Sonder Salone

On New Year’s Day we attended a school fundraiser dinner for Nick’s school. The dinner was scheduled from 8 to 10 p.m. but one of their friends warned us not to arrive until at least 8:30. Nothing starts on time here which is proven to me time and time again, but I have this constant fear that the one time I show up late, the event will start on time. We arrived at 8:30 and the place was almost totally empty. They began serving food at 10 p.m. which made us very thankful that we had eaten dinner before we’d arrived.

The next day it was time to go back to site after almost four full weeks away. I had a lot of mixed emotions but was happy to be done traveling and living out of a backpack. In Bo I waited in a car for four hours that never left and finally switched to a van as the sun was starting to set. Part of me was grateful for the delay – I didn’t know what to expect coming back and was hoping I could quietly slip into my house and decompress.

I was dropped off in front of Seibatu’s house where she was all smiles. She said everyone missed me but she missed me the most. Her three nieces were happy to see me as well and Mimi walked with me to my house to drop off food Seibatu had prepared. I immediately noticed that the village was eerily quiet – many people had apparently left for the holidays, so I walked all the way to my house without really passing anyone. I saw Ja who said he could tell by my face that I’d had a nice break. Mimi left the food with me and I gave her a necklace and earrings I’d bought for her 12th birthday that passed while I was away.

The next morning, a miracle happened – I got cell network in my house for a few hours! So far I was feeling really good about being back and I was taking this as a good omen. I walked with Mimi to a section of the village I hadn’t been to before and later met a man who said he was running to be the Paramount Chief of Pujehun. He told me his whole life story along with a brief history lesson of World War II and then said he would visit me later and bring bananas because “white people love bananas.”

That night, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) from 2011-2013 named Jesse arrived. He had served in my site and currently runs an NGO with his wife that supports the school and surrounding communities. Some community members brought out cultural dolls to celebrate and then we went to Veronica’s house so he could settle in. The chiefs showed up and started talking to Jesse in Mende, and when he said he had forgotten all of his Mende, they continued yelling Mende phrases and laughing. I will never understand it. I was waiting for them to start comparing us as volunteers but instead they told him how happy they were that I was there which I really appreciated.

The next day we walked around the village with a giant group of kids following us. Jesse, Seibatu, and I sat at the school for a bit and talked. He told us that his suitcases had been cut into at the airport and various items he had brought for community members, including a laptop, were stolen. He was very relaxed about it and I could only imagine what my reaction would be if I experienced the same thing. The next morning my friend Christopher asked me to jog to the next village which I hadn’t visited since rainy season. The journey was infinitely less treacherous and once we arrived, we saw our friend Dauda with his sister. She gave us cassava leaf and rice, numerous coconuts, and a giant bag of gari which is shaved cassava root that sort of reminds me of oatmeal when cooked.

The weather was extremely cool and nice – this was the harmattan winds everyone kept talking about. We had just jogged over two miles and I wasn’t sweating at all. I had left the window next to my water filter open at home and that morning the water was actually slightly cold. I also slept with a full sheet for the first time!

We walked back and then I left for Pujehun with Jesse. We visited two volunteers’ sites and shared stories about how Peace Corps and Sierra Leone have changed over the last nine years while eating avocados and fried plantains. He said when he was here the roads in Pujehun weren’t paved, but a lot of things were still basically the same.

The next day was supposedly the first day of the second school term. I say supposedly because I was told it was a holiday – January 6 is the anniversary of the rebels attacking Freetown during the war. I had asked Seibatu, teachers, and students and had heard it was a holiday but they were just waiting to hear the announcement on the radio. Yet at 6:30 a.m. I had too much anxiety to sleep in since the holiday hadn’t actually been confirmed. I told myself I was being crazy and forced myself to lounge around. At 8:15, 15 minutes before first period starts, Mimi came to my door.

“Are you going to school?” she asked.

“…are you?”

“Yes.” Her hair wasn’t braided and she wasn’t wearing her uniform.

“Is Seibatu?”

“Yes.”

What the hell?! I took a quick bucket bath and was out the door 20 minutes later. A student who lives across from me was ironing his uniform even though it was now 8:40. I asked him if there was actually school. He said yes. I asked every single student I passed if there was school and they kept telling me yes despite the fact no one was ready and school had technically started 10 minutes earlier. I just knew I was going to get there and no one else would be there.

I turned the corner to the school and saw…………………three students. And one teacher. The students who had actually come were now being forced to clean the whole school while everyone else got a day off. Jesse came by and told me Aruna, Veronica’s relative and a worker for the NGO, was driving to Bo soon. Since school was apparently not in session and I’d heard most students wouldn’t even start coming until the second week, I spontaneously went with him. A study abroad group from my university was visiting Nick and Riley’s site the next day and I decided my time would be better spent there than sitting alone at an empty school.

We drove to Bo while blasting Drake. Aruna drove so fast we made it in less than an hour – it has taken me up to two and a half hours before. I took a keke to a village just before Nick and Riley’s and sat with a group of teachers while waiting for another keke to come by. One of the teachers helped me negotiate a fair price and then I was off. I got to the police checkpoint and ran into their neighbor, a young boy named Tompay. He walked the far distance with me to the clinic where I met up with Nick and Riley.

An NGO that supports a birth waiting home at their site was visiting as well. They had also invited members from a church in Minnesota to visit, so we met a lot of Americans and learned about their work and first impressions here. One woman from the church group had done some sewing with local women earlier in the day and was extremely concerned that no one had pin cushions. Another member of the group gently reminded her that they were in a different culture.

The next day I went to Nick’s school with him and not a single student showed up until 9:30. We talked to the few students who came for a bit and Nick told them his girlfriend Riley had gone to a better college than him and was smarter than him – they all gasped. The principal then randomly decided to teach them about letter writing so Nick and I walked to the clinic to meet up with Riley.

Soon after we entered, we ran into their friend Nancy. I didn’t even recognize her at first as she was wearing a short wig, makeup, and a new dress. She looked particularly happy and proud.

“Does she look different?” a nurse asked us. “She’s a woman now!”

“Oh!…” We didn’t know what to say. That meant she had just been initiated into the women’s society, a secretive process.

We all walked to the back of the clinic to the nurse’s homes and a young man instantly knew what Nancy’s new look was for. He seemed to scold her for joining the society and she kept denying that she had joined.

That night the study abroad group from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign arrived. They went to the birth waiting home and then we met them at the NGO house. It was already late and they were trying to figure out sleeping arrangements. Nick and Riley offered their house and we all walked back with two students, one of which had the same major as me when I was at U of I. But right before we left, the professor in charge of the trip asked me and another Illinois alum if we’d like to go to Tiwai Island with them the next day. Yes!

The next day I tagged along with the group as they visited a cassava farm and two villages to learn about plant health, food storage, and moisture levels. The group had a special machine to test the moisture levels in stored goods such as rice and nuts. Most of the items they tested were within acceptable moisture limits which made all of the farmers really happy. I don’t know anything about agriculture here (or in general) so it was a really interesting day. I thought about how when I was in college I went on so many study abroad trips and now two years after graduation I was still managing to join in on them.

As we were leaving the second village, a man stumbled over to our group and then quickly darted under one of our two cars, latching on to the undercarriage. Community people came over to complain that while our group was discussing food storage with the locals, the man had been running around robbing houses. He was now demanding money from us and claimed he wouldn’t let go until he got it. In the end some men had to drag him out and then we were on our way.

Our final stop before leaving for the island was back at Nick and Riley’s site at an “ABC,” an agricultural business center. Apparently the ABC was supposed to be open to the community but the chief had turned it into his own personal business so that he was the only one profiting from it. I thought back to the school fundraiser dinner we had attended on New Year’s. The chief was in charge of it and each ticket was an astonishing 250,000 leones.

After that we headed to Bo where we ate at Ruri’s, stocked up on snacks at the supermarket, got gas, and then set out for the island. We arrived after sunset. The sky was clear and the moon was big and bright, illuminating everything around us. I told the professor that at my own site I loved nights like this where I could walk around without a flashlight. He told me he knew of a study abroad student who had died in Bali after walking down the beach at night and getting bitten by a snake. I use my phone light regardless now.

