Beef!

This post is dedicated to one of my favorite charms of Krio: the usage of the word beef.

All four legged meat is called bif. I asked my friend once which beef he liked best and he proceeded to list them for me, "You get your cow beef, goat beef, sheep beef, hog beef..." And when he got going on bushmeat the beefs were never ending - and mostly in his local language, so I really had no idea what animal he was referring to. I think five minutes later we were halfway through the monkeys. (My favorite beef name is chuk chuk bif, which means 'stab stab meat/animal'...also known as Porcupine.)

While on Road Trip 3.0, I experienced beef up close and personal. What follows is, a) the funniest thing ever, which translates poorly to story form, but still makes me laugh, and b) exciting news.

Setting:

I was fortunate to spend three days in the second to last village before you reach Liberia, just a few kilometers from the Gola Forest Reserve. The Gola Forest is a rainforest with various endangered animals (and even more endangered timber) dwelling amid its dense, protective undergrowth. I didn't make it there. I went to where they were cutting down the trees instead, which was the same idea, but without the big trees that make rainforests legendary and without the protected species (so much), or so I gather. Now, the person I was traveling with to the village was aware that I am an ovo-pesco vegetarian - not in so many words, but he got the idea that I eat fish and not fohl (fowl/chicken) or bif. He was worried, because fish is not available in the village during the rainy season because the water is too high in the streams for the women to spend the day winnowing their woven nets through the eddies.

The small red outline is Gola Forest area:









"Eh, bo," he told me sympathetically, "So so bif de de ya." Which translates roughly as, "Aw man, we have so much meat here." We had already brought salt, onions, maggi cubes (MSG) - the ingredient par excellence here, groundnut, tomato paste and other provisions to give our hosts, since goods are not readily available in the village due to the lack of road, poverty, remote location, and general marginalisation. I was not worried about a lack of fish. Several pounds of starch and oil at every meal does not a hungry person make.

A) The funniest thing ever:

So, the first night, my host's younger brother's infant son was sick and had been for several days. There's no cell phone coverage in the village, but if you walk out to a nearby field, stand on a threadbare spot of dirt, and hold your phone at the right angle while peering up at your extended arm into the inky night sky, you can get a winking bar or two of coverage. I was performing this ritual, neck craned, arm stretched,while trying desperately to sound patient shouting questions about antibiotic dosages into the speakerphone to a doctor back home. An audience of five young men helpfully watched as I talked to America from a moonshadowy patch of dew grass in "the interior". (Yes, they actually call it that here, still, in a weird neo/post-colonial time-warp.) When the call kept dropping and the coverage seemed interminably skittish, I passed the phone off to a local who was more adept at scavenging for reception. While I stood watching the darkness change color and the flylights (fireflies) dance, I saw a low shape come trotting toward us from the far end of the small field. I tried to make out if it was a dog, and in the murky dusk pondered its gait and tail, before deciding it was too small and was something like a fox...not looking that dissimilar from the ones that used to dash across the college grounds at Oxford, lighting up the motion detectors in the night...As my mind connected languidly from one thought to the next, one of the young guys shouted: "BEEF!!!" making a mad dash after the critter to grab it barehanded.

When the 'fox' or whatever it was made it into the bush unscathed and the 'hunter' made it back to our party, I felt obliged to tell them that I'd watched said beef walk across the field for almost a minute and didn't think to mention it because I didn't know they would want to 1) eat it, much less 2) chase it on foot and catch it with their hands. Add it to the list of things that would never occur to me to do, but might be common here. (Similarly, it would not occur to me to use the fuse on a petrol-powered saw to light cigarettes because I forgot my matches...but the three-man logging team did just that, after carting the five-gallon jug of fuel a good three miles into the road-less, trail-less forest. I of course, watched their desperate display of nicotine addiction from several metres off, worrying they would accidentally blow up said forest.)

BEEF! They shouted at the sight of a small fox and then took off in the night, running after some type of mammal = Amazing.

The kid is okay now, too, but the health challenges the community faces are formiddable: over seven miles by foot to the nearest community health post; people too sick to walk have to be carried by hammock; the only medicine available is that brought by travelling 'pharmacy' merchants a few times per week, who offer their own inexpert, conflict-of-interest laden assessment of which medicine people should take. Need I mention the drinking water comes from the swamp?

Okay, so as a story, it falls a little short of funny, but it was actually hilarious in a context where things are seldom uproarious.

B) Now for the exciting news, which also happens to be a bit morally ambiguous. As mentioned above, in the "interior" so so bif de de. And the area is Mende-speaking, which means translation of local plants, animals, and food items is next to impossible. Asking for the Krio word for local forest animals is futile.

Now, before I go further, I should say this news is brought to you by a few habits I have that really shine when I travel:

1) I like to adapt to and fully absorb local systems - be it putting milk in my tea in England or, well, we're getting to that in Sierra Leone... (The way I see it, if I wanted to live like an American, I would just stay in America; see previous post on code switching.)

2) I like to think I am unfazed/hardcore/a 'jungler'. (This mostly stems from previous item (#1) + overly optimistic self-confidence + stubbornness. It manifests in me driving on ridiculously bad roads, hiking through dense underbrush, refusing to let other people strain on my behalf, etc.)

2b.) As my research assistant describes it in Kringlish: "Yu know us (which) language I really like? Always yu se yu de manage." He nicknamed me 'Manager' because I so often said, "I can manage," or "we'll just have to manage."

3) I like to avoid missing out on once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

I think you see where this is going?

Eager to please and learn the local system, I quickly decided eating whatever was served to us was central to experiencing the village's way of life. This involved a heavy dose of blind trust. After 15+ years of vegetarianism, I found myself putting unidentifiable pieces of fat, skin, and flesh in my mouth whose source was unknown and whose preparation I was not always witness to. Once I decided to myself that I would be okay with eating bush rat and that my hosts would be able to communicate if monkey was being served, it was smooth sailing. (Incidentally, I didn't get to eat bush rat this go 'round and never had to avoid monkey meat.)

The first night was 'freetombo' in groundnut soup with cassava. Freetombo appears to be something like a tiny duiker, though I'm basing this off an image on a poster highlighting Gola Forest animals.

The second night was the tastiest, bush cat in groundnut soup with cassava. The bush cat I ate was something like a caracal or African Golden Cat, again 'I think'.

