10/22/13-The Devil Strikes Again

The devil, demons, spirits, witch.......whatever you wanna call it.  Call me culturally insensitive but I'm so sick of this f*cking "devil" business!  It's such a cop out for so many things.  It's so easy to not take self-responsibility for anything because everything is the work of the devil and demons are controlling your life.

One of my students had an epileptic seizure today.  I wasn't there when it occurred but I was called in after the seizure was done.  I found Fanta on the ground, she was dazed & confused while everyone hovered around her.  Yes, of course they were yelling because that's what Sierra Leoneans do best.........yell.  The principal told me of Fanta's pre-existing condition so I knew what had happened.  She also told me that there were 2 girls in the class that knew what to do in the case a seizure happened.  And just like any other Sierra Leonean student and their inability to learn anything, the supposedly trained students didn't do anything and what pissed me off the most is when I asked them what happened.  Well, her answer was as clear as day.....I should've knew it was coming.  She opened her mouth and said, "She has a demon in her."  Well, color me stupid! Gat dammned I should've known!  The devil of course!  Really? Seriously?!?!  These are the words that are coming out of the "smartest" stream.  The Pure Science stream, the ones that want to become doctors?!?!  They say that their classmate has been possessed by demons?!?! Give me a fucking break!!!

Am I really that culturally insensitive???  I'm Filipino and I come from a country that originally consisted of indigenous tribes people along with all that talk of devils demons and spirits.  Yes, Filipinos can be superstitious at times due the residual history of our tribal beliefs but it doesn't govern our lives and is the end all explanation to everything.  Wake up Africa!  If you want to move forward towards becoming a progressive developed country then put all those chicken bones and voodoo-hoodoo aside, it's freakin ridiculous.

On another occasion, I came into class and a teacher asked me to excuse a student and let her put her head down at her desk.  I looked down at my student and saw her crying.  The story goes that she was at her desk, she heard someone calling her name so she ran out to see who it was.  It was no one.  So she freaked out and started crying because she said that the spirits were calling her.  You really can't ask me to sympathize with this bullshit.  I excused her to go to the library and said that she can put her head down and cry there because I don't tolerate the devil, spirits, demons, or witchcraft in my classroom.  The students laughed and I said:

" What's so funny?  You are the ones that believe in this garbage and I'm just telling you that I don't allow works of the devil in my class.  So if you would like to entertain works of the devil then you can deal with the spirits outside of my classroom because I'm here to teach Math to serious students who can take responsibility for their own actions and not blame everything on demons and spirits."

Someone has to give them a reality check.  If we continue to coddle these delusions and say it's "culture" then this place will go nowhere.  I have one word......SCIENCE!  Ya, I get it, I know.  Using the word spirits, devil, demons, etc. were just ways to explain the unexplainable before scientific research and development proved everything.  So Fanta has been formally diagnosed with epilepsy but since the community has convinced her and themselves that she is being possessed by her dead twin brother then that means everyone has drank the punch.  I'm just hoping that she won't get killed because of the devil inside of her or die from village medicine that gets shoved down her throat and eventually poisons her to death....well, you know, to get rid of the demon inside of her.  Am I joking?  I wish I were.  So call me culturally insensitive, but I'm living and I see it with my own eyes and this stuff happens.  You tell me if that's OK.

Last vent.  Term3 exams last school year.  I went to proctor one of the exams.  A teacher comes and informs me that a student in my class will be taking her exams in a separate area from her peers.  I asked why and the explanation was that the girl had a dream that when she walked into the classroom to take the exam, 3 girls in her class threw sand in her eyes and made her blind.  The girl was crying and I even saw another teacher crying for her when she heard the story.  So everyone was convinced that these girls have witched her and entered her dreams so she will fail the class.  Dreams are "real" here and come true.  And all the evidence pointed to witchcraft, it was obvious.  The girl used to be the top of the class but then her grades started dropping when these girls were tormenting her in her dreams.  Hurry quick! Someone call the witch police!  There has been a committed crime of unlawful dream trespassing!  Puh-leez you really expect me to keep a straight face when I hear this ridiculous bullshit.  How about we call it what it is: nervous anxiety.  The mind is a powerful thing.  She's not top dog anymore so it bothers her.  But instead of taking matters into her own hands and say:  I'm scared but I can control the situation and be successful.  She can easily give up and say that her falling grades is not her fault but the work of witchcraft from her colleagues that wish to malice her.  So all the teachers entertain this delusion so we all protect her from witchcraft.  Well gee, I hope she doesn't have that same kind of witchcraft when she goes to university.  That excuse will definitely not fly at a university abroad.