We had to take a boat across the water to the island. It felt mystical with the moon shining down on us, the cool air whipping past us, and only the hum of the boat and insect noises filling the silence. It was another one of those “wow-I’m-a-Peace-Corps-Volunteer-in-Africa-and-this-is-my-life” moments. Island staff served us groundnut soup the second we arrived that I shoved into my face, clearing my plate while the study abroad students all commented to each other that there was no way they could finish all this rice.

They started to ask us questions about Peace Corps life and I talked about some problems in the school system, such as classes being taught in English when many students don’t understand the language.

“Well why doesn’t a teacher just show the one student flashcards?” a student suggested.

Which teacher? With what flashcards? When? One student?! It wasn’t that simple.

We all slept in tents and I fell asleep in the same outfit I’d been wearing for about two days. I hadn’t anticipated going on this trip so I was severely underprepared. The next morning we left early on a forest hike where we saw different species of monkeys doing acrobats through the trees and yelling distinct and unique calls to each other. I’ve seen monkeys in the trees across from my school but I’d never heard them or walked through the trees while they were there.

Our guide also showed us various types of trees and their medicinal purposes and then pointed to one that he said people needed to get permission to cut down. It is commonly used in cannibal societies. A man seeking wealth or power, such as contesting to be a paramount chief for example, may use the bark of this tree to turn into an elixir along with the skin of his victim sliced from the forehead and other specific body parts.

I asked the guide where cannibal societies typically occur and he said that they are everywhere, listing Pujehun first. Great.

As the sun set we took another boat ride around the island with the hope of seeing a crocodile, although none passed us. We stood on a sandbar and watched the sunset. Back at our tents, we had the option of going on a night hike. I went along but it didn’t feel any different from the day hike except for the fact that there were no monkeys and I was basically just stumbling around in the dark.

Then I was saying goodbye to the group and heading back to site, although I would see them one last time in Freetown for an alumni dinner. Jesse, the RPCV from 2011-2013, was still visiting and his mother and her friend were arriving that day as well. I made it back and was told I had to go to the school soon for a welcoming ceremony for them. So, of course, the lock on my door decided to break then. The carpenter was called, he quickly fixed it, and then I headed to the school.

And, of course, no one was there. I saw Mimi and the Head Boy, Ahmed, shoving a stick through a window to the teacher’s office. I walked over and was told Ahmed had accidentally left the keys in the office after locking the door. He had tied a hook to a stick and was attempting to fish the keys out. It took a little bit, but he eventually got it. I was impressed the hook worked and he was beaming.

Everyone finally arrived and put on the biggest celebration I’d seen yet. Both the men’s and women’s societies came out with their songs and performances and four people in devil costumes came out to dance and collect money. After the ceremony everyone danced into the street. It was amazing and fun and overwhelming all at once. We heard the societies had challenged each other over who could dance the longest and we quietly slipped away into Veronica’s house.

After eating and relaxing for a bit, we drove to a nearby village to host a movie screening of a documentary called, “Welcome to the World.” The documentary follows three mothers in America, Cambodia, and Sierra Leone, specifically in the village where we were showing the movie! Whenever scenes from the village were on, everyone cheered and laughed and called out to whoever was on screen. Many of them were sitting in the audience. The woman featured was present and introduced herself in front of everyone. Her son, the other main character in the documentary, was standing right next to me.

About 20 volunteers got together near Bo to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was so therapeutic to see everyone and I was amazed that we all had strikingly similar stories to share. So I wasn’t going through all of this alone, I wasn’t crazy, and I wasn’t the only one feeling stressed. I was also impressed that even though we all had the same struggles, everyone was still out there trying their best. I’m truly lucky for my cohort.

We went to the chief’s house to use their giant cooking space. We were making pumpkin plasas over rice. I helped cut onions the Salone way with three other volunteers – we held them in our hands while slicing them over a bucket. At one point some oil spilled into the fire and caused a small explosion that singed the ceiling but everything was okay!

We finished cooking and brought it back to their house. Many volunteers had also made desserts like pumpkin bread, cookies, and cobblers, and it was heavenly. Some of our hosts’ local friends came over and it was nice to be able to share our American holiday with them. When we finished, we all drove to the Dohas hotel and spent the night drinking, swimming, and talking. I also remembered it was the one-year anniversary of me being accepted to the Peace Corps.

Back at site, Seibatu caught me up on some drama I had missed over the weekend. She told me various rumors about Wuyata that were pretty off-putting, and she also told me two teachers had gone to her to ask her to speak on their behalf to the chief. One had beat the other’s wife and the chief was fining them both 100,000 leones. She refused to support either of them.

While I was sitting outside her house, an ambulance whirred by and all of a sudden everyone sprinted toward the clinic. I later learned that a boy had apparently been knocked down by the force of the wind from the ambulance and had hurt his legs. They took him to the clinic where every person in the community ran to get the scoop. I asked Mimi what happened.

“He will die,” she said matter-of-factly. Moments later we learned that he only had a few scrapes and bruises. We talked about how it is normal here for the community to go to the clinic together to see what happened. I said in America we don’t do that.

“It is rude?” Mimi asked.

“Well… we all want to know what happened but we pretend we’re not looking!”  

Back at school, the students had final exams. In between two of their tests, the JSS 1 students asked me various questions about America.

“Can you walk to America?” one boy asked.

“There’s no connecting road, duh!” another boy spat out, implying that there was forest in between our continents.

“Guys, there are no roads at all,” I emphasized. “The ocean is between us and you can’t swim.”

Another student asked me if you can see people on the ground when you’re in an airplane and everyone laughed at him. I said if you’re close enough to the ground then you can, but way up in the sky you can’t.

“Are there hills in the sky?”

After school, two Peace Corps staff members arrived to talk to Seibatu about all the responsibility I had at school. Before we spoke with her, we went to my house to review and make a game plan. They framed the meeting like it was a normal check-in since the first school term was ending. We all sat down together and they simply asked how school was going. She immediately brought up the teacher who had been making fun of me and sent someone to bring him to our meeting. Uh-oh.

He arrived and told them about the three times he had spoken to me in a high voice yet pretended he was the victim in all of it. The Peace Corps staff were exceedingly friendly and charming yet also stern, and after our meeting ended, they went to his house privately to have another chat.

“Peace Corps is your family and we are here for you!” they said to me. “If he does it again, call us and it will be a different conversation!”

Overall I think having Peace Corps show up was a great move. The next day at school none of the teachers were ignoring me anymore and the rude teacher even greeted me. Seibatu called a quick teacher meeting to inform everyone about the Peace Corps’ visit and to reiterate that we all need to work together. Swaray told me that the last female volunteer who was here in 2014 “didn’t have many challenges” and that if anyone asks me for money I should just say I don’t have any. Money? Who was talking about money? And at that moment it truly clicked that I will never be fully or even partially understood and I just need to accept that and learn how to deal with it.

After the meeting, I learned that one of the JSS 2 students was missing. No one had seen her for two days. I had a hunch the students probably knew where she was but weren’t saying anything. I asked Mimi if students knew her whereabouts. She said yes. I asked if she was okay and Mimi shrugged.

“Is she hurt?”

“Sometimes.”

“Is someone hurting her?”

“Yes.”

“In her house?”

“Yes.”

She reappeared two days later and had apparently been hiding at a friend’s house.

I spent the day grading their final exams and unfortunately many had failed, as was normal for every class. With classes being taught solely in English, many students who don’t have the language skills are unable to learn anything.

After school, Mimi showed me a brand-new white dress that Seibatu had bought her. Klua told me they were all sleeping somewhere else that night and I was confused. They were all traveling and Seibatu hadn’t told me? Then it clicked – the girls were going somewhere for a women’s society event. They told me their faces would be painted white that night and they wanted to come to my house to show me. Society business was supposed to be secretive.

I went home and a student who lives next to me tried to teach me Mende. I asked him how I could ask someone what they were cooking and he instead told me how to say cassava leaf. I asked him how to talk about eating and he gave me another random word. Language learning was still a struggle. We finished our impromptu lesson and I decided to crochet outside for the first time. Multiple people passing by were impressed that I knew how to do something crafty. Many people believe I don’t know how to do simple things like cooking, cleaning, or walking through the woods because they think Americans sit in their houses while hired servants do everything for us. I try to keep dispelling that myth.

