Wrapping it Up Here

Post by Lara

30 September 2014

Hello everyone! I know it's been a while. We're all wrapped up in wi-fi, college football, job interviews, and going out to dinner with everyone we didn't see for two years-- but as today is the last day of Peace Corps volunteers in Sierra Leone (at least for a while), it seems fitting to put a bit of a denouement onto our little blog.

First off, I wanted to make our last post "Our Peace Corps Service by the Numbers" in which I would list off (unemotionally) all of the things that we counted while we were in Salone, and then attach a (rather more emotional) sign-off paragraph or two, and thereby tie a nice little ribbon around the last 27 months of our lives.  BUT it never works out how we want it to, does it?  All my numbers are tucked away in a journal somewhere, and that journal was nowhere to be found today.  I'm afraid it may be a while (like a month...or several years) before I stumble across it again, probably in some place that I put it *knowing* I would remember, and at that point I may log back on here and post our real, final blog post.  In the meantime, a few words will have to do.

Now, on to the hot topic: Sierra Leone.  We left on August 1st, amid a slightly chaotic non-evacuation of all volunteers and trainees from Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia in the face of a seemingly sudden realization that the current Ebola outbreak wasn't going to die down as quickly as everyone estimated back in March when the first cases started showing up.  We ourselves were not pulled out of the country-- we had already packed up our house, said our goodbyes, and gotten medically cleared in anticipation of our scheduled closing date.  However, the volunteers who came to Salone a year after us, and those who had just arrived this past June, were not so lucky as to have that kind of closure before leaving. Some had no notice at all, because they were already in the US on vacation during the summer holiday.  I can't imagine how difficult and confusing it must be to serve as a volunteer for a year, knowing that I had another year to work on projects and get the teaching thing down and wrap up all my loose ends, only to find myself home indefinitely with no real plans until further notice.  And to think of packing all my things up for 2+ years, selling my car, quitting my job, and just a short 8 weeks later landing back where I started would not be easy to deal with either.  I've joked before that becoming a Peace Corps volunteer brought with it an emotional instability that I wasn't familiar with-- and these are some good examples of what I mean by that.

Of course that's the story on this side of the ocean.  On the other side, school and standardized testing have been postponed until further notice, travel is severely curtailed, and weekly markets have been banned.  Additionally, Sierra Leone has implemented nationwide shut-downs several times now, once for 3 whole days, to try and allow medical workers to catch up with the rising number of sick people who are avoiding hospitals and to slow the spread of Ebola.  News stories that we've heard are alarming, to say the least.  We haven't had a whole lot of contact with our friends and neighbors back in Salone, but we have heard that so far only one documented case of Ebola has been found in our town of Mattru Jong in the south.  Our host mother wrote us not long ago during one of the shut-downs, and told us that her kids are simply bored, because they're not allowed to leave the house.  The Ebola outbreak is touching everyone, even in places not directly experiencing the disease.

As I am neither an epidemiological expert nor a witness on the ground at this point, I don't feel comfortable describing the Ebola situation in any more detail. All I know is that the nation-wide measures being taken are making it so that even those not at the epicenter of the disease are feeling its reverberations.  Peace Corps made the decision in September to close all of its volunteers out of service on October 1st and allow them to re-apply next year for a program of their choice, including (if things are looking more stable), West Africa.  Thus, today is every volunteer's last day.  We hope that the program will continue with a new group of volunteers next year-- but it's far too soon to tell now.

Ultimately, we feel a sense of completeness about our service that I'm afraid not all the volunteers who are leaving can relate to.  We did our two years, completed our projects, locked up our house, and said goodbye to our friends.  For now, Mattru is our former home and a chapter in our lives that is at least mostly closed.  We may not have accomplished everything we planned to, but all-in-all we are happy with our time in Salone and happy as well to be home in Ohio. We are moving forward.  Kevin's looking for engineering jobs, and I will be applying to nursing school in the next year.  We're not sure where we'll end up, but we're fairly certain it will be within driving distance of our families in Ohio.