The third night was the big event in terms of gustatory adventures, *something* in groundnut soup with cassava. Wow. At the time, all I could discern was that they had caught something that has a long nose and eats ants. 'Sweet!' I thought to myself (un-sarcastically, I was actually looking forward to the meal), 'I get to eat anteater. Or maybe tapir? Do they have that here? Maybe just southeast Asia?' When we were sitting around the bowl of soup and starch, however, the dim light of a mobile phone flashlight revealed that something entirely un-anteater-like was what was being touted enthusiastically as one of the most delicious bushmeats: A thick, tough skin marked with ridges like it had scales confounded both my powers of recognition and my eating abilities. I was limited to fishing out the small bits of flesh and wondered, 'Armadillo?...in the rainforest?'

Nope! It wasn't until I got back to Freetown and the internet that I discovered the source of our meal: tree pangolin. It looks like something that would be so cute! if it wasn't so creepy! Kind of like a thick-tailed bone-plated rat squirrel that wishes it was a potato bug and thus spends its days rolling and un-rolling itself around tree branches. Yum.

The fourth and final bushmeat I ate during this trip to the village arrived the night before we were leaving. My host's brother (the one whose infant son we tried to treat by phone that night in the field) came back exuberant and exhausted from a three hour walk from the Liberian border carrying not only the 50 kilo bag of rice he went to go fetch at dawn, but a duiker he found in one of his traps on his return. This was the only beef I saw in its original form and thus could identify relatively easily. My host's brother was a bit disappointed he wasn't able to bring it back alive for me (because he couldn't carry a struggling duiker plus 50 kilos of rice, and thus had to kill it where he collected it). He thought it would be nice if I could've taken it on the road the next morning. I told him not to worry, next time he can give me the live one. I sat in the dark cooking area and watched by the light of the cooking fire and a few flashlights, as my host's young wife began the lengthy and very thorough processing of the bushmeat.

First, the duiker was quartered; the entrails pulled out and meticulously cleaned and washed for consumption; meanwhile the quarters of beef were held over the fire to burn off the fur; then, each quarter was scrubbed clean; once cleaned it was seasoned and boiled/steamed; and finally, fried in boiling palm oil. I think I left the cooking party around the seasoning and boiling stage and went off to bed. The next morning, we were given a black plastic bag full of duiker chunks, which served as sustenance on the 2-hour drive back to Kenema, the main town. After 15 years of not eating meat, I don't really know whether what I ate that day, and the three days preceding, was particularly tasty. I think 'game-y' generally applies to undomesticated animals, so I assume that was the prevailing taste, and certainly seemed to apply to the very lean fried deer flesh I snacked on while at the wheel. The duiker had the most meat and was hence the most easily manageable for a beef neophyte like myself; the bush cat was the most tender and flavoursome (sorry cat-lovers!); the freetombo tasty but obviously small; and the tree pangolin, well, a delicacy I am glad to push aside for those who really appreciate it.

I managed to not eat any endangered species, for which I am especially grateful. And I relatively easily assuaged my vegetarian guilt by reminding myself that I am not a vegetarian for the sake of being a vegetarian, but because of the environmental degradation and deforestation caused by the meat industry and the deplorable and cruel conditions under which animals are reared to be killed in the West. And also because I don't generally need to eat animals to be nutrified. In a village where it's soup, starch and beef, the consumption of meat is both a sign of politeness and appreciation to one's host, and a means of nutritional satisfaction despite the conspicuous absence of fruits and vegetables. Finally, the moral coup de grace, in my opinion, is that the young men who hunt for bushmeat do so in the 'un-protected' forests owned and managed by the community, using handmade traps that catch but don't kill the animals. There are serious problems with the bushmeat trade across the continent and to the US, UK, and Europe, but self-sufficient minimalism prevails in this village.

As far as 'organic', 'free range', 'happy' beef goes, you can't do much better than eating an un-endangered forest critter that lived its whole life in God-given bliss until it walked into a trap made of sticks and rope (a fair match, unlike super-powered long-range rifles fired from helicopters) and was killed by the hand of the hunter whose family will eat it with a swift cut to the throat. The original locavore-ism in action.

Africa without Africans

A people-free photo of my research

A household concept in any progressive African Studies circle (and hopefully in regressive ones too), the imagining of or representation of an "Africa without Africans" refers to the Western world's persistent and often subconscious romanticization of Africa as a foil to the West's industrialized society. This Africa is a small step removed from Conrad's dark continent, where the human inhabitants are a footnote, merely bystanders to history, and the savanna grasslands or lush tropical jungles define the place and its worth.

The pop culture paradigm of this phenomenon (tradition?) is Disney's The Lion King - a glorious movie if ever there was one, one of the two dvds I own in this world, and the soundtrack to which I know all the words... in case you were bracing for a diatribe on neo-colonial racism in corporate America. A geopolitical embodiment of the problems embedded in valuing or imagining Africa without Africans is the charged universe of environmental conservation across sub-Saharan Africa. Periodically stories crop up of shoot-to-kill antipoaching policies (usually tacit), wherein African poachers are killed to save the lives of animals. (These stories grab more headlines than the battles between farming communities and nature reserves, over both land and the control of wild animals, that know not where the reserve ends and community property begins. While I adore Kruger Park, wish Sierra Leone still had a robust population of forest elephants, and support the chimpanzee protection organisation here, this post does not feature me weighing in factually nor editorially on the environment-people/conservation-development/etc.-etc. morass.)

Coming to the point. My cynical eye has watched my idealistic self enthusiastically, if sporadically, write about various triumphs and travails here in Sierra Leone with next to no mention of all the people who help, hinder, and otherwise constitute my life in this country. 'Aha,' cynical eye intones knowingly. 'You see your Africa without Africans? Just like all the other misguided, self-styled do-gooders on this continent.'

Now, it's possible that's not what my much more generous friends and family are thinking when you read my periodic postings, but maybe it should have crossed your mind. And I am here to explain the situation, which you may or may not have identified - an admittedly preemptive defense. My research is sensitive. And the people I spend almost all of my time with are intimately connected to my research. The people I travel with, whose homes I stay in, with whom I cook and share meals, and who have taught me much of what I know about Sierra Leonean ways and means are often former political prisoners, former members of armed groups, or former captives. Even those who have no obviously volatile history or infamous identity attached to their person remain out of the sights of this blog. Because, quite frankly, I am afraid of the internet and its completely opaque security machinations.

