A Few of Our Neighbors

Living 7 degrees from the equator comes with a lot of changes for a couple of Ohioans.  For one, 118 degree weather is just not something humans should have to endure, and yet we walk to the market and cook over a fire at such temperatures.  For two, when you don't have winter and frosts, cold-blooded animals don't die or have to hibernate for a good part of the year.  We like to "snap" all of the crawlies that come our way.  Here is a smattering of non-blood-curdling crawlies that we've encountered at or near our house:

Words We’re Bringing Back With Us

Post by Lara

14 March 2013 (Pi Day!)

When we found out we were coming to Sierra Leone for our Peace Corps service, we read in our invitation packet that English is the official language of instruction. This may lead some to believe (as it did us initially) that we would be able to communicate with Sierra Leoneans immediately and without translation. Turns out, we had another thing coming.  While it may be possible in Freetown and some of the bigger cities to get by just speaking English, Krio and local languages dominate the scene, especially in rural areas. Even the English spoken here is pretty far from American English—African English is sort of an entity unto itself, and on top of that Sierra Leone is a former British colony so any Western influences on the language are British English (think “trousers” instead of pants and “mending” instead of fixing things).  Thus, in the time we’ve been here our English has slowly morphed into something that is more understandable to your average Sierra Leonean.  Some of the new additions to our vocabulary are totally coming with us when we return to the states, including:

Snap! In Salone, you don’t take a picture. You snap.  Any time we pull out a camera in public we are immediately surrounded by a swarm of children screaming “Snap me! Snap me!” Not only is this a totally appropriate way to describe taking a picture, it also saves us several syllables, and we do love efficiency.

Verandah – Houses here do not have porches, patios, or stoops—only verandahs.  Some verandahs are big, some small—some enclosed, some open. Our own house has both a front and back verandah.

Eh Bo! Krio has a number of fun expressions, and this is one of our favorites. You can call anyone roughly your age or younger “Bo,” and the “Eh” is basically an exclamation of dismay.  Example: Musa, the 4-year-old neighbor boy, drops a candy wrapper on my verandah. “Eh Bo! Don’t throw away trash on my verandah!”

Spoil – Things do not break here. They spoil [Krio: poel].  This applies to tools, cars, buttons, anything you can think of that can stop functioning properly.  Example: The water pump has spoiled. Call a mechanic.

Osh Ya – This is a Krio word that doesn’t really have a good English translation.  “Osh” is what you say to someone who is sick, grieving, injured, or otherwise in a bad state. It’s not exactly “I’m sorry”… It’s more like, “I sympathize”.  It’s what you say to someone when you really don’t have anything else to say.  The Mende equivalent is gbe hoe or gbena hoe [“BAY-way/bay-NA way”].

i don don / i no de – In Krio, when something is totally used up, i don don [it has finished].  For about a month in our town, kerosene don don.  This is also used to refer to someone finishing a project, a class, etc.  Similarly, if something or someone is not around, i no de [he/she/it is not there].  For instance, when we go to the bar in town and ask for our favorite flavor of Fanta (lemon lime of course), about half of the time the bartender informs us that i no de, so we settle for orange Fanta. 

Binch (“beench”) – This is the Krio word for beans, and isn’t it way better?  We think so. On a related note, the word for ants is anch. We also love this.

Sabi – We’ve mentioned the Krio word sabi, “know,” before.  It’s great for handing out compliments: “Abubakar sabi dans o!” [“Abubakar knows how to dance!”]. It’s equally fine for teasing people, especially your 4-year-old neighbor who claims to know how to do everything: “Na  lay! Musa, yu no sabi.” [It’s a lie! Musa, you don’t know.”]

Scrub-scrub – We may or may not have mentioned that we don’t have a dishwasher here (to be fair, we didn’t have a dishwasher in Urbana either), so all of our pots, pans, plates, cups, and silverware get washed the old fashioned way with some strong lye soap, a bucket of water, and a whole lot of elbow grease. Remember how we cook over a fire? Yeah, washing dishes with burned-on sauce and charcoal soot takes some serious muscle.  Enter the scrub-scrub—the Krio word for SOS pad. We go through them pretty quickly, so it’s a good thing they only cost about a quarter in the market.

Goodbye, Lucky

Post by Lara

21 March 2013
A few months ago the oldest of our neighbors' three dogs, Lucky, stepped on some broken glass and injured his paw.  I spent somewhere around 2 weeks chasing him around with Neosporin, gauze pads, a bandana, and medical tape trying to keep his paw from getting infected, much to the entertainment of all of the Sierra Leoneans who witnessed it.  After that, he stopped hanging out on the neighbors' verandah in favor of ours, and sometimes didn't even go to their house at dinner time.  They joked that he was my dog now.