I'm not sure yet how much writing I'm going to be doing in the future, but I went ahead and created a post-Peace Corps blog, where I'll be writing from now on. You can find me (and occasionally Kevin too!) at www.ninefourten.blogspot.com.  Thanks for reading our blog, and we hope to see you in our new space!

Borrowed Kitchens: Erica's in Portland

Post by Lara

For our third installment of "Borrowed Kitchens," our hostess was Erica, in a suburb of Portland.  Erica and her roommate work early in the morning, so we had to get up early and get on the road.  We had time for a quick bite to eat first, though.

Kevin's ready to take on Portland in his bow tie! He later realized the jeans he chose for that day weren't quite skinny enough.

Eggs over medium on English muffins with local Oregon berries on the side. Pretty good for a quick fix!

Borrowed Kitchens: Alexia's Granparents' Beach House, Cambria, CA

Post by Lara

For our second "Borrowed Kitchens" post, we stopped along the California coast in beautiful Cambria, where our friend Alexia's grandparents have a beach house.  When we first heard "beach house in California," we thought of hot sun and white sand with warm waves lapping up the shore.  Well, the waves were there-- just about everything else was a bit different.  The Central California coast is not warm, and it's not terribly sandy-- but the tide pools created by the big rocks on the shoreline are very interesting-- full of hermit crabs, sea anemones, and snails.

 For our first ever dinner on the Pacific coast, we thought seafood would be fitting. We picked up some Albacore tuna steaks and cruised up to the beach house with a cooler full of vegetables from Vegas. Alexia and her sister Carina helped us prepare dinner.

Tuna steaks rubbed with salt, black pepper, and cayenne before broiling

Cauliflower and Brussels sprouts before roasting

Lemon slices for our tuna steaks

Cheddar cheese makes everything more delicious

Our dinner of tuna and roasted veggies was just perfect for our first evening on the Pacific.  The following night, we went a bit less healthy and grabbed individual slices of pie from Linn's, a famous bakery in Cambria, and ate it on the beach.  We have no regrets whatsoever.

Before leaving Cambria, we had to stop over at Hearst Castle for a quick look at what I can only describe as one of the classiest over-the-top mansions we've ever had the pleasure of being allowed into, and we were treated to an absolutely fabulous day on top of the 'Enchanted Hill'.  We also got to see a herd of zebras leftover from Hearst's menagerie-- though I wasn't quick enough to snap a photo.

 Next stop: Sacramento (after a winding climb up the coast through Big Sur).

Favorite Conveniences

Hi everyone! This is just a super quick post to update you on what's up with us at the moment. We are in Seattle after a 2000+ mile long road trip, during which we managed to meet up with 4 former volunteers from PC Sierra Leone. During our wanderings we've talked to our fellow returned volunteers about readjusting to American life after Peace Corps.

Here's a small list of the conveniences we've rediscovered and learned to appreciate in a new light:

- Even "bad" roads are nicer than what we're used to.
- Potable water is everywhere. Some of it doesn't taste good, but none of it will give us dysentery!
- We can drink all the water we want, just about whenever we want, because there are public restrooms everywhere.
- 4G. Wow.

There you go. Probably our shortest post ever.

Borrowed Kitchens, Part 1: Cheryl's in Las Vegas

Post by Lara

If you've been following our Facebook pages, you'll know Kevin and I officially closed our Peace Corps service last week and returned to the US. And unless you've been living under a rock, you will have heard that all 300+ Peace Corps volunteers and trainees have been temporarily removed from Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea as a precaution related to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa. I may write a post on all that craziness later...but for now just know that we are safe, sad to leave Salone, and happy to be back in the USA. 