So, please excuse my Africa without Africans. Hopefully the culture and flavour of life here, the hopes and challenges of this heavily populated (with people) nation come through despite my reticence to introduce the many characters who have welcomed me, with open arms and sometimes with trial by fire. There is so much more I would love to share but don't to firstly, protect people here and the precarious lives they are living, and secondly, to protect myself.


'Oh, cynical eye,' says idealistic self with patience and gratitude, 'Did you forget naivete can crumble? And blind faith in humanity mature? You see, cynical eye, every action has its reason.'

Code switching and (mis)communication

I have always excelled at code switching, sometimes much to my dismay. I'm not a linguist, so I use the term "code switching" loosely, to describe the ability to transfer between multiple languages, accents or dialects depending on one's social surroundings and context. In high school, I discovered my adept and subconscious tendency to code switch when I began noticing that I spoke differently with my friends at school, in the classroom, and at home. I was afraid it was a sign of inauthenticity or a multiplicity of identities, I was worried I was a poseur and I didn't even know it. (These fears were underscored when my sister once told me she could tell who I was talking to on the phone by how I spoke!) My college friends allayed these concerns by introducing to me the concept of code switching and so, with less aversion, I have watched myself from afar navigate through wildly different communities and contexts and seen my speech change shape -subconsciously- as I go. Code switching causes (or enables) me to shift vocabulary, intonation, and some grammatical structures when I call my bank in the UK for example. As I put off the line, my code switches back to align with my family. An even more striking switch occurs when I visit a diverse urban school or basketball court... Here in Sierra Leone, my propensity to code switch facilitated a rapid adoption of Krio pronunciation, making me tohk Krio clear, but as you will see, this enviable research skill has some drawbacks, such as...

The secret to my lack of communication? Instead of posting messages and stories to make a dent in the backlog, I have spent my time pondering why I fail to communicate said messages and stories. I have come up with two winning theories.

1. The backlog of un-relayed and often-inexpressible experiences is intimidating, and I don't know where to start, especially now that chronologically went out the window.

2. I have realized that here I not only code switch, which for me is a painless and subconscious application of relevant speech patterns, I now think in Krio. ("Krio" is Krio for Creole, and is the lingua franca of Sierra Leone.) To type emails or blog posts, or what have you, I have to pull myself out of my brain and reinsert my thoughts into my dormant English-speaking mind. Yu see di problem?? People been tell me seh, if ah de tohk Krio, ah fo poil mi Engrish. An now look watin don pas. Ah no mean for tohk seh, na pohfect Krio ah de tohk no moh, buh mos time ah no jus tohk pan Krio, ah de tink pan am back. Dis na di problem!

(You see the problem? -this is a favorite Krio phrase and one I use often- People told me that, if I speak Krio, I'll mess up my English. And now look what happened. I don't mean to say that I speak perfect Krio -hah! as if. but so people like to tell me, and I admit, I let it go to my head sometimes- but most times, I don't just speak in Krio, I also think in Krio. This is the problem!) Also a problem, no one really reads or writes in Krio. Obviously no one in my limited audience of friends and family reads Krio, but Krio -speaking, -reading and -writing people moreover generally apply their literacy skills to English. The richness of the lingua franca is as an oral language, in my inexpert opinion.

And as I try to mitigate the Kringlish that wants to spill onto the page, my loss of vocab and inadvertent inversion of grammatical structure distracts me back to the here and now (i.e. Sierra Leone research mission). And as a result, I don't email, or post, or otherwise extract my thoughts from the present context. Which isn't to say I don't want to - Lord knows what fate awaits me when I have two weeks to prepare a conference paper in English in (where else?) England - it just goes to show that lack of electricity, poor internet connection, and litany of other more pressing responsibilities are not primarily responsible for my communication failures. What to express and how is far more daunting.

Now, I'm going to poil (spoil - ruin) my sister's positive assessment that my blog was getting funnier (just read the bold to preserve a semblance of lightheartedness):

Communication Accommodation Theory
The Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), developed by Howard Giles, professor of communication, at UCSB, seeks to explain the cognitive reasons for code-switching, and other changes in speech, as a person seeks either to emphasize or to minimize the social differences between him- or herself and the other person(s) in conversation. Prof. Giles posits that when speakers seek approval in a social situation they are likely to converge their speech with that of the other person speaking. This can include, but is not limited to, the language of choice, accent, dialect, and para-linguistic features used in the conversation. In contrast to convergence, speakers might also engage in divergent speech, with which an individual person emphasizes the social distance between him- or herself and other speakers by using speech with linguistic features characteristic of his or her own group.

Okay, I know it's a little dense, but I think Prof. Giles is on point, and I don't think it is a calculated or rational choice (at least not for me), but rather a natural byproduct of sincere social interaction. My research certainly requires a readiness to minimize the social differences (which are eyewateringly vast) between myself and my informants, and engender social approval not just for access and information, but also for safety and enjoyment. So, with that, ah tell God tenki ("I thank God" - the Krio phrase par excellence, applicable as response to any question) for my code switching skills and promise to not only reflect on my experiences, but code switch them back to you in English...eventually.

Re: Departure

After five trips to the immigration office, I secured a visa extension into September. I'll leave the commentary on government bureaucracies for later, when my diplomatic assessment can benefit from the dispassionate distance of remember-y. The outcome is what matters now, which is that instead of flying out this weekend, I am now planning to leave Freetown by the 1st - a supervisor instated deadline with conference panel to boot, so that I don't stay in the country indefinitely, pursuing obtuse questions with multiple answers.