I dunno, maybe they have something here.  Maybe I should incorporate it into my own life.  It seems to make things easier.  Like:

-Oh I never ever get sick, I'm real healthy but every now and then I get possessed by the devil

-Oh I'm sorry I'm late for work again, there seems to be demons in my bed that prevent me from waking up at an appropriate hour 

-I really wanted to make that deadline but the Finance Dept. really hate me and they've performed witchcraft to affect my duties, it's not my fault.  It's the work of the devil, I tell ya!

-Oh I wasn't being a bitch,  the devil just possesses me sometimes is all.

Call it the DEVIL if you want but I'll tell you what it really is:  STUPID EXCUSES

10/13/13 - Love Hate Relationship

I hate going outside sometimes.  The black flies just eat up my legs, the sun at times can be hot as hell, and the constant harassment from people:

Hey Opoto!

Hey Baby!

Or one of my all time favorites:  Ching chong ching chong!

Hey Opoto, ye ma di! (I want to eat)

Hey Opoto, ye man kala! (I want money)

No exaggeration, this happens at least, AT LEAST, 10 times a day.  Some days I'm like, fuck me, less than a year left, I can do it.

I went for a bike ride into the bush today.  I was on the road to meet Chris at the Loose Your Face junction (it's the name of a tele-center, I think).  And the usual harassment happens along with, "Give me your bike."  So now I'm like, do I really want to deal with this today???  Fuck it, I'm already outside, let's go to the bush......

The ride was sweet today, sunny but not scorching hot.  Seeing Salone from a distance can be beautiful especially when you wanna get away from the thick of things.  It's beautiful when you're not surrounded by harassment, piles of garbage, and feces both animal and human.

Salone does this to me.  Whenever I start to hate this place and be like, get me the fuck out of here, something happens and I'm like it's so fucking awesome here.  Bike rides out into the bush is great.  Lunsar just being a clusterfuck dirty crowded town, one just needs to get away sometimes.  Running off into the bush is easy.  Spinning class is so fucking lame.....biking outdoors, I'm sold.

Being a terrible bike rider, I ate it twice today, like a damn fool.  The first time I fell, half a dozen naked children bathing in the stream saw me. And as I got up, they kinda formed this Soul Train lineup and "thumbs upped" me and kept saying "Opoto osh-ya." (I'm sorry).  I saw their mother or Auntie bruking clothes in the stream and as I rode off, I told her that she was a good mother and that her children were very respectful, she smiled and thanked me.  I mean, how cute was that, really.  A crowd of small naked children concerned about my fall.  I know bad wording but just stick with me, it was damn cute, ok!  Fall #2:  I slipped into a pit of mud.  The okada bobo washing his bike nearby helped me wash the mud off my bike and luckily for me I was right next to a stream when I fell so I just washed off the mud then I was good to go again.

We cut through Chemende where Boss K had us walk with him through the village.  Bush kids are so quick to yell "Opoto!" when you zoom by in a bike or car.  But on foot they kinda swarm around you carefully, almost as if you have this small force field around you.  They crowd around because they are curious but they keep their distance because they're afraid.  I told them they can touch my back fender, all of them afraid to touch, the one "dry eye" kid emerges from the crowd and touches the fender.  Then all the kids get a feel and they all start laughing.  Trust me, they were "enjoying", it's probably the nicest bike they've ever seen and probably perceived as extra nice because it belongs to an Opoto.  Everything the opoto owns is that much more desireable because they think everything we have is imported and expensive.

I dunno, everyone was just super nice at the end of the day.  Letitia even showed me a place where I can get cold ass beers.  I mean, I've already settled for warm beers and I'm stoked about cool beers but this shit was fucking sub-zero cold!  I mean, even really cold by American standards.  Am I dreaming, NO! This was true life, this is the coldest beer in the country.......in my town, Lunsar.

Salone......it's hard to love it and it's also hard to hate it......

10/12/13 - I'm Sorry SPAM Is Not A Vegetable

I have had many occasions where I've seen the damages of rote memorization in this society.  The education system here believes in shoving endless amounts of text into minds of children who can't read and barely count to 10.  So what happens to these children?  They get weeded out to the final top students, and when I say top I mean barely passing at like a 50.5%.  So these children are considered successful students because they are capable to retain only half of the information they are required to know.  And when I say "retain" I truly mean just be able to keep the information in your memory banks so that one day you can regurgitate the information without any knowledge of what it means.  