Now, on to today's topic:

As this is the first and maybe only chance we will have to take a month off and go do some interesting things while having no one to answer to, we're on a road trip! We start in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, where Kevin's sister Cheryl just got married. We got a chance to house/dog sit for a few days, and as such we got to cook in a real, fully equipped kitchen! As we anticipate we will get to do this a few more times in the next few weeks, we decided this is a great chance to write a little series on what we like to cook when we can cook ANYTHING.We started off this meal with a trip to Walmart where we had so many choices, we nearly collapsed.  Since the only squash in Sierra Leone is pumpkin, and it's almost autumn, we decided a nice acorn squash would do great.  After that, we kind of just ran with that idea.  Here's what happened:

We chopped up some onion, celery, pepper, and carrot and tossed it with walnuts, bacon bits, raisins, olive oil, chicken stock, cumin and cinnamon.

After baking the squash by itself for 30 minutes, we added the above mixture and baked it some more! It popped and sizzled for 10 minutes or so after we removed it from the oven.

YUM

A side salad and some cheesy garlic bread rounded out our meal. Kevin washed his dinner down with Blue Moon pumpkin ale-- a bit early for fall, but we feel it's fair since we missed autumn two years in a row. 

 

There you have it! dinner came together in about an hour and 15 minutes. Not bad for a couple who used to take an hour just getting from no fire to hot charcoal!  Tomorrow we may mix up all our leftover squash and veggies into a pasta dish, or serve it in a fall-themed salad.  Stay tuned for more Borrowed Kitchen meals! 

Salone Superlatives: Best Krio Words

Post by Lara and Kevin

21 July 2014

In our two years here, we have both achieved an “advanced” mastery of Sierra Leonean Krio.  We’re a bit afraid that that level of fluency has shoved some of our English out the door…so here’s your head’s up if you’ll be seeing us upon our arrival home. Our English is Krio-ified, for sure.  As a small celebration of our impending homecoming, we want to put together some superlatives, and here, to kick it off, are some of our favorite Krio words and phrases:

Fak – A rubber band of any sort. It sounds like a very bad word, and it’s often used as a transitive verb (as in, “I’m going to fak your hair”)

 Gbing gbing [or bing bing] – A phrase used to add emphasis or to specify what you’re talking about.  We feel silly saying it, but love it at the same time.

Han Klin [as in “hand clean”] – A handkerchief, of course

Astafulay – Comes from Arabic, meaning “God forbid it”.  A great word to use when bargaining for things in the market.

Bobi Wata [literally, boob water] – Breast milk. What else would you call it?

Balans [“balance”] – To ignore.  People here do not like to be “balanced”.

Jam/Jamsi – To “jam” is to fight. A person is your “jamsi” if you had a fight and never resolved it…which means you permanently “balance” each other.

Wetin sef – Whatchamacallit (or thingamajig)

Hala hala [holler holler] – A verbal argument. Always loud. Seldom has a winner.

So so – Alternately used to mean “et cetera” or “a whole lot”. 

Teeeee [pronounced “tayyyyyyy”] – It means, “untillllll….” Usually it indicates a long time or an extensive amount (as in, “cook the sauce tayyyyyyy it has boiled for an hour”).

De de de – One of the weirdest correctly-conjugated verbs we know of, in any language.  If something “de de de,” that means it “is being there”.

Poto Poto [puddle puddle] – Mud

Roba [rubber] – A bucket. Not a condom.

We and Love and Food

Post by Lara

8 July 2014

Before Peace Corps, Kevin and I were interested in nutrition inasmuch as we liked good food and tried to incorporate as much variety into our diet as we could.  We planted herbs in our flower bed, joined a CSA, and cooked our own dinner from scratch most nights.  When we came across a fruit or vegetable we didn’t recognize, we would often buy it and figure out how to cook it.  I had a rough idea of which nutrients could be acquired from which kinds of foods, and we did what we could to get all of those, without spending too much mental energy on keeping track.  For what’s it’s worth, though, we did not follow any kind of strict diet—we had a kitchen pantry that was permanently stocked with Oreos, a fridge with a special place set aside for heavy cream, which we cooked with regularly, and we routinely ordered pizza when we didn’t want to cook—all of which I add here to reassure you that although healthy eating was high on our priority list, “junk food” was not absent from our lives, and we definitely weren’t purists of any breed.