The semi-relevant photo is from Freetown, where public transport consists of poda-podas (like this minibus taxi), okadas (motorbikes - currently being banned from the city center), shared motorcar taxis, and a few stray government buses that (under)serve the suburbs. This photo features a few charms of the roads in Freetown:
1. Pimp my ride: What poda poda drivers lack in resources (and common sense), they more than make up for with enthusiasm. Get excited!
Note the exciting use of license plate holders to accent the back door! (I've often sat in traffic and pondered who imports license plate holders that don't fit the license plates here - I'm no MBA, but it seems like a niche business model.)
Note the exciting use of non-functional, bolted down fire extinguishers to look hype! (The more the better, and symmetry is preferred.)
Note the exciting font and unironic pro-football(soccer)/Bob Marley reference - two guaranteed crowd pleasers throughout Africa! (Other popular themes are God, Jesus, Allah, Mother - mine, yours?, Enemies, Money and Uncle - again, mine, yours? A whole post could and should be dedicated to awesome sayings painted on poda podas.)
Note the exciting attachment of ski racks and other non-sequiters to the top of the vehicle! (For four months, I didn't realize that the racks on taxis and poda podas: A) were not ever used (I naively assumed they were necessary for strapping down goats, produce, charcoal, etc.) and purely decorative; and B) were attached after import (again, naively, I assumed that the used car market in the US, UK, Netherlands, etc. was flooded with be-racked vehicles that made their way to West African ownership). C.f. license plate holders, the business model of importing ski racks to Sierra Leone is fascinating.) (Apologies for the excessive use of parentheses.)
Finally, note the exciting attachment of radio anttenae atop the vehicle! (Although poda podas regularly bump loud music - Akon reigns supreme here - they rarely play the radio. I was smart enough to know that four or six anttenae wobbling out of the rear of a reconstructed van were probably not fully functional.)
2. Far less exciting than the poda podas that transport 15-20 people, are the means of transporting goods. Just below the left-hand fire extinguisher, you'll see a push cart. Unlike in Ethiopia, where donkeys provide the majority of hard labour, in Sierra Leone manual labour relies on people. Women and children fetch water with 5-gallon jerrycans at public taps ("pumps") throughout the city; and young and old men for hire ferry all manner of goods (rubbish, huge bags of rice, beds) up and down the streets. In the East End where the streets get smaller, wheelbarrows join the parade, as the flatbed pushcarts maneuver - and block traffic - far more slowly.
3. For big loads, there are big trucks. These tend to go to the provinces (destroying the fragile patchwork of stones and dirt that communities and contractors are repeatedly attempting to grade into functional roads) and as far as Guinea and Liberia. On the far left you can see an "Own Goods" truck that might be transporting produce (this means cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rice - not lettuce and carrots), timber, fire wood, or people. These trucks are inevitably smoke-billowing bullies with no regard for other vehicles or pedestrians. They move at dangerously high speeds when coming toward you, and slower than molasses when you are behind them breathing in fumes.

Road Trip 3.0

Or, End Radio Silence.

Last week I returned to Freetown after three weeks in Eastern Province and what was sadly my last major road trip before returning to the UK/S. The map above charts my movements, as I realise the names will mean little.

The roads were bad, but could have been worse. The rainy season gods were smiling on me (most of the time) - they must have been impressed with my driving through a torrential downpour the first day - and didn't wash away too many critical sections. The only weather-related glitch was getting stuck an extra day in the village because the swamps/road filled with water the first day and took three days to drain. We traveled out of there in high style: with manpower, shovels and a pickaxe to build the road as we went (plus, serious agricultural booty including 2 roosters, about 50 pounds of papayas, an entire bag of ginger and lime for making gingerbeer, some 30 pounds of cassava, and a bag of rice for someone's mother).

Highlights included:

-walking into Liberia (twice!)

-seeing Guinea across the river

-learning to ride a motor bike (finally!)

-getting three country chickens (cock fohl - boys) and other nice gifts

-meeting bohku (plenty) wonderful people

-spending time in the village cooking, climbing into the forest, and learning Mende words (plus a surprise highlight t.b.a.)

-exhausting myself before I exhausted my potential sources for research material

-listening to my research assistant's endless supply of "Krio man say..." and "Mende man say..." proverbs.

Not-lights included:

-driving on abominations of a road (however, no breakdowns or flat tires and got stuck only twice = victory)

-being turned away from one of the Sierra Leone/Guinea waterside villages because of tensions surrounding a border conflict (difficult to solve with a country that has no president)

-getting innumerable and unidentfiable bites, some of which are not looking so good

-fuel shortage in Kenema on day two (road trip in the Eastern province is a carry-what-you'll-need endeavour, including fuel and water, which incidentally started to taste a bit like fuel)

Current mission: obtain two-week visa extension and sell car. Will also add posting backdated road stories to the humble blog.

...Lest ye be judged

I feel a little bad for mentioning Naomi Campbell alongside the word 'unscrupulous'. While she hasn't redeemed herself yet in the eyes of the world or Special Court for Sierra Leone by handling her implications with grace or finesse, apparently the blood diamonds were 'for the kids'. Groan...not good. But if she indeed donated them to Nelson Mandela's children's charity, which to date she has neither confirmed nor denied, that is certainly easier to swallow than her illegally transporting them from South Africa. The captivating train wreck that is Nobel peace prize laureate + warlord president + international supermodel + big uncut diamonds in the news cycle (which incidentally, partially transpired on a real train) is fleshed out a bit here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1291607/I-Naomi-given-SIX-blood-diamonds--Campbells-closest-aide-speaks-ahead-war-crimes-trial.html
Please ignore the classic British tabloid headlines featured on the sidebar. Personally, based on accounts I've gathered from people who knew the ertswhile Liberian president, I think Ms. Campbell's fears of retribution for testifying are not entirely unfounded. Still, a bit more political agility and a semblance of moral clarity would do wonders for her public image.

In other links -regarding justice, judgment, the writing of history, and the theatricality of life- I am looking forward to seeing the new documentary, War Don Don, about former RUF leader Issa Sesay's war crimes trial. Like Taylor's it was conducted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, but concluded last year when all appeals had been heard. The three RUF leaders were convicted and sent to Rwanda to serve their maybe-not-life (given their international standard prison healthcare that far suprasses Sierra Leone's) sentences. Trailer: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1291607/I-Naomi-given-SIX-blood-diamonds--Campbells-closest-aide-speaks-ahead-war-crimes-trial.html It looks amazing and I know a number of people who were involved in its making, offering interviews and information to the filmmaker.

I am consistently captivated and confused by the multiplicity of truths that constitute my research and the history of the Sierra Leone war. But maybe its our myopic view of good and evil that obscures a certain truth:
Aren't the war criminals necessarily also the peacemakers if true peace is to come at all?

In other news: the neighbourhood dogs went crazy after Spain won the World Cup. Then again, maybe they were just glad to see the match end with a real goal.

Ah, so this is the rainy season.

A word about the seasons in Sierra Leone:

There are two or three, depending on who you ask. The dry season and the rainy season. Some charitably divide the dry season into the Harmattan - when a "cool breeze can blow" from the Sahara - and the Hot season (c.f. 1985 Peace Corps Krio language manual). But for most, the obvious change is the arrival of torrential rains and flash floods, wherein roads become rivers and wash away the continuously constructed, "help yourself" patchwork of stones and dirt that made them bearable in the dry season. Technically, the rainy season is from May to September, but according to experienced locals and the indomitable wisdom of google, most of the rain falls in July and August.