That was the last day of the first school term for me – I had made it through my first term! For the next two weeks my whole cohort had training together where we talked about how site was going and different tactics we could use going forward. We also voted people on to committees and I was voted onto our Gender Equality Committee where I will help plan gender-related activities.

During training I visited my host family and it was a little awkward. Half of the family seemed genuinely excited to see me while the other half didn’t react in any way. Some didn’t even say hi. It was great seeing the younger kids again since they had randomly left when I had gone on site visit in July. Gbrilla, the 13-year-old boy who had always liked reading with me, saw me in the street first and sprinted full force up to me. Unfortunately Mariatu wasn’t there because she had gone to another town for college.

Some things I learned during our training: don’t bring only $6 when you travel and the bank is closed for the weekend, forcing yourself to drink water through a LifeStraw out of the sink because you can’t afford water until Monday; Dungeons & Dragons is a unique, fun, and extremely long game; hotel staff in Salone like to knock on your door before 7a.m. and will continue knocking until you answer; there are endless NGO opportunities for us in Salone after we complete our service; my Krio is apparently now at the advanced mid level even though I haven’t spoken it since the last time I was tested in August; and every single person in Port Loko will be sure to remember Gabe and ask me where he is, forcing me to repeat over and over again that he is permanently back in America, and no, he is not coming back.

After training, we had a few more weeks to kill before the second school term started. I ventured out to River No. 2 Beach in Freetown with some friends. On the drive there, we had to cross a bridge that only fits one car going one way. I’ve crossed this bridge multiple times and always wondered if cars ever entered it at the same time going opposite directions. That day I got my answer first hand!

We were halfway across the bridge when a car coming from the other way entered. A police officer was running alongside them while motioning his hand toward us repeatedly.

“Go back! He doesn’t have brakes! Go back!”

There were cars behind us but the car ahead of us apparently wasn’t about to stop. We all slowly reversed and made it off the bridge, but not far enough before we bottomed out.

“Keep reversing!” the police officer yelled in a panicked voice, motioning back.

“We can’t! We’re stuck!” we replied.

“Oh…come forward!!!”

Four of the six of us got out, the car became unstuck, we avoided the oncoming vehicle, and we crossed the bridge. We spent a few days at the beach where we took a small boat to a waterfall and saw monkeys and jumping fish and generally just relaxed by the water. One day we wanted to take a free boat ride across the water to walk to another beach. Locals took the boat back and forth throughout the day for free and the distance was maybe 30 feet. We got to the boat and they wanted to charge each of us 5,000 leones.

We argued that we knew it was free but they wouldn’t have it. In the end, I took the boat alone and carried everyone else’s items while they swam across. All of the locals were highly amused at this and laughed to each other, although I think they were also impressed we could swim. The current was strong and not in our favor.

As we walked to the new beach, some men selling coconuts followed us and wouldn’t leave until the only male in our group told them to. Ugh. Back at the beach we were staying at, we all enjoyed BBQ seafood, fries, and beer. We watched the sunset, took cute beach pictures, and listened to music. At one point a staff member came to us and tried to increase the price of our rooms and charge us for the free breakfast after the prices had already been established. We said no.

On our last night at the beach, we took a car into the city to eat at a nice restaurant. There was a big, loud political event happening at the beach that we didn’t want to be around (plus they closed the kitchen). We found an oceanside grill with a stunning view. We sat down and a waitress brought FREE GARLIC BREAD. We all lost our minds. The owner came over to greet us and told us his daughter was in Virginia – two of the volunteers with me happened to be from Virginia. The owner sent us a free veggie platter (!!!) that we all meticulously divided amongst ourselves.

I spent the next few days visiting volunteers in Bonthe district which is to the west of Pujehun district. The president grew up in Bonthe and I was able to visit his house at a friend’s site which was very neat to see. We went to the district capital and found a woman selling packaged nutrition meals from America, the kind you make at Feed My Starving Children. She had an enormous stack of them that were all expired. My friend asked her if she’d ever tried it and she said she had but she didn’t really like the taste. She also said it wasn’t spicy enough.

NGOs are infamous for providing solutions that just aren’t quite right and aren’t exactly what the people need or want. What if the organization that had provided these nutrition packs simply added dried peppers to the mix? Had they ever surveyed the countries they were sending these to? On top of that, I’m sure the packs were meant to be given out for free. How did this woman end up with a whole pile for sale?

On Christmas Eve, all of the volunteers in the Bonthe area met up to decorate Christmas cookies that our lovely friend Kayla, the best baker in the world, made! It hadn’t felt like Christmas at all, but Kayla made us cookies and various types of icing, taped a fabric tree to the wall that we decorated with paper ornaments, designed a paper snowman on the opposite wall, made delicious hot chocolate with marshmallows and peppermint, and put on the movie ‘The Christmas Chronicles.’ She is truly an angel.

On Christmas Day we were invited by some American doctors to their house at the district capital. Before we left for that, Kayla and I attended church for two and a half hours and it was quite the party. They collected money from everyone at least five times and we sang and danced to lots of songs.

A few days later the Bonthe crew went to Bonthe Island. We had all heard great things about the island, but when we arrived, we felt a little deceived. There was no beachfront and hardly any buildings or people. We walked a short distance to the guesthouse we had booked and were met with a very grumpy woman. She refused to let us all share one room and yelled at us for wasting her time when she was tired and wanted to sleep. We left the guesthouse and decided we would just go back to the mainland and figure out a different plan for New Years. The man in charge of selling tickets for the boats told us they ran up until nighttime.

We ate lunch and then walked back to the dock around 2:30 p.m where we saw a boat just pulling out.

“When is the next boat?” we asked.

“That was the last one,” the man said.

“What?! Why did you tell us they ran until night?!”

We were all getting tired, anxious, and angry. We sat on the dock and talked to various boats going by but no one was going to the port we needed. Some offered to charter us for a whopping 700,000 leones. Our entire boat on the way to the island hadn’t even paid 200,000. Luckily a woman started talking to us and we discovered she had some family members at one of our sites. She convinced a man to let us stay in his spare room for only 20,000 leones each – an extremely cheap price. We walked toward the man’s house and as soon as the only guy in the group was out of earshot, the ticket seller asked the five of us for our numbers.

“We’re married.”

“All of you?!”

“Yup.”

“But I can text you?”

“Peace Corps doesn’t want our phones to be busy. We only use our phones for work,” Riley said.

“Okay, how about we just send images?”

“Oh…wait what?”

We made the most of our night on the island and caught the first boat out the next morning.

We decided we would spend a night at the Dohas hotel. On the way there, our van tire popped and Kayla and I were stuck on the side of the road for about two hours. Luckily she brought her radio so we passed the time talking and listening to music. My patience has really improved being here and I’ve found that I don’t keep track of time as much, especially when I am forced to wait around. Although after the first hour passed, I was starting to get a little annoyed.

“Where is the driver?!” I asked another passenger.

“He has gone for another tire. We all pray for his safe return,” he replied calmly.

“Oh….right.”

We finally arrived at Dohas and had a much better time than we did on the island. The next day was New Years Eve and I traveled back to Nick and Riley’s site to spend it with them. We drank beer the chief gave us and fell asleep at 9:30 p.m. Happy New Year!

Veronica was about to head back to London which meant lots of final meetings for us. We had a Hands Off Our Girls community meeting to discuss what the First Lady had shared in Pujehun. One woman told a story of three girls sitting on a bench who were called one by one into a room to be assaulted by a man – and she blamed the girls for going in. I talked about the ‘It’s On Us’ campaign in America, assault statistics for both men and women, and victim blaming, and shared ideas about how we can support those who are assaulted instead of shaming them and making them afraid to come forward.

While I was talking, I had a little firework burst in my head – I couldn’t believe I was actually living in West Africa talking to a community about a human rights issue. Every day I try to remind myself how grateful I am for this opportunity and how hard and long I worked in order to be here. Sometimes it feels so surreal.