 I don’t think that I would have told you then that nutrition was one of my main interests, in part because keeping nourished in the US is not difficult to do, and most Americans do it without making a conscious effort.  It was out on the periphery of my interests.  It wasn’t until I moved to Sierra Leone, experienced an almost total changeover from my old diet to the one I observe now, and saw how important nutrition is when you exit the first world, that I began to see this as a crucial part of my service and my post-Peace Corps life. 

For westerners living in Sierra Leone, staying nourished often means learning not to be picky—a luxury that we seem to have acquired at some point in the last few centuries.  Not liking fish, or too much oil, or onions, are totally normal things in the states, but here, you often have to set that aside and eat what’s sitting in front of you.  Many of the common dishes here are chock-full of vitamins, monounsaturated fats, lean proteins, and fiber—which are wonderful for your health.  Unfortunately, we who are not used to eating dishes swimming in oil and who have been almost conditioned to believe that carb-heavy diets are inherently unhealthy often find ourselves battling those western beliefs as we try to decide what and how much to eat here. 

Sierra Leoneans also have their ideas of what a healthy diet consists of—they know that babies should be fed exclusively breast milk until 6 months, that fish, beans, and other proteins are essential to a complete diet, and that “empty” (or plain) rice has almost no nutritional value.  There are also some interesting myths floating around here.  Almost everyone I know is afraid to eat very fibrous parts of fruits and vegetables—the little spines in pineapples, the skins of peanuts, and eggplant seeds are all taken out of foods before consumed.  This would make more sense to me if it weren’t for the fact that these same people happily gnaw the ends off their chicken bones and have no qualms whatsoever about swallowing about a million fish bones a day as they eat their rice and sauce. 

In our time here, we have attempted to make nutrition a bit easier for volunteers by editing our post’s cook book and supplying information for trainings to help those with a Western view of food to thrive in this much different environment.  We also learned how to cook local dishes in variations that are more palatable for Americans—peanut sauce without fish, potato leaf sauce with a healthy smattering of big broad beans and a handful of garlic cloves, and less oil on the whole.  Ours being an early generation post, we have a rare opportunity to help impact the way our post treats things like nutrition and staying healthy in remote locations—we have jumped at the opportunity and attempted to bring more information that is relevant to our specific country and even depicts seasonal variations in what’s available. We leave plenty of work to be done yet, but we’ve at least helped spread information that can keep Americans healthy living here in Sierra Leone.

Ultimately, no matter where you’re eating, challenges arise that can un-balance a person’s diet. In the Western world, often the main challenge is fulfilling your requirements without exceeding them—a task that daunts a larger number of people now than it ever has before.  In the developing world, eating right is mostly about getting enough of those nutrients that can be tough to come by—protein, vitamins, iron, calcium—and doing so before you fill up on carbs (in Sierra Leone, that’s usually rice).

After we complete our Peace Corps service, I’m planning to pursue a career in health care (likely nursing, though time will tell).  I know that the extreme awareness of what nutrients are in my diet, what’s missing, and how much I need to consume will fade when I’m back in an environment where I can get everything I need without trying, but I hope that the lessons learned here will stay with me, and I hope that the efforts I made here have a positive effect on the health of both volunteers and locals in Sierra Leone in the future.

Thinking about 'Merica

Post by Lara

20 June 2014

This is one of those on-the-fly posts that come once in a blue moon when the internet's working and I have a minute to spare.  We're leaving the country in about 40 days.  Here's what's on my mind today:

• Soon enough, I'll be somewhere where you can swallow the water in the shower. Turns out, the vast majority of the world is not that way.
• All those little things that make me me are about to change-- different keys, wallet, ID, clothes, shoes...even medicine.  Coming here (and leaving again) really is like becoming a different person.
• I keep wondering which, if any, of my clothes here will be able to make the fashion leap into the US.  We'll see...
• I. Cant. Wait. To. Feel. Cold.