Ok fine, this posting is not fair.  There have been a number of occasions where I have had wonderful meaningful conversations and discussions with my Sierra Leonean peers but those insightful conversations are rare.  Critical thinking and the ability to thoughtfully discuss a topic is something that we cultivate in the American school system whereas in Sierra Leone everything is a memorized definition.  So the Sierra Leoneans that are capable of having meaningful conversations are either self-taught or have spent a good number of years in a western society.

Insightful conversations aside, let's just talk about something basic.  Like knowing your area of expertise.  Case in point.  I was sitting down with one new Home Economics Teacher, Princess.  Princess is a product of the HTC (H Teachers Certificate).  An HTC means that she was able to finish high school and wasn't smart enough to go to university.  Where she then made her way through the system at the bare minimum of 50% or purhased the grades or slept with the teacher.  Those are the 3 main ways to pass your class in Sierra Leone.  I was asking Princess when the girls will start doing practicals.  She told me that she was going to start cooking with the girls next week and saying that Week1 they will be cooking meals for pregnant women and Week2 will be for vegetarians.  I was actually impressed for a minute, like wow, she's ready to do different stuff and teach about healthy cooking.  She must know her stuff, right?  So she said that she was going to prepare things like salad for the vegetarian.  I told her how much I love salad and asked what kind of salad she was going to make.  She said:  lettuce, carrot, egg......ok, she then clarified that the meal is for a lacto-ovo vegetarian.  Ok, fine I accepted, egg is ok.  Going back to the ingredients:  lettuce, carrot, egg........LUNCHEON MEAT.........whoa, hey, wait up......luncheon meat?!?!  Sometimes in situations like these I just continue to smile and nod but this time I couldn't, I had to interject.  Ums, ya, I'm sorry Princess, but Luncheon Meat is MEAT and not vegetarian.  Then she used the Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian term again.  And I really hate sounding like a douchebag know-it-all but I didn't want her to give a vegetarian left-over pig parts in the form of a cube and say its vegan, lol.  So I kindly explained to her that "Lacto" means dairy and that "Ovo" means egg and that luncheon meat is neither dairy or egg and is clearly meat just like the can says "MEAT".

What freaks me out is that she is a teacher and she is going to teach these girls and say that putting luncheon meat is a healthy meal for a vegetarian.  When the truth is that luncheon meat is neither healthy nor vegetarian not even lacto-ovo vegetarian.  Sadly, she will ignore everything I said and still make the "vegetarian" salad in this manner..........con carne style, lol.

Why is Princess like this?  Well, she is a product if this poor education system.  So you have the blind leading the blind because she memorized terms and "kinda" passed and never understood a single word from it.

Am I singling her out and hating on her?  I mean, should I mask the truth?  This is just one occasion.  How many times have I had to correct "well educated" adults here and tell them that America and Europe are two different places.  So yes, that is where I come from London, America: Obama's village.  The WHITES are so powerful that is why America is a great place so we need to bring more British people in Salone.  No, not a joke, these are things people say to me.

So it's obvious that comprehension is a complete NO GO and sadly even just basic memorization isn't working so great either.  All of them take Geography classes for several years and in the end they can't even memorize the difference between Europe and North America.  90% of the population won't even be able to point out Sierra Leone on a map of Africa, wait, just change that to 90% of the population won't even be able to point out the continent of Africa on a map.

I'm sorry SPAM is not a vegetable.

10/07/13 - I Swear I Have A Good Excuse(s)

Just like any other blog, the writer tends to drift off and do less entries......guilty as charged.

But I swear I have a good excuse, not like I'll receive any slack from it but ya, I got an excuse.

Reason #1:  Workload - My entries started decreasing during Term2 of last school year because that's when my SS1 girls showed up, so I actually started teaching more classes.  Is it really a good valid excuse.....probably not.  Only because my workload is a fraction in comparison to my former life as a cubicle jockey.  True reason:  laziness.  I've enjoyed my mid-afternoon siestas.