That night we had a final teacher meeting and the next morning we had a final BECE (a standardized test here) committee meeting. And then I was saying goodbye to Auntie Vero, someone who had been such a huge support to me my entire time at site. I was especially grateful for her because she could understand my perspective since she has lived in London since she was 17 and she could also explain the Sierra Leone perspective to me since she grew up here. And now she was leaving.

The next day at school, the day started out well and then quickly turned into a disaster. As always, my seventh-grade class was giving me a hard time. I was walking through the rows and noticed that once again, students were ignoring me and copying notes for other classes. I internally exploded. It was the final straw. Day after day after day I was struggling to get them to listen and learn and nothing was working. I had no support. I walked out in the middle of the class feeling overwhelmed but also immature. Another teacher noticed and asked me what was wrong. I unleashed all of my stress and said I couldn’t take it anymore – if they weren’t going to listen, I was done trying.

I stomped home and had a huge internal conflict. Maybe I was failing as a Peace Corps volunteer, as a teacher, as an adult, as everything. I got in my house and burst into tears I didn’t even know were welling up. Suddenly Wuyata appeared and asked me what was wrong. I couldn’t stop ugly crying and then Seibatu and even a chief came by. I tried to calm down but really couldn’t. Everyone left and Wuyata told me to stop by the clinic and get her before I went back to school.

At the clinic, the rest of the nurses yelled to me in Mende and laughed at my tear-stained face. I couldn’t believe it. I ignored them and walked away with Wuyata. As we approached my school, I saw my whole class kneeling in the dirt and heard students wailing. I looked in the barre and saw older students and my neighbor, Ja, the principal of the primary school, forcibly holding students stomach-down by the wrists and ankles and beating their backs with a cane as they squirmed and screamed. It was horrifying. I ran to the barre and told them to stop. I felt crazy. They laughed at me. They told me to leave and go stand in the office so I didn’t have to see it. I told them I didn’t want the students to be flogged, especially not on my behalf. They finally agreed to stop.

But on the other hand, who was I to come in here and throw a tantrum when this was their norm? I wondered if I was overstepping my bounds and if it was even my place to say anything. Yet how could I not when for me, seeing children get flogged is completely abnormal?

I still couldn’t stop crying. I sat in the office while teachers lectured me for two hours about why ‘stubborn African children’ need to be flogged here. And during those two hours the students went back to class, the teachers went back to teaching, the community went back to their normal routines, and I was the only one still dwelling on the whole incident. It was unreal to me and I felt like I was removed from reality. Even some of the students were laughing about it and were completely unphased at the violence of it all.

I sat in the barre and tried to compose myself. A text from Gabe came through. He had been seeing the doctor in Freetown for a while and the doctor couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. He was most likely getting medically separated – permanently sent back to America. It was one of the most hopeless, melancholy moments of my life.

School ended and everyone left. I continued sitting there. Rain started to fall and I saw Seibatu walking toward me. I told her about Gabe and she empathized. We sat together in silence as the rain poured around us and she ran her hand up and down my back. I was defeated. That night I contacted our doctor and said I was drowning in stress. He told me to come to Freetown the next day which was a huge relief.

At 9 p.m. Wuyata and Seibatu showed up. I was already in my pajamas and didn’t want to have to interact with anyone, which I even told them and felt rude about. They came in anyway and gave me a long speech about how I needed to be strong for Gabe because “relationships depend on the woman’s behavior.” Seibatu started to cry and told me she hadn’t eaten all day because of me. If I had internally exploded earlier, now I was straight turning to ash. I didn’t want to listen. Or talk. Or keep up the polite charades. Or take any more blame. I just wanted to be sad and alone. They finally left. In the corner of my room I watched a spider capture a firefly and eat it, its light going out. How appropriate.

The next morning I felt embarrassed to even walk out my door. How many people had heard about me screaming and crying all day? I had to greet Ja like everything was normal, like I hadn’t just seen him whipping my students the day before. I sat on the highway and waited for a car to come by. Tears kept threatening to fall out and I blinked and swallowed and drank water and forced it all back inside. Wuyata sat with me and listed every reason she could think of that I’d be sad about Gabe going back to America. I pressed my lips together and nodded along. On the bright side she also informed me that three of the nurses were being transferred to other villages – hurray! Maybe nicer ones would transfer in.

Finally a car came and I was on my way. I’d never been to Freetown before and it was stunning. There are rolling hills and a beautiful ocean view. On top of that, drivers aren’t allowed to pile six passengers into a car like they do in the villages, so I comfortably sat in the front seat while two men sat in back. One told the driver he would pay for the final seat just so we could get going – he said it was too humid to wait around. I was shocked. I learned he was a diamond miner who worked with a man in Las Vegas. He wanted to give my number to the Vegas man until I told him I was married, then decided it wasn’t worth it. He insisted we get drinks together and he wanted to introduce me to some military man in charge of the Pujehun area. Did the thought that I hadn’t trekked all the way to Freetown just to run into him and spend my whole afternoon entertaining him even cross his mind? Why were people constantly feeling entitled to my time and attention?

I made it to the Peace Corps compound and saw Gabe. It was like a huge weight was falling off my shoulders and instant happiness flooded me. The Peace Corps compound is where all of the higher up staff members work and there is also a doctor’s office and a sort of hostel where volunteers who are sick or on program hold can stay. There is also air conditioning, Wi-FI, computers, a kitchen, and hot showers – a small haven.

The next day I met with a doctor and talked about all of my stress, from having Mende yelled at me constantly, sexual harassment from men, no support at school, students who won’t listen, nurses and community members who laugh at me, teachers not doing their jobs, feeling like all of the responsibility is on me, Auntie Vero leaving, Gabe leaving, and especially the entire flogging incident. He had me fill out two surveys and my results showed that I had a lot of anxiety at site. He told me I would have to talk to the education programming staff.

As nice as staying in the compound was, it was also seriously bringing my morale down. Everyone else who’s there is sick or stressed, and three volunteers were actually going back to America. Listening to them talk about all of their stress at site and how excited they were to go home definitely wasn’t helping me want to stay. But I knew I wanted to stay, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy. As Peace Corps says, this is the hardest job we will ever love. And it’s true.

The next few days I met with Peace Corps staff and they were concerned with all of the responsibility I had at school, from running assembly alone to being in charge of signing out all the textbooks to parents even when I had class to being the sole disciplinarian and more. We agreed they would come visit my site and talk to the school staff. I was really nervous about this approach but knew something had to be done if I wanted things to work out at site. Thankfully Peace Corps was extremely understanding and knew perfectly well how awkward a meeting could potentially be. They fully planned it with me and took all of my concerns seriously.

The next day I saw a dog get hit and killed by a keke and I cried in the street. The day after that my Kindle, with over a thousand books, broke. God damn universe, can I catch a break?! After a week of Netflix and showers and pizza and general destressing, it was time to go back to site. That day Gabe officially found out he was being sent back to America. We said our goodbyes and I began my long trip alone back to site.

I tried to give myself a pep talk. I had reached a breaking point, taken a week off, and was now vowing to have a better attitude, different strategies, and new coping mechanisms. Mind over matter. I got in a car and the woman next to me shared some fried dough. I told myself to hang on to these small moments. I got to Bo and switched to a car headed to Pujehun. I was squished in the front seat next to a man who started out nice and then began asking me if I had a husband, if I wanted a Salone husband, if I could cook Salone food because that’s what the men will really want from me, if I plan to get pregnant in the next year, and a whole bunch of other totally inappropriate questions.

“If I’m making you uncomfortable, I’ll stop talking,” he said. I don’t know about you, but if I have to ask someone if I’m making them uncomfortable, it’s probably a given that they’re uncomfortable. I straight up told him I didn’t want to talk to him anymore, our bodies stuffed together in the seat for the next hour and a half.

I got back to site and Seibatu’s three nieces sprinted up to me as if I had been gone a whole year. We walked to my house and Mariama was so happy to see me, she ran over in her underwear. It was really touching, and again I added to my mental list of reasons I’m here – for people like them and for relationships like these.