A recent conversation with a colleague about whether the US had a rainy season plus a 24th hour of relatively heavy rain inspires this post.

Usai I kohmoht (where I am from/literally, 'where I come out'): Seattle
Average rainfall in the Rainy City: 36"

Usai I de (where I am): Freetown
Average rainfall in the capital city: 150-160"

Can I just underscore that this is no less than twelve and a half feet? Most of which falls over the course of 60 days (the two months that happen to also consitute from now until I leave). Also mentioned in the combined wisdom of google+BBC is an uncomfortably low average of two to three hours of sunshine per day during the rainy season. A very fine climate overview of West Africa: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/country_guides/results.shtml?tt=TT000540 And Seattle: http://www.gonorthwest.com/Washington/seattle/weather.htm

Rain and the cooler temperatures a deluge can bring are quite lovely in isolation. The pounding on zinc roofs lulls most of the country to sleep midday and the streets jammed with vendors tend to clear out as people scurry to small corners of cover, comfort, and deafening (from the rain) quietude (from the impenetrability of other noises). Despite these small graces, the reality is that life gets more difficult for everyone in direct relation to their level of poverty.

Starting small, we can observe that laundry, which like most places in the world, is dried in the sun in Sierra Leone, can hardly dry during the few sunbreaks the gods afford in July and August. At a slightly larger scale, all earthly possessions -already scarce enough for most of the country- and basic structures, from my flatmate's fairly 'high-end' apartment to my colleagues' zinc-walled rooms insulated by cardboard boxes and wallpapered with magazines, are permeated by mold. (I spent an hour this morning ironing mold out of clothes that sat untended for a just a week in my wardrobe.) Then there's the havoc flash flooding and a lack of adequate drainage systems wreaks in a country teetering its way up from the bottom of the Human Development Index. As mentioned above, most streets, aside from the government's outsourced highways, are maintained by initiative-taking neighbours who hand-fill gaping potholes with hand-made gravel and dirt. But, the lack of drainage due to clogged and infrequent gutters (there's no comprehensive sewage system to speak of) leads to rivers of run-off that quickly wash away even the professionally graded roads. Gusting storms blow apart self-constructed rooves and rickety powerlines pop and burst due to some formulation of rain, cascading electrical charges, and rust. The myth of Sisyphus comes to mind.

And unsurprisingly, no one is hit harder than the poor. Slums, "informal settlements" if politeness is your cup of tea, are built on landfills at the water's edge, literally clinging to the city against the force of the tides and along ravines and gullies that channel run-off from the surrounding peninsula mountains out to sea. As water courses through these natural passages, overburdened by the loss of soil from deforestation and over-population of unplanned urban-ity, people's homes fill with water at best, and are washed away or toppled by landslides at worst. The marginalised inhabitants of slums are hardly ignorant of the risks posed by the ground beneath their feet and the roof over their heads. As a friend who lives in a pan bodi (zinc-walled) room at the shell and trash strewn water's edge told me yesterday, he decided to rent the room only after the previous tenant reported no flooding problems -from tides or rains- in six years. Those without his steady employment or an equivalent source of income may be hard-pressed for such discretion in an undersupplied housing market.

Open sewers and the fact that toilet means latrine in all but the wealthiest compounds present persistent public health problems in addition to the housing threat. The compound in which I have been spending most of my days recently has no toilet (read latrine) and an open room-sized pit reveals where the full one used to stand. When the rain comes, the small gutter along the house overflows and the path gushes with dirty water. Water rushes through the streets with equal abandon and throughout the country (particularly in rural areas) poorly constructed latrines runneth over or disintegrate, polluting community water supplies.

Thus, for all the idyll heavy rains can provide, they also guarantee spikes in malaria infections (standing water breeds mosquitos) and cholera, dysentery, and other diseases from contaminated water and lack of adequate sanitation.

While I wish I'd spent more days at the beach, look with trepidation toward my next road trip, and bemoan the rampant mold, I count my blessings that these are my problems. If anyone is looking for high-impact development work, it's water and sanitation.

**Photos taken during the dry season in an urban poverty risk assessment by Concern Worldwide**

Starbucks a la Sierra Leone...

Or, Breakfast on the Road:
This is a photo of my go-to breakfast spot in Bo. Finding places to eat in Sierra Leone is always a challenge, and in the provinces it's only more difficult. My experience in Bo was a bit of a Goldilocks effort. The first day we drove around town and stopped at over three places looking for tea and bread, the local breakfast staples. Finally, we ended up at a mid-market 'restaurant' which served machine bread (a white bread akin to a giant hot dog bun in appearance, texture, and taste) with mayonnaise, ketchup, a boiled egg, and spaghetti noodles. The whole concept of a noodle-ketchup-and-mayonnaise sandwich was more satisying than the food itself. The tea is reliably, a half teaspoon of cocoa mix laden with a quarter cup of sweetened condensed milk and mixed with hot water. The next day we found this place. A bit more downscale and just right. For about 75 cents you get tea and Fullah bread with mayonnaise and egg. I'll have to do a bread post to introduce the various kinds available in Sierra Leone, but fullah is my second favorite, and the most widely available. It has a chewy but thin crust and soft, airy interior. Not nearly so heavy as J-wan bread and not as bland as machine bread. It took all of one hungry morning to get used to the idea of havng a mayonnaise laden loaf for breakfast. As an infrequent bread eater and someone who has never bought mayonnaise in my life, I never thought it could taste so good, especially in the morning, but I am a convert. When in Rome, and hungry...eat as the Romans do. Plus, the egg and mayonnaise, inferior ingredients as they may be, carry me through to the unreliable second meal, sourced sometime between three and six o'clock. The final Goldilocks moment was breaking ranks and telling them how to prepare my tea: No de put borku milk na me yone, yehri? Ok, ihdo. And put tealeaf, yah? With one third the sweet milk and a tea bag added, it almost tasted like something with caffeine in it.
Now that I'm back in Freetown I miss the ritual hunt for a place with thermoses lined up and mismatched plastic mugs dotting a wooden plank table. I even bought a jar of mayonnaise. But it just doesn't taste the same.