Reason #2:  Travel - When I first got here, I spent a lot of time marinading in my village, Lunsar.  But now a lot of my weekends are spent in other villages or Freetown or the beach.  Why?  Well, I pretty much know what I need to know in Lunsar so on the weekends I take off.  Better reason:  one of the goals of Peace Corps is to learn about the culture.  So here I am, learning about a culture by spreading my geographic reach outside of my village.  Besides, I find it really refreshing in visiting other sites and seeing my PCV friends in their "element".  It's sometimes easy to forget why we're here and whenever I see my friends ruling the land in their hood and meeting their peeps, I feel good about this whole Peace Corps thing.  And on the weekends I'm in Lunsar, I'm relaxing aka being lazy which includes being too lazy to write an entry, lol.

Reason #3:  Normalcy - There I was not too long ago, running away to Africa because I hated "the grind".  But here I am today, in another kind of grind.  I guess my stay here came to a point where I didn't feel the need to constantly record my daily happenings.  It all feels normal but I guess from an outsider looking in its still interesting because it's so foreign.  Speaking of "the grind", do I hate it?  No, at least not yet.  It took me 9 years of doing the cubicle grind before I wanted to rip my eyeballs out so I'm sure that in due time this situation will lead to the same fate.  So sorry folks, this experience has not inspired me to be a teacher in Africa.  It's fuckin hard, yo!  Lol.  Props to teachers and even more props to GOOD African Teachers.  (Emphasis on GOOD because that is a very rare breed of teacher here, so when they are here, they are freakin awesome!)

I will try my best to keep up on this blog thing especially now that I'm on the countdown.  Less than a year left, I know it's gonna fly.  I'm still happy here and all of it is a great experience even with its bad moments I'm still glad to be here.  

09/23/13-15 Months Down, 10 Months To Go

Countdown begins:  15 Months Down, 10 Months To Go

09/10/13 - Coming Home To Somewhere

I recently visited home, America, for 3 weeks this last August.  I didn't know what it was going to be like.  I would hear stories about reverse culture shock or never wanting to get on the plane back to Africa.  Other PCVs would talk about getting mind-fucked after attempting to enter a Target, all kinds of crazy shit.

Luckily for me, I experienced neither.  It was good to be back home.  I immediately slipped back into my American habits.  And just like that, I was American Kristin again.  I mean yes, one of the main things I noticed was the constant excessiveness of eating.  Eating everything all the time and a lot of it too.  Eating was just present everywhere, lol. 

I didn't get reverse culture shock and cry my eyes out for Africa.  At the same time, I wasn't crying to stay in the first world either.  I enjoyed every minute of it and there was no rush to go back home (Africa) because school was locked.  There was also no reason to stay home (America) because there was nothing there for me and I had a job to finish in Salone.  It felt good for what it was, a vacation. 

All of this became very clear to me as I arrived back home in Lunsar.  And there I was, walking on dirt roads again without running water and lack of electricity.  I didn't feel bothered by it, it felt normal, really.  I can't explain it, I just think it's kinda weird to have this ability to live these 2 completely different lives and be OK in these parallel realities of my life.

Honestly, I think that my complacency with the quality of life in Salone has a lot to do with the fact that I know it's temporary.  I'm used to the way of life here in Salone but I'm not in it for the long haul.  

As much as I love it here.  I know I'm only loving it for what it is, a temporary stay.  I battled a lot with this.  As awesome as Salone can be, I know that I will never be 100% accepted into this culture.  Salone has a long way to go.  No matter how much Krio, Temne, Mende and any other tribe language I learn and no matter how much I know about the country and its culture,  I'll always be "white" to them.  It's just a fact of reality here.  

04/30/13-I've Been Really Terrible At This Blog Thing Lately

I know, I suck.  I went from daily blogs and according to my posts, my last one was a month ago.  I guess there's a number of factors that explain all this but I'm here to admit that the #1 reason is just plain laziness.  Yes, the fact that I've been in Salone for quite some time now (11 months) and things have become more of daily life rather than a new experience. Totally forgetting that life is completely different back home in America.

I've also been quite busy at school.  OLGSS is one of the most functional schools in the country.  So while I'm working my ass off making lesson plans, teaching, and grading papers, my other PCV buddies are off doing other secondary projects b/c there's always some reason why school is out whether it be harvest, sports, secret society stuff, teachers not showing up, etc.  I use the word "functional" lightly b/c we have our own problems as well but it's the lesser of the evils when compared to the other schools.  So when I say "working my ass off", I really just mean I'm in school everyday, haha.

Term2 was really my first term teaching since my SS1 girls come in around that time after BECE results come out.  Alot of lessons learned for me on how to proceed forward for Term3.