The next morning I was extremely nervous about going back to school. I didn’t know if anyone knew why I left. Seibatu and Wuyata believed I went to Freetown “to say goodbye to my husband.” I confidently walked to the school acting like nothing had happened. Just as I turned to enter the office, a teacher who had made fun of my voice twice before said good morning to me in a very high-pitched voice. Seriously?! My first day back?! I snapped at him and he immediately denied it, insisting he was telling a student to grab his phone for him.

We then had a teacher meeting where teachers who weren’t even at school at the time defended him and his fake story. Only one teacher, Swaray, took my side. Even Seibatu questioned me. But I stood my ground and would not let them gaslight me. They wanted both of us to apologize and I refused. Again I felt crazy – I’d never been this aggressive or yelled at anyone before. My promise to myself to have a better attitude at site was failing miserably.

But that day my mom texted me saying she had received the pen pal letters Veronica had taken and sent to her from London – yay! Veronica even included a really nice note about how much she appreciates the work I’m doing here.

The next day I skipped assembly. We had two weeks left of the school term and I decided I would skip assembly until the next term. Either another teacher was actually going to come on time and run it, or they wouldn’t and we would start late. I was going to try not to worry about it. Three teachers started to completely ignore me, I guess showing their alliance with the one who had made fun of me three times now. I acted like I didn’t notice, but greeting is a very large and important part of their culture, so it was hard not to. First period was supposed to start at 8:30 and by 8:25 assembly had yet to begin. I sat in the office.

The school day was fine, but that night Wuyata and another nurse came to visit me to ask about my argument with the teacher. Again I was to blame – they told me I had to learn how to be friendly and adapt. They insisted that Africans just speak loudly which drove me crazy. No matter how many times I told people he was not shouting, he was speaking in a high-pitched voice to mock me, they always claimed he yelled at me and wouldn’t listen to what I was saying. I didn’t want to be agreeable. I told them that I would not be friendly to someone who was going out of their way to annoy me. Then what would come next? I felt like I couldn’t let anyone even tiptoe around my boundary line or things could quickly get out of hand. And to top it all off, they told me I should never tell Gabe when I’m sad here because I’ll just stress him out. All of this unwarranted advice was going to make me burst.

The next day Mimi was diagnosed with malaria. Normally one of the best students in class, she fell asleep on a bench in the middle of the day. I also noticed that one boy had been absent every day since the flogging incident. I asked my class about it and they said he was never coming back. I wanted to go to his house but then felt apprehensive – would his family see it as my fault that he was flogged and therefore quit school?

Around site, society season was beginning. I started to hear the women’s society at nighttime walking around the village singing, chanting, and shaking instruments. In the morning I saw them again dancing past my house and didn’t know if I should hide inside or not. After they passed, I walked to Seibatu’s house to wait for a car. I was traveling to a friend’s site to meet up with all the volunteers in the south for Thanksgiving!

I met up with two volunteers at the hotel in Bo and listened to them share stories with their families over FaceTime who were highly amused and laughed at everything they told them. I tried to see it from their perspective. I didn’t want to take everything here so seriously and be so upset all the time even though some things were really tough. Then once we got to their site and I saw how laid back they were when people did things like shout Mende at them, I asked myself why I couldn’t do the same.    

I had been at site for about two months when Seibatu mentioned that the solar installation in her house was actually meant for my house, and she had been borrowing it until I arrived. I had no idea it was supposed to be mine, and then randomly one Saturday morning I saw an employee from Easy Solar taking the panel off her roof. He and Mada put everything in a bucket and started walking toward my house.

This was incredible. I was going to have lights and I would be able to charge my phone! The employee told me he was from Guinea after I tried greeting him in Mende. He said he was also trying to learn Mende but everyone was always yelling it at him – I could empathize. At my house, Ja asked him how much a solar set-up would cost.

“1.5 million leones!” he yelled across the whole damn village.

“What?” Ja asked.

“1.5 MILLION LEONES!”

Shut up! I hadn’t even paid for the solar and I didn’t want all of my neighbors thinking I was that rich. The man finished installing four lights and a battery with a USB port and then left. That night I turned the lights on and stared. I could see everything in my room. My phone was charging next to me.

The next day I missed school for the first time. I was very achey and had a cough and congestion, but it wasn’t terrible. Multiple students visited me during the day as well as a teacher, Seibatu, Wuyata, and my neighbors. Seibatu was adamant that I should go to Freetown to see a doctor but I insisted it was just a cold.

“She’s fine! She’s adapting!” Ja said.

“You can’t adapt health!” Wuyata replied. She turned to Seibatu. “Cry for your daughter!”

They walked away laughing but also warned that you never know what could happen in the middle of the night. For me this was a simple bad cold that I wasn’t worried about at all, but for them it could’ve been anything. I still felt bad the next day but went to school anyway. I didn’t want to miss more classes and I wanted to start a pen pal project with my students. When I got to school, many students ran up to me and bragged to each other about who had visited me. One student said she was mad at me for missing school, which was actually very heart warming.

We started the pen pal letters the next day and I was really impressed. JSS 2 (eighth grade) took the time to write rough drafts and wrote things like, “Your food is sweet but our food is also sweet!” and, “My family is so very nice.” I would be sending the letters to fifth graders in America at my mom’s school. My seventh-grade students were also excited about the project. Kids who had never talked in class before were eagerly calling me over to ask how to spell words. I showed everyone some pictures my mom sent me of the students and school and they very intrigued by them.

I visited Gabe again over the weekend and had another stressful travel experience. I got to Bo and immediately found a car leaving right that second for the next city – yay! But when I tried to buy a ticket, the man said I needed to buy two. I asked why.

“Because you have a big butt!” he laughed. Disgusting.

Instead I waited over two hours for a totally empty car to fill up. A man asked for my number so he could ‘help me’ in Bo and I said no. The car finally started to leave when a preacher came on and yelled at everyone about God. Another man came to the window and yelled something at me while winking. I decided my new tactic would be to blankly stare back and not say a single word. It worked wonderfully! The man got extremely awkward and left.

The preacher finally finished and the car pulled away. A chicken trapped in a plastic bag began pecking my ankle. After three seconds we stopped to change drivers. I took out my phone to listen to music and noticed half of my Spotify playlist had disappeared. I tried to remain calm and had this weird feeling of amusement at how ridiculous everything was mixed with anger at how ridiculous everything was.

A weekend away from site was again rejuvenating, besides the bats that flew around Gabe’s room that he swept out the door and the child who came to his window and yelled at me to take my shirt off. On my way back to site, a keke driver tried to overcharge me in Bo. I told him I was just going to walk then.

“But you’re walking the wrong way!” he called after me.

“Oh…that’s fine!” I yelled back. Eventually we negotiated a lower price. I ran around the city buying different spices and vegetables and was actually pretty proud of myself for navigating everything alone. I got a car back to site and the driver yelled at everyone else in the car park to “look at his girlfriend.” Ugh.

My students had midterm exams that week. We all sat in the barre and they studied for the next test. I noticed one student’s notebook had ripped pages from a book taped around like a book cover. I asked them about it and they told me they go to the primary school, check out books, and rip out pages to use as book covers because their notebooks fall apart so easily. I thought about my library project and how I had just received confirmation that a book shipment was being sent to me.

I visited Wuyata at the clinic and she and another nurse told me all about their “womanly duties.” They said women are responsible for cooking and cleaning and that if other women see your husband doing those chores, they will say you are lazy and don’t know how to take care of your man.

“I know my husband wants forgiveness if I see him cleaning!” one nurse laughed.

I asked if the women here care that they are stuck with all of these chores and they insisted they don’t. I also asked what people would think of me if they saw Gabe cooking for us. Wuyata said they would understand that it’s part of my culture.

“Women will even point to you two and say to their husbands, look! This is real love!” Wuyata said.

Gabe visited that weekend and he helped me carry buckets of water into my house. I wondered what my neighbors thought.

The next week at school I learned about some conspiracy theories people here have about America. The teachers asked me about Bin Laden and whether or not Tupac was really dead. One teacher insisted he is living at the International Space Station. They asked if we all have money making machines, how tax brackets work, and how many states we have now – they guessed 56, up from the 52 they had previously thought. How do jails work? How much do doctors get paid? Is it safe to carry insurance cards around?