Lucky's paw healed into something that didn't require him to sport a red bandana every day, and he spent the next few months faithfully guarding our house from any suspicious visitors.  Then in January he started coughing a lot, and finally the last week or two he wasn't able to eat. We suspect heart worms.

Today we buried Lucky, the Alpha dog at our house, and will sorely miss him.  We're relieved that he isn't suffering anymore, but the place is certainly not going to be the same from here on out.  Goodbye, Lucky. 

Yeah, I’d Eat That.

Post by Lara

12 March 2013

We’ve had a lot of conversations lately with fellow ex-pats about how our tastes have changed quite a bit since we moved to Africa. Some of the reasons behind these changes are cultural differences—in Salone, just about any meal consists of complex carbs topped with a sauce of vegetables, protein, pepper, and oil.  After several months of eating this way, you stop hankering for a cut of meat with veggies and potatoes on the side and start yearning for a big old plate of rice and a generous helping of sauce to heap on top.  Beyond this, a lot of the things we were used to eating in the states needed to be kept cold or dry, neither of which can really be guaranteed here, and many things we like to eat cannot grow in a tropical climate (hello potatoes, button mushrooms, lettuce, and peas!), so they either aren’t sold here or are imported and thus more expensive.  Finally, the fact that food is not as plentiful here and doesn't keep as long means that we are willing to overlook a few flaws that would have us throwing food out in the states.  Recently Kevin and I have had a running joke that our lives right now can be characterized by the simple phrase, “Yeah, I’d eat that.”

Some examples of things we wouldn’t mind (or actively enjoy) chowing down on here: 

Fresh crab? Of course we'd eat that!

Dried fish-- bones, skin, and all

Fish bones—unavoidable in most meals. Yeah, I’d eat that.

Sardine salad sandwich made of sardines with all the oil they were packed in, raw onions, chili pepper, and mayo? Yeah, I’d eat that (and I have!)

Chocolate bars that have been melted and re-solidified so many times that they now have a somewhat sandy/grainy texture? I will eat ten, thank you.

“Meat pie” that is actually about a teaspoon of crushed up fish [mostly fish bones] and chili pepper spread onto a puff pastry and then fried? Yeah, that’s actually pretty tasty.

Oysta kek: Fried donuts with dried oysters mixed in, served with a generous dusting of chili pepper and raw onions? Yeah, I’d eat that, as long as there’s a whole lot of water to wash it down, on account of the copious amounts of pepper and onion.

Mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, and barbecue sauce that have been sitting opened and un-refrigerated on a shelf for several months?  As long as it still tastes somewhat like it did when we opened it, yeah, I’d eat that.

Beef jerky topped with a dollop of Easy Cheese? Delicious.

Termites! Roasted in oil with a bit of salt.  Apparently they taste somewhat reminiscent of Cracker Jacks.  Yeah, I’d eat that.

Spaghetti noodles, hot dogs, pepper, onions, and tomato sauce on a sandwich? Kevin says that it’s pretty yummy.

Binch Salad: lettuce, hard-boiled egg, spaghetti, and cooked beans topped with ketchup, mayonnaise, and pepper. So good, we went back for it a second day in a row. 

Acheke: gari [pounded dried cassava root], spaghetti, lettuce, hard boiled egg, fish or chicken, and raw onion topped with ketchup, mayonnaise, and pepper.  Pretty good, but not as good as binch salad. 

It's "pizza"!

Velveeta/Easy Cheese/Laughing Cow/any processed cheese product: I might eat them in the states, but not when there’s a less processed alternative available. Here? Keep it coming! Processed cheese is one of my favorite inventions.

Manpo: pounded rice and sugar sealed in a plastic bag and then boiled to make a doughy, pudding-y substance.  Not the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten, but one of the most hygienic street foods you can buy since they boil the whole thing. Yeah, I’d eat that.

Honeybees/beeswax/chunks of tree: I wouldn’t normally be happy knowingly swallowing a bee or a splinter, but since honey harvesting here is a bit ad hoc and involves hacking into the tree housing the bees, throwing everything into a bucket and then kinda sorta skimming the top before selling it as honey, we’ve found all of the above in the local raw honey we buy, and we deal with it because hey, it’s local raw honey.

Foo Foo: fermented cassava root shaped into balls and then boiled, served with fish or chicken “soup” poured on top.  The foo foo is kind of sour, very sticky, and otherwise unremarkable. The soup is sometimes very good. This is a favorite lunch for a lot of teachers at my school, and sometimes they buy me a serving also.  Most days I politely accept and gulp down as much as I can before offering the rest to the nearest child who gladly takes it. Once or twice I was hungry enough to scarf it down.  Yeah, I’d eat that.