Our Site by the Numbers

Post by Lara

9 June 2014

Our little town in Mende land, Sierra Leone has a lot to offer—at least by local standards.  For security purposes we’re not permitted to name our town on our blog, but we can tell you a little bit about it with the following rundown, which should be at least mostly accurate as of June 2014:

Overview:

7,000-10,000: Our town’s population.  The number varies a whole lot, partially due to poor information and partially because different estimates include more or less of the surrounding neighborhoods around the town.  What we do know is that this is the largest town in our district.

2: American citizens (except when Dennis Glover of www.realafrica.blogspot.com is around)

2:  Chiefs living in the town. The town chief (a woman) and the paramount chief (a man) both live here.

4: Languages frequently spoken (Mende, Krio, English, and Temne—though there’s a smattering of Fullah too)

2: Basic religious distinctions (Christian and Muslim)

17:  Churches

5:  Public Mosques (private ones in homes don’t count)

1: Police Station

1: Prison

0: Post offices

1: Community bank

0: Community Libraries

6: NGOs with offices in town

4: Organizations that run solar power

0: Functioning internet cafes

1: Radio station that broadcasts 8 hours per day

3: Cell phone towers

Schools:

4:  Secondary (junior high/high) schools

7:  Primary schools

5: Nursery schools

1200: Students enrolled at Lara’s school

210: Students that Lara teaches (4 different classes)

800: Students enrolled at Kevin’s school (+/- 100— it is difficult to get a straight answer)

110: Students that Kevin teaches (3 different classes)

Health:

1: Hospital

1: Clinic

1: Nursing School

0: Doctors that live in our town year-round

1: Community Health Officer (in charge of the hospital)

5: Pharmacies that sell everything from soap to amoxicillin to glucose injections to codeine (no prescription required! See # of doctors)

2: Traveling veterinarians that service our whole district.

Market, etc:

6:  “Bars” (places you can buy beer and soda—not necessarily cold)

0: Supermarkets

2:  Places you can buy a hot meal between 12 PM and 4 PM any day but Sunday

0:  Places you can buy a hot meal before 12PM, after 4 PM, or on a Sunday

3: Hardware stores

4: Shops that sell bulk dry goods every day (i.e. rice, flour, margarine, dried beans, lentils, etc)

2: Stores that sell toilet paper (as long as it’s in stock)

1: Vendor that sells towels and bed sheets

Transportation:

0: Paved roads

1: Ferry crossing

1: Boat that runs daily down to the nearest port town

1: Vehicle leaving for Freetown every morning around 7 AM

30: Capacity of the average Freetown vehicle

1: Vehicle leaving for Bo every morning around 7 AM

25: Capacity of the average Bo vehicle

2: Places to buy gasoline by the gallon

1: Place to buy diesel by the gallon

16: Miles to the nearest commercial bank (which is insured)

52: Miles to Bo (the nearest supermarket, reliable internet café, branch of our cell phone company, and Peace Corps medicine and mail drop)

180: Miles to Freetown and the Peace Corps compound

At Home:

35: Pineapples planted by us since we came

19: Papaya trees lovingly nursed and planted by us

19: Papaya trees eaten by grasshoppers in one fateful weekend

3: Mango trees

1: Avocado tree

1: Cacao (chocolate!) tree

1: Coconut tree

1: Bitter orange tree

2: Chickens living it up in the oh-so-posh Flaute hen house

5: Dogs (that we say belong to the neighbors…but may as well be ours)

2: Adult cats

9: Kittens born and raised by our mama cat, Nimbus (we only kept one)

Mende Numbers

Post by Lara

22 May 2014

It’s been a long time since I wrote a post on either of the new languages we’re learning here, and as a dedicated student of languages, I’m a bit embarrassed by that. Furthermore, talking about Mende and numbers is a math-and-foreign-language junkie’s dream.  So, without further ado, here’s a mini lesson on the Mende number system and its fun idiosyncrasies.