I also heard stories from Wuyata about her life during the war. She told me she walked to Liberia from Pujehun after the rebels invaded. She was separated from her family for seven years and only reconnected after an old friend randomly saw her walking around a market. The Red Cross delivered a letter to her from her family to confirm they were alive and then she went back to Bo where her entire family was. She thought everyone had been killed. She never returned to Liberia.

She told me she witnessed the rebels cutting a baby out of a pregnant woman’s stomach. She also watched one rebel threaten to kill a mother and son if they didn’t have sex. They refused and were murdered.

“Thank God they never raped me,” she said. “I really don’t like talking about it and remembering.”

The next day at school as I was teaching JSS 2, I heard a lot of commotion outside. Students were being hauled from JSS 1 for ditching class Monday afternoon. But here’s the thing – all week during midterms they had tests in the morning and then were supposed to have class in the afternoon that not a single teacher showed up to. Every day they sat in empty rooms so eventually they stopped staying. On Monday the teachers decided to show up but the students didn’t and now they were being punished. It wasn’t fair at all.

Next JSS 2 students were being called out of my class. I walked outside and saw everyone kneeling facing the wall. Seibatu slapped some JSS 1 boys in the back of the head and one banged his head on the wall in front of him. Anger boiled inside me.

“What is happening?” I asked.

We all met in the office and I explained my dismay. I volunteered to stay after school with them so they could write lines as punishment instead. Some teachers agreed while others said I just didn’t understand stubborn African children. After school, the students thought I was joking, then got very serious when they realized I wasn’t. Ten students ditched and had to stay after school the next day to write twice as many lines.

While they were writing lines, a journalist came to the school to interview Seibatu about the standardized test incident. She wasn’t even part of the testing and now she was taking the blame for the teachers. The journalist wouldn’t say who had called him to report her. Veronica talked him out of writing a story.

The next day at school more students stayed after to write lines, this time for talking in class. It was my third day staying after with them. I didn’t like being the sole disciplinarian and by 4:30pm, two hours after school ended, I was wondering what was taking them so long to finish. One girl couldn’t even read the sentence she was supposed to write and therefore had no idea what the punishment even was. Another student had someone else write the lines for her. It was so frustrating, and after everyone left, I sat in the barre and again angry cried. Was I doing the right thing?

The next day at school I went home for lunch and didn’t go back, something I had never done before. Two students came to my house to ask me what was wrong. Stress!!! And now more stress that they noticed I was gone when I should’ve been there.

My stressful week was thankfully followed by a really fulfilling weekend. I ventured to a student’s palm oil farm again and spent the morning watching a woman walk around a giant tub of oil. They explained the entire process to me, including watching a boy use a rope around his waist to shimmy up a tree to get the nuts. Back at my house, I saw my neighbor, Amie, cutting potato leaf and asked if I could watch. I sat on her veranda for the first time and it felt natural. I was thankful I didn’t try to force myself to sit with random people when I first arrived and instead let it happen on its own. Kids came over to color on my veranda and we all moved easily back and forth between the two houses. It felt communal.

At night, I again made fries with Veronica and Mimi, as was becoming our routine. While we were cutting the potatoes, a boy I had seen around town walked over.

“Please!” he yelled. This was the only word he ever yelled to me but usually I was alone. I asked Veronica to talk to him.

She discovered he didn’t actually know what please meant and he didn’t know how old he was or the year he was born. He claimed he was 13 but then couldn’t say what 13 was in Mende. He was supposed to be in second grade but his mother had sent him to live with a relative and instead of enrolling him in school, she had put him to work selling items and doing housework. He could spell his name and he knew the alphabet which Veronica cheerfully sang along with him. She told him she wanted to be his friend and showed him where her house was. He turned to leave and I asked if he wanted to take some fries.

“Thank you. May God bless you,” he said in perfect English. What?!

Veronica told me one of my students who was staying with her, Umaru, had a similar story. He had missed six straight years of school when he was sent to live with a relative and finally decided he wanted to get an education. He moved back with his father at my site and is now 19 years old in seventh grade. He really tries in class and is never deterred even when the other students (and teachers) laugh.

The next morning, my neighbor Mariama showed up 45 minutes before church started asking if I was ready to go. I told her we still had time, and a short while later we walked over to the primary school together where church was now being held. A JSS 3 (ninth grade) student was leading it and asked everyone if they knew what the word generous meant. One of my eighth-grade students perked up and excitedly motioned to me – it was a word I had just taught them last week in class. I was thrilled he remembered and was applying it to real life.

At the end of the service everyone is allowed to share ‘testimonials’ where they talk about ways God has impacted their life. One small boy was literally leaping out of his chair to share, and when he finally had the stage he started talking about his family and then burst into tears. Everyone fell silent and a nurse said it was God’s will. After church I asked Wuyata what he had said, but she hadn’t been able to understand him either. We asked another nurse, Massah.

She explained that the boy’s father was in Liberia and his mother lives in another district. His parents decided he was too disobedient so they sent him to live here with his grandmother. She didn’t want him either so Massah took him in.

“Lucky for me he’s been great!” she said.

Did he think if he prayed hard enough his parents would take him back? It was heartbreaking. I went to Seibatu’s house after and couldn’t stop thinking about it. We had a quick meeting about school documents and she told me the community used to have a library and that someone had given them computers and a generator but it was all sold by prominent community members.

I started to get wavy vision in my right eye that I couldn’t blink away. My head began to hurt. The pain was growing so I went home. I drank water and a rehydration packet and took a nap, but when I woke up my head felt exactly the same. I took two Aleve and finally after four hours it faded. It was the first migraine I’d ever had in my life. I decided to rest for the remainder of the day and read a cheesy memoir from that house-building couple on TV, Chip and Joanna.

I continued having small integration successes that I was really proud of. In my eighth-grade class, I made a song with clapping so that they could learn possessive pronouns and everyone loved it. The students actually told me different ways I could have them present the song and pairs of students started running to the front of the room to sing it even though I didn’t tell them to. After class ended and I was walking away to go eat lunch, I could still hear the whole class singing and clapping together.

Three of my boy students randomly visited me at home to practice their English and reading. John from Leh Wi Lan visited the school again where we met with the student prefects to discuss their leadership responsibilities. He also said a worker from Handicap International would be coming to test the students’ vision. This was all great – and then the conversation got slightly weird when he found out I had gone to Pujehun to see the First Lady and hadn’t informed him. He was very upset I didn’t tell him and insisted we could’ve gotten drinks together.

After school I saw my first official soccer game at site between my village and another. I had slight anxiety that I’d be standing at the field alone but all of my students ran over to me and were happy to stand with me, discuss the game, and scold kids who got too close. After the game I walked home and my neighbor asked me to eat with her.

The whole sharing food culture here really confused me – did they actually want me to sit and eat with them or was it just a polite thing to say? I had gone to a few neighbors who had asked me, eaten one spoonful (or fingerful), and then left. But Allematu prepared me a whole plate and I actually sat down with her. She’s my favorite neighbor and one of the kindest people to me here so I was really happy for the chance to talk to her more.

Integration and adapting are happening slowly but surely!!

A man named John from an organization called Leh Wi Learn came to my school unexpectedly. His group had handed out reusable pads to the female students and now he was back to survey them to see if they were using and liking them.

We all sat in the barre, a sort of pagoda structure, with all of the girls sitting on the inside circle facing out surrounded by boys sitting facing in. John had them raise their hands if they were using the pads and each girl did. I was in awe that this was being done in front of the male students and that no one seemed to be embarrassed.

John repeatedly referenced me and said all the students knew me and that I’m a good resource for them. I love that he did that, and he also talked about starting a girls’ club with them which I immediately offered to be part of. Seibatu and I then went to a room with 10 female students to fill out a survey with them on how they feel about the pads, if the school has good enough facilities for them, if they ever miss school because of their cycles, and more.

I really enjoyed school days like that, but school stress was still rising. I had started sending kids outside when they weren’t listening which I absolutely hate doing, and sometimes I wasn’t even sure who to send out because so many of them were being disruptive. I even asked Mr. Swaray to come talk to them once, and the class immediately fell silent the second he appeared in the doorway. He told me I had to manage my class, but it’s not that simple.