Monkey/cat/squirrel/bush rat/mystery meat: pretty much if it swims, it’s fish, if it has wings, it’s chicken, and if it’s anything else it’s beef.  We don’t think we’ve eaten cat, dog, or monkey yet but I doubt we would refuse if it were served to us, and it’s not unlikely that we wouldn’t know. So…I may have already eaten that.

Wardrobe 2: Dressing up

Post by Lara

12 March 2013

In Sierra Leonean culture, having a few really nice outfits is a must for weddings, funerals, memorial services, or regular services at the local church or mosque.  In Krio, we say that someone is “bluffing” (i de blof) when they are showing off very fine and stylish clothes, or showing off in general.  The word can have a negative connotation in certain cases, implying that someone is showing off too much, but we also tend to say it as a joke whenever we wear new clothes or get fancied up for something.

The first event that we “bluffed” for was our meeting with the President in Freetown.  The Ministry of Education generously provided all of us with outfits made from gara, one of the most expensive types of fabric you can buy here. The gara clothes were all expertly hand-dyed with patterns. My outfit was a short-sleeved shirt and a skirt in purple and green. Kevin’s was a short-sleeved shirt dyed an orange-brown color with stripes of darker brown.  All 44 of us showed up at the President’s house in our new outfits and took a photo with the President and several government officials.  (sadly we don’t have a copy of the photo at the moment) For the first month or two we lived here, that was our only dress-up outfit. 

During training, we were offered the chance to hand-dye our own gara and Kevin and I both jumped at the opportunity. We both chose to do the “cloud” pattern of dying.  Below is a photo of us in the outfits we had made from our gara:

At the end of training, our swear-in ceremony was held on my 25^th birthday, and for that and various other reasons I really wanted to have some nice clothes to “bluff” that day.  Kevin and I decided that we would go ashabi, which means “in uniform”—have clothes made from the same fabric.  This is a very popular tradition among families here, especially for special events like Christmas and the end of Ramadan.  When we went shopping for our fabric, we chose a style that we both knew was loud and garish by American standards, but here our host parents simply nodded and said, “This is fine” (remember: “fine” means good/great/pretty/etc. here, so this wasn’t an American “oh, it’s fine I guess”—it was a real approval).  The next step was to take the clothes to the tailor. Our host parents each have their own tailor who specializes in men’s or women’s styles, so we went to the men’s tailor first and ordered Kevin a long-sleeved button-down shirt.  After that, we walked across town to the women’s tailor and I took a few minutes looking at the posters of different styles before choosing my own.  The tailor then measured me and we agreed on a price for the outfit.  On the morning of swear-in, our clothes were brought to our house just in time for us to jump into them and head to the ceremony.  Here we are with our host parents after the ceremony, bluffing our ashabi styles:

Most recently, we sported new outfits to go to Lara's principal's wedding. Here we are just before leaving:

Since moving to site, we have added to our collection of dressy clothes, aided substantially by the fact that Kevin has befriended a fellow teacher at his school who is also a professionally-trained tailor.  We now have several dressy outfits to choose from and can show off our African style in several ways.  As an added bonus, Lara has nearly perfected the art of tying an enkicha (head-wrap), because dressy occasions often call for a woman to cover her head.  Every time the tailor makes us clothes, he leaves a descent sized piece to function as an enkicha if necessary. 

That's the basic overview of dressing up here in Salone.  If you have any questions or requests for blog posts we welcome them! Thanks!

Goings On Around Here

While Kevin and I are busy writing, proctoring, grading, and returning something like 300 mid-term tests, I want to take just a few minutes to update you on life at the Flaute household.

A group of Engineers Without Borders from Pennsylvania came to Lara's school a few weeks ago, enlivening our lives quite a bit and bringing some much-needed and much-appreciated improvements to the school grounds, including toilets and pipes that run directly into the underground cesspits. They also came over for dinner twice and then before they left, they brought us a duffle bag (no joke) full of good ole American snacks and even some instant mashed potatoes. It was awesome.

They also gifted us with this amazing hammock that our good friend the Reverend Joe Abu is shown testing out:

And in other news, Kevin just purchased a shirt and matching cap made from hand-woven kontri klos (country cloth) in Sierra Leone blue, white, and green.  The fanciness of this outfit is somewhere in the range of wearing a suit here in Salone. If you add matching trousers, it's basically a tux.  Isn't he snazzy?

Except for the shoes, Kevin is ready to blof some serious style!