Context for Naomi Campbell

An excerpt from the Prosecution's first expert witness to testify in the Charles Taylor trial, January 2008:

"Q. You have studied and written about diamonds' role in
conflict. Can you tell us is there anything about the
characteristics of diamonds that gives them a role in conflicts?

A. Well, diamonds are the most concentrated form of wealth on earth.
You could put five million dollars' worth of diamonds in
your pocket and it wouldn't show. It wouldn't show up on a metal
detector going through airport security. It would show up an on
an x-ray machine, but very few airports have x-ray machines. So
they are very small, they are high value, they are easy to move,
they hold their price, historically they have held their price
very well, and so they have become - not so much today, but in
the 1990s, the period that were talking about, they were an
alternative to hard currency in countries where there was no hard
currency, or where people wanted to hide the movement of money."

Available at http://www.sc-sl.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=sSJXuExCeYM=&tabid=160

Oh, to be beautiful and unscrupulous.

Or, The Naomi Campbell Post:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/10480596.stm

The Special Court for Sierra Leone is still deep in calling the Defense witnesses in former Liberian warlord/president Charles Taylor's war crimes trial, but the Prosecution has recently stolen the show by subpoenaing an unlikely witness. Supermodel par excellence Naomi Campbell has been ordered by international law to cooperate with and provide testimony for the Prosecution regarding allegations that Taylor gave her a 'huge' uncut blood diamond at Nelson Mandela's residence in South Africa (!) in 1997. It is a totally bizarre scenario with actress Mia Farrow also set to testify as a witness to the transaction. The relevance to the trial is seemingly tangential, but if Campbell's testimony affirms that Taylor gave her the rough diamond it would prove that Taylor's claims to have never possessed uncut diamonds were lies. Stay tuned, and reevaluate your opinion about paparazzi-punching Naomi Campbell as you will. I personally wish she had used her elite status as a mainstream supermodel to uplift and empower black women the world over rather than profiteer off African suffering, but indeed, the jury is still out.

Things I Learn in Sierra Leone

One of the great triumphs of Sierra Leone is people's fearless resourcefulness. Nothing, it seems, is ever broken beyond repair. (But, before we get distracted by silver linings, I want to underscore that this is all a consequence of poverty, deprivation, and global marginalisation. From a tree-hugging perspective it seems great that someone in Sierra Leone can almost always put another's cast-off to use, and that everything is salvageable, revitalizable, fixable. In reality, everyone would rather have nice new things.) That said, I have learned so much about how to do more with less here it is a constant source of excitement.

First of all, cars generally arrive after a decade or more of previous Western use and with hundreds of thousands of miles already on them. As a result, I have learned a LOT about cars. It's hard to know much of anything about cars in America because they don't break down very much, when they do it's usually due to some remote controlled electrical computerised robot failure, and to be fixed they are carted off on tow trucks into magic secret jiffy stations that give them hundred-dollars cures behind the scenes. In Sierra Leone, however, cars are actually machines with working -or not, as the case may be- parts that can be de- and re-constructed countless times.

I have learned how to push start (method of choice) dead battery cars, as well as use a truck's ill fitting battery to juice a car, then change the battery while keeping the engine running to load the correct-but-dead battery. Both of these methods, incidentally, have rescued the barbie safari car.

Also, did you know that cars can run without a key in the ignition? A wildly entertaining taxi ride featured a driver whose key kept falling out of the ignition and landing on the floor at his feet. Over and over again. I couldn't stop laughing.

Fueling cars is an artform in itself. While there are some brand new foreign-owned filling stations in Freetown, the breadth of fueling activities across the country is like a history lesson in gas stations. The first revelation was watching young boys hand crank the fuel up into the one gallon jug at a National Petroleum (NP) station on the Freetown-Makeni highway before the fuel - "petrol" - was delivered by hose and nozzle to my car. Even more striking was the handmade gallon jug with funnel attachment I posted a picture of a few weeks ago (see below, June 14th-ish). Sure, it's obvious that you can just pour petrol into a car, I guess, but who would ever try that at home?

Everything in America has become so highly technical, that it has been sterilized and specialised. I would have never dreamt nor dared to hand-fuel a car. But being in Sierra Leone brings me a little closer to the form-function nexus. And is not only educational (nay I say revelatory) but also a bit liberating. Things aren't so fancy, and unfortunately sometimes they do not work so well for lack of supplies, but where there is a problem, people tend to be much more closely connected to the solution than in the States.

This brings me to the breakdown while driving to Tongo Field. As I explained in the previous post, a large rock buried in the mud cut my exhaust pipe between the first and second chamber, making my car growl like a Harley (so annoying and intrusive passing villages!) and making it, as my colleague and assistant described, "lazy," or slow. With no option but to keep on trucking, we roared our way slowly (a hilarious combination) to the impoverished diamond mining town. Enter the garage. The men there were working furiously on an engine-less car that has clearly not been driven anywhere in recent memory, but happily pushed it aside (literally) to take a look at my own exhaust problem and weld the pipe back together.

The old man knew cars. He wanted to check all my various oils and fluids and greases, and lauded the car as a "strong car" - it's persistent accolade amongst locals. I have had many parts welded back together on this once rust-afflicted vehicle, so am no longer as dazzled by the straightforwardness of melting metal with metal to repair damage. What was new this time was the ditch they'd built beneath the tire tracks to more easily see and reach around under the chassis. I've always pitied mechanics here because they seem to routinely have to dive under cars on their backs and bellies, lacking those hydraulic sky jacks that perilously hoist cars to the rafters in American garages. Yet, in Tongo they had created the most poetically logical solution I could imagine, simply walking beneath the car to work from below. Yes, the welder still worked without eye protection, and the lack of spare parts was total...but the human capital was boundless. They let me squeeze in under the car with them to examine the problem in my bright pink dress, patiently showed me a few other places I might want to check out in Freetown, and brought a chair out of nowhere to make sure I sat down while they worked. And the price? Le 35,000, about $9. I'm grateful for the opportunities I have had here to learn more about cars and how to fix things in general.

Add to the list of lessons learned: drive in pants and wear brown so that breakdowns aren't such a mess. I immediately employed this lesson on the drive to Kailahun, and immediately benefited when the car 'fashuned' (fastened/got stuck) in the 'pohto-pohto' (mud) for over an hour.

Add to the list of lessons learned: always inquire if a road is passable before trying to drive it, and How to Pull a Car out of Several Feet of Mud when the Four-Wheel Drive Fails.