In the afternoon I visited Auntie Vero with Mimi to finally make fries. I quickly realized it was Mimi’s first time in her house. She was absolutely giddy about the nice home, and when Veronica asked me if I wanted to sit in the kitchen or living room, Mimi was discreetly staring at me and pointing to the living room. We sat on a couch together and Mimi told me it was her first time sitting on one.

A Peace Corps employee randomly showed up then and handed me a calendar that has pictures of Salone for every month. We flipped through it together and Veronica had Mimi read the captions. Mariama, my neighbor, randomly showed up and she enjoyed looking at the pictures too.

That night, Auntie Vero had a prayer circle that a student had been inviting me to for a couple days. I went and after we finished, Veronica told me how the village used to be before the war. Apparently my site used to have the luma, or big weekly market, that people from nearby villages would come to. She said there were five shops, a regular market, and various tribes living peacefully in the area.

The war destroyed it all. She left for England and when she came back to visit she didn’t even realize she was in her hometown. Now there is no market, the luma is seven miles away, and there are only two small corner stores that pretty much only sell onions and energy drinks. How could Salone look now if the war hadn’t devastated them three decades ago?

At school the next day, Veronica watched me sign out books to parents and asked the other teachers if anyone had been explaining to parents the rules of the textbooks. That thought had never even crossed my mind seeing as in America everyone knows what to do with textbooks. Veronica told the teachers they need to explain that the books need to be returned, they cannot be sold, they are the property of the government, and students need to bring them to class.

After she left, a few teachers ranted to me for three hours about the lack of support they have. The current president is pushing for “free, quality education” but as Mr. Swaray put it, where is the ‘quality’ if none of the teachers are trained or paid? He added that all of the NGOs that come here are for the children – UNICEF, Save the Children, UK Aid – where are the organizations that help the teachers? I wrote down everything they told me afterwards and want to try to look into helping them resolve some of the issues.

They apologized for ranting for so long but I thanked them and said I was interested in hearing about it. Another teacher walked into the room with cooked potatoes and said, “Brittney, let’s eat!” I felt like I was slowly building a better relationship with them where they felt comfortable talking to me and including me. We ate potatoes and they thanked me for joining them.

After school I had my biggest jogging group yet – 17 kids ran with me to the next village. It was my furthest distance yet at 5 miles roundtrip. They had been asking for weeks to go to the next village and I finally agreed. One boy brought a whistle and blew into it three times as we took off.

After about half a mile, many of the younger kids wanted to stop. I decided I wouldn’t stop this time. The boys tried to encourage everyone to keep going and I was impressed with everyone’s stamina. The road was treacherous with all the mud, giant puddles, and rocks, but the sky was beautiful in the setting sun and we even saw a rainbow and the moon. We passed something they called a ‘sky snake’ and everyone stopped to look at it. We ran over a river that had tiny fish darting around, and we all looked at those too.

At a curve in the road, a few kids walked into the bush to pee and the rest of us stood along the highway in what looked like a wheat field, the breeze making the plants sway back and forth. Each time a car passed the boys would erupt into screams. If someone greeted me, they mocked them. A motorcycle passed and everyone started to yell.

“That man is staring at you!” a JSS 1 (seventh grade) student named Musa said to me. His eyebrows were furrowed and he looked genuinely upset.

I looked up at the motorcycle and saw that they were indeed still staring back. Suddenly the bike swerved and all of my students laughed. Their concern and protectiveness were so sweet. I knew this would be one of my favorite memories that would stick with me forever. We reached the next village where some of my other students live. They were surprised and ecstatic to see all of us. Some of the kids who had jogged with me had never been to this village before, so they were eager to walk around. I was getting nervous as the sun was setting.

No one (except me!) wanted to run back so we walked and talked and the group split up. Night fell and it started to rain. My principal’s nephew and his friend appeared with a blasting radio. They said since we hadn’t come back yet, they came looking for us. We all walked back into our village in the dark with lightning showing us the way.

That weekend I visited a hotel in Bo for the first time called Dohas. It has air conditioning, Wi-FI, western food, and showers! I just went there to visit friends and to eat, but a shower would’ve been nice since I got doused in muddy water on the way from a car slamming into a pothole next to me. After the hotel we walked around the markets and it was my first time feeling confident buying things. I even bought two plastic chairs, something I had been wanting since I got to site. I own two wooden chairs that are pretty uncomfortable and I was so excited to finally work up the courage to make a big purchase and lug them back to site.

I had to take a keke to the car park and the driver originally said he would take two more passengers and put my chairs inside next to me. But three women showed up so he tied the chairs to the roof with shoelaces. I was extremely skeptical but told myself he knew what he was doing. We drove a short distance then dropped two of the women off. I learned that the woman next to me was from my village. We made small talk and then heard a crash.

The chairs had slipped off the roof and smashed into the center of the highway. My beautiful chairs that I had been waiting two months to buy! Not to mention they could have slammed into any one of the dozens of motorcycles on the street and caused an accident. The keke pulled over and the man looked at us.

“Well go get them!” the other woman yelled. The driver grabbed the chairs and showed them to us. The red one I had bought for myself was fine. The purple one I had bought for when Gabe visits had a crack in the middle. My heart sank.

“How much was it?” he asked me.

“65,000!!!!” I was so mad.

“So…how much do you want?”

“65,000!!!”

“Oh, I was even thinking that would happen,” the other woman said. “He should have moved them after he dropped the other women off.”

We put the chairs inside and he dropped the woman off. He then started giving me a speech about how sometimes people make mistakes and you just have to forgive them. I said he could have prevented this mistake and I was not going to forgive him. We drove all the way back to the keke park and other drivers asked why I was back.

We explained the story and a male passenger immediately took my side.

“My brother, it is your fault. Pay the white woman,” he said. “What do you think foreigners will think of us if you treat them like this?”

I was conflicted. Realistically I could just buy another chair and it wouldn’t really affect me, but I didn’t want to perpetuate the image that all white people have endless money and that anyone can do whatever they want to me and it’s okay. If he had dropped a local’s chairs, what would protocol be?

Two police officers came over and listened to the tale. A male officer said I should just forgive the driver because people make mistakes. The female officer was more understanding, and we finally agreed that the driver would pay me for half and I could keep the chair. Then the same driver took me to the car park I was originally going to which was a bit awkward.

I couldn’t fully hear him as he started ranting, and I assumed he was yelling at me. I leaned in.

“I can’t believe that man called you a foreigner!” he said. “That is so rude of him. We are all Sierra Leoneans!”

Again, I was shocked. We had just been in a dramatic screaming match where police got involved and now he was offended on my behalf. I assured him I was not offended at being called a foreigner and then we introduced ourselves to each other. We got to the car park, I thanked him, and he left.

“Hey, is this your chair?” the car driver asked. “It has a crack in it.”

“………….”

I made it back to site well after the sun had set. I couldn’t wait to talk to Wuyata about this experience, but as soon as I saw her she started to scold me. She said she had just called her husband in Bo because she was worried about where I was. The thought of contacting anyone hadn’t even crossed my mind – I was too focused on dealing with the police, getting back to site, and managing my emotions. I tried to explain this but she wouldn’t have it.

I stomped home and angry cried. I was constantly feeling like no one was ever trying to see things from my perspective. The next morning a man I didn’t even know asked me where I had gone yesterday.

“See!” my friend Dauda said. “Everyone worries about you when you’re gone!”

The town elder appeared and also asked me where I had been. Because I was in Bo, I had missed a funeral that I didn’t know about for someone I never even knew. Then Wuyata arrived and told me we had to talk. My heart sank.

“You promised you’d tell me how your weekend with Gabe went!” she said excitedly. And here I was thinking she was going to lecture me. I told her I thought she was upset with me and she was surprised. She said she was only worried.

In the afternoon another volunteer visited me and greeted people in Mende. The first thing Veronica told me was that we really needed to brush up on my Mende. What the hell?! The other volunteer was only greeting people which I did every day! I was learning that shaming was a big thing here and I didn’t like it.

