solar panel to charge, I have never been able to get it to fully charge (blame the humidity).

SunPak Solar Charger (On loan)

I will have to update this one later, but it was $7 to purchase it and it seemed to be worth every freakin penny.  I will talk to the PCT we lent it to and see what she thinks of this.

GoalZero Solar Charger (On loan)

Gifted to us from Lara’s brother and the claims of charging an iPod in 1 hour is pretty close (due to the massive size of the panels).  Only complaint, there is no battery pack that it charges, which means you can only use it when the sun is out (a battery is available as an extra feature that I’ve seen fellow PCTs had) and if you don’t have full sun it will in fact draw power from your iPod, so this needs to be monitored closely.  All in all though, it’s a really cool product.

GoalZero Speakers

So grateful that Lara’s brother Eric loves music like he does because I would not have thought to get good quality sounding speakers prior to coming here.  This has made watching movies awesome and listening to music at night incredibly nice.  At one point they even used these speakers to show a movie to a room of 60+ people about malaria and it worked great.  The speakers use a wooden box to resonate the bass and they make any movie watching experience much greater.  They have an internal battery that can be charged by a micro USB input.  I have successfully been able to watch a movie and listen to two hours worth of music on one charge.  One thing that could make this better is if they would have made the battery bigger in the speakers and made an output such that I would have been able to charge my devices.  It is because of this that I leant out the Goal Zero Solar charger as opposed to any other ones that had internal batteries.

Power Film Solar (AA/AAA Solar Charger)

This has been a very useful tool in keeping the many (Read: boku) flashlights charged.  I use this charger to charge AAA and AA batteries and it so far has worked out perfectly.  People have envied my charger because it folds up so small.  It uses six flexible panels to charge 2 or 4 batteries.  It claims to charge them in 3.5 hours for 2 batteries and 6.5 hours for 4 batteries, but once again, the time has taken much longer than they claim.  Again, I will reassess this in the dry season when it actually falls below 90% humidity.  All in all though, this is a great product and I am very happy to have it here in country.

Chinese Adapter/Power Strip (Bought in country)

I bought this power strip at a small wooden stand that was selling all sorts of electronics.  They had this power strip that was made in China and has five three-prong outlets on top and 10 two-prong outlets on the sides.  It also came with a voltage meter on the top and 5 on/off switches for each set of plugs.  After one use, something arched when I had plugged it in and it fried the voltage meter (common problem with 220 volts it turns out).  When I went to purchase this product, the seller gave me the price of Le 38 000 ($8.77).  Because this is a haggle economy, I said Le 15 000 ($3.46).  We bantered back and forth for a bit and eventually ended at Le 25 000 ($5.77).  So far this has been my most exciting and most functional purchase in Sierra Leone because you are able to use any plug on all the outlets on the surge protector.  Also, it’s a freaking surge protector!  There is a real problem with the surges coming from the completely rigged generators that they run here.  This power strip seems to have gone missing somewhere along our trip to site, so we bought a new, smaller one last time we went to Bo.  The smaller one cost Le 10,000 and has 3 outlets. 

Things I wish I had brought:

•  More AAA rechargeable batteries.  (Brought 15, turns out I use somewhere around 21 or 24).
•  More than one Kindle.   Only having one between two people makes things difficult.
• USB Battery charger (just got one sent to my in-laws back in the states, so that’ll be on its way soon!)
• Silica gel packs and Ziplock bags to put all of our electronics and batteries in—the rainy season kills battery life and we think it also may have destroyed our Kindle screen.