Introducing...The African Barbie Safari Car!

This is my car and it is amazing. When I first saw it, I thought it was too embarassing to even consider owning without spraying over the 1990's Barbie-colored Danish graphics, and now I love it like nothing else. It is an extension of me and makes me feel particularly accomplished (quite a feat for what is effectively a luxury item in this country). Why does it make me feel like a champion?

1. Manual transmission
I learned to drive stick shift on safari in South Africa, but really, driving on open roads, dodging only rhinos is a lot easier than driving through the pot-hole ridden, stone strewn, heavily populated, narrowly constructed streets of Freetown. I like to think I really learned to drive stick in Sierra Leone, a place where even experts might reconsider driving a car.

2. The bad, bad roads
Nothing warrants a victory cheer like overcoming a road made of [boulders, holes, mud, water, etc.]

Effectively 'off'-roading + stick shift = road warrior. My greatest accomplishment yet, sad to say.

See the mud? This is the road to Tongo Field, a diamond mining area. An infamously bad road, we took it 'small small' (cautiously). This road led me to mentally categorize roads by which gear I spend most time in. Tongo was a 1/2 road. Not good. On the upside, I learned How to Drive through Mudholes:

Go straight through the middle - bypasses will tend to make you slide out, and other cars must also ply the road, therefore the problem has *probably* been fixed with rocks beneath all the mud; stay in a low gear; move slowly; don't turn the wheel; and definitely don't stop.

This did not save my exhaust pipe, which cut on the way going. Padding the mud with enormous rocks is marginally unhelpful, although I appreciate some concerned citizen's effort to keep cars from getting stuck in the mud. Not seeing the stone, and having a little too much zeal-at-the-wheel, I bottomed out mid-mud and the corroded exhaust pipe unceremoniously cut. Next post will feature this episode along with other: Things I learn in Sierra Leone.

Road Trip, part two

It's been many weeks since my last post due to a drought in the internet supply and another road trip in the provinces. I returned to Freetown this week after finally (yes!) making it to the Southern and Eastern Provinces and their attendant, headlining highway towns. My first stop was Bo - the "second city", or LA to Freetown's New York, although the size makes it a bit more like, oh I don't know, Bellingham before it had suburbs and sprawl? Driving on the brand spanking new road from Masiaka to Bo was glorious in itself, and were it not so conducive to driving smoothly and efficiently without braking I would have stopped to take a few pictures. Until my next trip, a description will have to suffice.

The highway is a real two-lane work of art. Sparkling black tar. Banked on all the right curves. Lined, striped and dotted with bold yellow and white paint. Occassional road signs - new and relevant to boot - warn of sharp bends. And the coup de grace to ensure the fine work doesn't wash out in one rainy season, steep gutters and embankments for run-off. The drawback to this drainage solution is that there is not much in the way of a shoulder. In fact, there's none but two feet or so the whole length of the highway. This seems to be a problem afflicting the entire country and is in my inexpert opinion the number one culprit for the heavy number of road fatalities. (The runner-up would be bad-plus-overzealous drivers.) Without a shoulder to pull onto and with all major arteries in the country two-narrow lanes at best, trucks, lorries, passenger vehicles, tractors, etc. all break down in the middle of the road and generally only on curves and hills, where visibility is worst.

Dear Government of Sierra Leone,
Please consider adding a (hard or soft) shoulder to your existing road construction projects: So that vehicles can break down where God wills them to, and not just in the village pull-outs (where He inevitably does not will them to). So that vehicles can swerve to safety when death defying maniacs overtake into oncoming traffic, rather than having to plunge into steep gullies, gutters, swamps, and forested ditches. So that when people repair breakdowns, they don't need to leave clods of dirt-and-grass strewn along the newly smoothed road to act as flares.
Faithfully yours,
Cautious driver

I suppose the upside is that, without much in the way of a towing service, the skeletons of broken cars along the side of the road act as a macabre reminder of road safety and deterrent to speeding. Although, sadly, I'm not sure the speeding drivers of the luxury SUVs and 'road giants' (Toyota LandCruisers, driven by NGOs and NGO-funded government ministries and which make up roughly 40% of the vehicles on the roads in Sierra Leone, inching toward 100% in distant Kailahun District) are driving slowly enough to see them.

After my solo cruise, powered by the fine road and some fine tunes, terminated in Bo, I commenced a few days of networking and interviewing, then moved on to Kenema. From Kenema I made an epic day trip to Tongo Field, and an epic over-night trip to Kailahun, before returning back to Kenema, back to Bo, and once again to Freetown. I will try to post a few photos here and there, though it's not too encouraging that my first post on my previous road trip was also the last one. It appears we have a much-predicted backlog.

Lots of love.
xoxo

Road Trip, part one.

I just returned to Freetown yesterday from one week in the Northern Province. I started in Magburaka, where I helped a friend's local NGO hold a HIV/AIDS "peer animator" training workshop. I was mostly there for show - in Sierra Leone white faces are often seen to add gravitas to any development type effort - but led a few of the facilitations. It brought back many memories of leading various trainings throughout high school and college, and made me appreciate all over again the joys of sexual health education and the empowerment it gives people over their own bodies and personal lives. The condom distribution was a big hit; most of the 30 odd participants came into the district capital, Magburaka, from more rural towns and villages where condoms aren't readily available. One 'Pa' (the only older man in the workshop) took an entire box that he was happy to carry back to his community. All of the participants knew quite a bit about HIV/AIDS and other STIs, and had clearly been trained before, but still had gaps in their knowledge. It was heartening to see their active engagement and ready acceptance of the benefits and drawbacks of condom use. However, it was a somber reminder of the limits of education to realize that the tools (in this case condoms, but c.f. bednets, vaccines, early treatment of health problems, etc.) are not necessarily available in people's communities...

Road Trip

Fueling the car in Makali

River No. 2 Beach

A friend from MSF Liberia (sitting) takes in the sun and surrounds, while two of us take a more laid back approach to appreciating the restorative day.

River No. 2 Beach

Last weekend we made the one hour journey down the peninsula to River No. 2 Beach, one of the country's most beautiful - where mountains stumble down into mangrove swamps and the river (a modest creek of mountain run-off) plays with the sand and the tides as it flows into the Atlantic. The are villages in the surrounding area of Peninsular Road, and the car park fee of Le 5,000 (about $1.25) goes to the community association, but the small beach is mostly populated by a smattering of NGO workers and local Lebanese families on weekends.