Unlike the base-10 system of numbers we’re used to, Mende has a mixed-base numerical system.  Groupings of 20 are used in addition to numbers 1-19 which are in base-10.  Apparently, a number system in base 20 is called vigesimal (Thanks Sean Stephens for that!)—but I don’t think that’s exactly the term for Mende’s number system, because of this mixture of bases.  Below is an example of how numbers get grouped in Mende:

 

11 = puu mahu yila = ten plus one

35 = nuu gboyongo mahu puu mahu loolu = twenty plus ten plus five

58 = nuu fele gboyongo mahu puu mahu wayakpa = two twenties plus ten plus eight

99 = nuu naani gboyongo mahu puu mahu taalu = four twenties plus ten plus nine

The result of these mixed bases is that numbers get really long-winded.  To say “99” requires us to enunciate 13 syllables!  It’s no wonder Jay-Z’s song “99 problems” never took off here.  This excess of syllables also gives us some insight into why we hear fairly often that someone’s aunty or grandpa or village chief is 100 years old, in a country where life expectancy, by some measures, is lower than 50.  To say “50” takes 9 syllables.  “75” takes 13 syllables.  “80” takes 6 syllables.  But the number “100” in Mende is hondred—2 syllables long, and perfectly suited for expressing the thought that a person is, well, old enough that we’re satisfied to round up. 

In addition to the 20/10 mixed bases, Mende also has some weird cultural standards for talking about numbers relating to money.  Apparently, when hyperinflation hit the country in the 1980s, at one point or another the exchange rate for Leones was 1 pound to 2 Leones (now, it’s closer to 1 pound to 6000 Leones).  During that time, Mendes decided that if you give a price in Mende, the number you say in Mende should be multiplied by two, and that makes the number of Leones you pay. As in, if I order “two thousand Leones” of bread using Mende numbers, I actually want four thousand Leones worth of bread.  If I use English numbers, then I get the 2 thousand I asked for.  This was a very odd rule to learn, and before I managed to figure it out I ordered double of a lot of things thinking I was being clever by asking in Mende. 

Le 5000 = tawji fele pondo loolu = (2000x2) + (200x5)

Le 67000 = tawji nuu gboyongo mahu puu mahu sawa pondo loolu = (33000x2) + (200x5)

 
The currency rule is more complicated by the fact that when multiplying by two, you’ll always get an even number.  What happens, then, when the price is an odd number?  You have to add 1 of course, but you can’t say “1” because that means “2”. Instead, you say “pondo loolu” which translates to, “five sets of 200 Leones” (5x200 = 1000, so fair enough, but of course this number doesn’t get multiplied by 2. Why would it?).  Thus, trying to order an odd number of thousands of Leones can get interesting:

The amazing part of all this is that Mendes are generally very good at doing this kind of math—as long as you’re talking about Leones.  As soon as I take the currency out of it and ask them to multiply one quantity in parentheses by another, my students clam up—but ask them how much you owe them when they sell 4 pineapples to you at Le 2000 each and then add 15 limes for Le 100 each, they’ll take a minute and announce to you, “9,500” (or, more directly translated, “two times 4 thousand plus 5 times 200 plus 500”).  The math teacher who successfully convinces these guys that “market maths” and school maths are one and the same will be my hero.

For those of you who like to know how to count to 10 in as many languages as possible (ahem, Pat & Diane), here’s how you do it in Mende. Happy studying!

1 = yila (or ita)

2 = fele

3 = sawa

4 = naani

5 = loolu

6 = weita

7 = wofla

8 = wayakpa

9 = taalu

10 = puu