The balcony on a sunny day

All grown up!

When I first moved to Sierra Leone last fall, I ended up with an adorable tigress of a kitten on my hands. The previous post is one of my first pictures of her teeny tiny scrawny kitten days. Much to my disappointment, when I became a reluctant vagabond, I had to leave her in the care of my friend, whose much loved cat Dave had died after a valiant fight against a virulent infection. Now, my friend/her guardian is also my flatmate, and we've been reunited! In addition to trying to eat everything I eat, she likes to sit and sleep alternately on my papers or snuggled in my mosquito net hanging over my bed.

Introducing my kitten, Oct. 2009

A positive headline in the news

A positive headline about West Africa is a little bit of an occassion in itself! Coming on the heels of horrible, terrible, no good, very bad days in the Mother Earth department for going-on-two months, this calls for a link:
www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/world/02liberian.html

For those of us near and/or dear to Sierra Leone, this story hits close to home, because the drug trade has periodically tried to establish a way-station here as well. A fascinating factoid that sheds a lot of light on how the drug trade can so flexibly try to penetrate Africa to access European markets is that a fully fueled Cessna (the little six-seater, indeed) can apparently make its way from South or Central America all the way to West Africa without refueling. Adding to the appeal of exploiting developing countries for drug trafficking by buying off officials (or trying and failing, c.f. NYT article), is that there are a number of fairly unsupervised landing strips throughout the region. The Sierra Leone government successfully foiled a racket enabling cocaine runners a few years ago.


By the way, I've given it more thought and the generators are less like struggling refrigerators, and more like lots of gassy lawnmowers having a party without music. Next time you hear a leafblower herding freshly clipped grass, you can think of me dozing off to sleep! goodnight :)

The view from my window

It's a hot, noisy night here in Freetown: no power, so the few better equipped houses have generators rumbling and humming across the neighbourhood. It sounds like sticking your head behind a dying refrigerator echoing off the surrounding kitchen walls; there are a few crickets and cat fights, too. I've played and lost many games of solitaire waiting for this humble picture to load. The fact that I won two games means I must have played for over an hour. I do think my computer takes pity on me after I lose a dozen or so times, and thus throws me a victory so I can watch the playing cards turn into confetti. (I love that part.) I've also managed to read a few NYT articles. There was a gem on Liberia a few days ago for those of us desperate for a sign we're not running the earth and humanity into the ground full-tilt after months of oil spill time lapse images: "Liberia Aids US in Drug Fight." Or something to that effect.

So, this is my wonderful view. In the distance you can see Lungi, the island where the airport is inexplicably located. The water in the middle ground is ocean and is more or less a shipping channel into the bay-type water formation that is on the inland side of the Western Area peninsula (at the tip of which Freetown sits). Maybe 'tamarra' or 'next tamarra', as they say in Krio, I'll be able to post a picture of my balcony, which is actually envious. Needless to say, my number one extra curricular activity is watching boats pass, and taking their pictures as I mentally make a boat taxonomy and keep track of which ones would be most likely to have pirates if this was the slightly more rambunctious Gulf of Aden. (At the top of the list: old trawlers with flags and rags, and local wooden fishing boats outfitted with heavily polluting but impressive sounding motors.)

Magic

See interweb portal sticking out of my computer at left like a thumb hitching a ride on the information superhighway.

"There are oceans and waves and wires between us..."

This was going to be a post about caveats and is even more so now that the 'error on page' has fittingly expunged my first entry. Oops. Before I send this modest attempt at communication out to family and friends, I wish to make a few caveats about the interwebs here in Sierra Leone, and about my own propensities as long-distance communicator:

1. This is not my first blog. I started one in South Africa, where the internet connection is far stronger, and managed to post just two or three times before deciding that life was better spent being lived than being reiterated. The biggest challenge to this blog's success as a portal to my loved ones is that I am its author.

2. The second biggest challenge, of course, is the paltry internet connection in Sierra Leone. Any internet connection, mind you, is a huge victory for a country that stagnated for a few years at the bottom of the Human Development Index (http://hdr.undp.org/en/) and went decades without power in the capital city. That said, every word, every dot or dash of punctuation, and every valiant photo that makes its way onto the interwebs has to squeeze through a flash drive modem that spirits data away to a satellite in the nethersphere that somehow, ostensibly, bounces my musings back down to you. This means that many posts will be waylaid, or ingested by the 'errors' that be.

3. On a related note, text loads more reliably, but I am wont to write much; I would rather let the country and my experience speak for itself through images. I suspect that anything I write will be imprecise and inadequate, and I will regret it at best. At worst, it might get me into trouble. Of course (see above), it takes 20 to 120 minutes for each photo to load. Still, a photo blog is my sisyphusian aspiration. Forgive me if it is painfully spare. Maybe emails will prompt more textual elaboration.

4. I am still settling in (again) here in Freetown, with the luxury of time and my friend's internet connection while she's at work all day. When I get up and running, I'll be where sporadic electricity is a distant dream and hopefully doing better things with my time than watching pictures upload. Which means posts will become few and far between. Still, if this ends up being a front-heavy, 48-hour crush, the few photos it gets to my family makes it worth the effort.

With love, and hopes for more posts,
Zoe

Q & A

Question: What's better than a cold drink of potable water in Africa?

Answer: Hmm, not much. Maybe world peace?

Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary

Chimpanzees are indigenous to Sierra Leone, but have been endangered due to extensive hunting for bushmeat. Most of the chimps at Tacugama were captured as babies and sold as pets by hunters who killed their mothers for food. I made this second visit to the reserve in the forested mountains around Freetown in a heavy rain storm. Beautiful. ...and refreshingly cool!

This year, the sanctuary celebrates its 15th anniversary with the completion of an impressive national chimpanzee census. See http://www.tacugama.com/ for more information, to adopt a chimp, or to visit the sanctuary or offer your skills as a volunteer. The census estimates indicate roughly 4,000 chimpanzees living in the wild throughout Sierra Leone, alongside even more rare forest elephants and pygmy hippopotamus.

Upon arrival

Walking around Freetown upon return, I am struck with a craving for the tart frozen yogurt I didn't have time to get in Washington, DC. I have come up with a modus operandi to handle situations such as this:

Want what you can get. Don't try to get what you want.

Welcome back na Salone!