The next week at school an NGO called Marie Stopes, which supports family planning, randomly came. They spoke to the students about birth control and offered free arm implants for the female students. In front of all of the male teachers, a male staff member suggested that maybe I would also like some free birth control. I was speechless.

They brought out a kit to show the students how to use condoms. Everyone burst out laughing when the worker held up a giant dildo to demonstrate.

“You can pump and pump and pump!” he yelled while thrusting the dildo into the air. He also talked about how young students shouldn’t be having sex and pointed to a particularly petite boy in the front. The man then held up a pinky finger to compare to the boy and said sex simply wouldn’t work. Everyone laughed, including the boy.

Some teachers told me that parents used to tell their kids they’d die or have permanent erections if they had sex, but now kids don’t believe it as they have easier access to the internet to verify the truth.

That night Seibatu returned from a women’s conference I had nominated her for through the Peace Corps and she gave me cookies she had received. I shared them with her nieces and Mimi split the last one in half with me. Seibatu had learned about malaria and women’s health, including birth control, and was very worried about the possible side effects. I told her many students had received birth control implants at school just that day.

I jogged to another village after that with my youngest group yet. They got tired immediately so we walked a lot, they picked some flowers that I then had to hold, they fought over who could hold my hand, and once we arrived a woman gave us four grapefruits for the eight of us. Everyone began fighting over who could hold the fruit and I literally ran away. They called after me and I felt like I was in a movie. Two laughed and ran to keep up with me while the rest fell behind. It was too overwhelming, all of the screaming and fighting and touching and grabbing. Jogging was supposed to be a relaxing release but it was becoming a chore and somewhat like babysitting.

On my way to school the next day a man yelled at me for never greeting his family, claiming they greet me first every day, which is simply not true. These interactions were really building up and getting to me, and then I would get more upset for letting it get to me. A student’s mother was waiting at school and she was extremely upset that we had let her daughter get the birth control implant the day before, saying her daughter was now going to be promiscuous.

The thought that none of these underage students had received their parent’s permission had crossed my mind but I thought if it was an issue that the other teachers would have said something. I guess not. Seibatu agreed with the woman and brought up all the side effects she had learned about at the conference. Veronica, a nurse, arrived and tried to explain to everyone that what they were saying wasn’t true. Then it turned into a blame game of who had even let Marie Stopes come in without any warning.

At night we had a community meeting with even more arguments. There was a lot of drama regarding a standardized test the students had taken in July during my site visit. Community members said the teachers stole money that was supposed to be used for the students’ lodging and food. They had only eaten one meal a day during the two-week testing period and their sleeping accommodations left them all covered in mosquito bites. The teachers said this wasn’t true and blamed the hired chef.

Then at school the next day we had yet another meeting. I tried to discuss an NGO I was going to contact to order free books from. Only Swaray answered my questions. The other teachers said they were tired, stood up, and left in the middle of it.

Over the weekend I went to Pujehun for the first time and was amazed at how big it was! The First Lady was giving a speech the next day about her campaign called Hands Off Our Girls to end sexual assault and I was really looking forward to going and learning about it. On Saturday we walked around the city and hung out at the campaign area for a while. They were running hours behind and still had at least six performances to go before the First Lady. We left to get lunch and when we started heading back, we saw everyone leaving from the field. We missed the First Lady.

The first few weeks continued to be a little shaky. It was a huge adjustment into a school system that was nothing like I’d ever experienced. My schedule changed at least three times with the other English teacher suspiciously adamant about what I should be teaching. I added a few double periods instead of just single, 40-minute classes which helped a lot. I felt a better connection to my students after I could spend more time with them on a topic and offer more individualized attention.

One day as I was walking home from school, a few primary school students shouted, “Pumuey!” to me, meaning white person. One of my students stopped in his tracks, turned back around, and said, “Her name is not pumuey, it is Seibatu Rogers!” My heart warmed. I began playing games with my students such as spelling races, hangman, slap board, and more. It was making classes a little rowdier but I felt like a better relationship was really being formed.

I also began to form closer relationships with community members. My neighbor, Ja, sat on my veranda randomly and began to tell me all about his life, such as how he met his wife at a teachers’ college and how she unfortunately died a few years ago. We also discussed child abuse after watching a different neighbor hold a girl by the ankle while she flogged her repeatedly in the back.

“In America, that’s child abuse,” he said matter-of-factly.

And then a day I had been waiting a long time for finally came – the day I could leave site and visit Gabe. Volunteers don’t receive any Time Away from Community (TAC) days until the second month according to our volunteer handbook. The first weekend of the fifth week at site I was out of there on my first solo cross-country trip.

Due to poor road conditions, I had to take a very roundabout way and it took me about eight hours to arrive. An NGO worker had driven me out of my site to the city of Bo and then connected me with a construction company car that took me for free to the next city. They were so concerned about my wellbeing as I traveled alone that they actually forced an employee to travel with me to the next city. He offered to get me any food or drinks I needed from a supermarket and helped get me to Gabe’s site.

I arrived as the sun was setting and wasn’t exactly sure where to go. A family saw me standing in confusion and yelled, “Peace Corps?!” I said yes and the mother sent her young son to walk me to his house. Gabe was sitting outside on his porch and relief, happiness, and a little bit of embarrassment flooded me as I walked up in all my sweaty, disheveled, smelly glory. Seeing your person after spending a month in such an unfamiliar environment is an indescribable feeling.

He gave me a tour of his house and we talked (face-to-face in person!) for a long time. I ate cassava he had worked hard to time perfectly so that it’d be hot when I arrived and then I took a bucket bath. All of a sudden I got a strong pang of nausea in my gut, intense lightheadedness, and tunnel vision – the next thing I knew I was on the floor. I had to sit on the nasty, wet, concrete ground drinking a rehydration packet as two cockroaches ran around the wall in front of me. My knees were scraped and bloody and my dignity was nonexistent. If you ever decide to travel across the entire country in a day, remember to drink water and find yourself a nice boyfriend who will give you band-aids and ORS (and save the jokes for at least a few weeks).

I met some kids in his community the next day and we went on a long walk down a path that leads to a beautiful mountain. Mostly we just lounged around which was perfect and much needed. Our communities are very different – his has more modern looking houses, he is only ten minutes away from a big city, and his house has a lot of privacy. It’s interesting to see how each of our sites differ with even the smallest of details.

And then the weekend was over and it was time to make the long trek back. I felt rejuvenated and blissful and things that would normally annoy me didn’t have as much of an immediate impact. Leaving site and connecting with people you care about is truly important here. In my final car ride from Bo back to my village, a friendly man started joking about me taking everyone in the car to America.

“I have to stay here for two years though,” I said.

“Don’t worry about us!” he said. “Leave us there and come back! Driver, you’re going the wrong way!”

Everyone laughed but then he turned serious and started giving a speech about how we all need to make the most out of life with what we have. I arrived back at site and Seibatu handed me an attendance book for JSS 1 that I had to fill out by the morning and a bowl of hot food. I was dead tired and back to reality.

I woke up early the next morning to lesson plan and fill out the attendance, or class register, but when I got to school I discovered I was the only one of the three ‘form masters’ to complete it. They also informed me that I hadn’t done it correctly – I apparently needed to leave more space in between the girl and boy sections in case more students registered.

At the end of the school day, we held a very dramatic and theatrical election. I was alone with Seibatu and another teacher because the rest had left for a funeral for a teacher’s father. The students were voting on the Head Boy. Each student had to write the name of one of three candidates and if their ballot wasn’t exactly correct, it was to be vetoed. The teacher running the election gave a speech about free and fair elections, individually counted and held up each of the 96 votes, and recounted each vote after he had placed them in piles. There was a clear winner, but there was one problem: someone had voted twice. The election, which had taken over an hour, was scrapped and rescheduled for a later date.

After school I saw Wuyata and she asked me how visiting Gabe had gone. I told her about me fainting and she burst out laughing.

“I bet he made fun of you, right?” she asked.

“No!” I said surprised. “He helped me!”

The next day I taught JSS 2 for the first time. My schedule was finally set in stone and I was taking over the eighth graders from the other English teacher. We were a few weeks into the term and he had only taught them the first four lessons from the Lesson Plan Manual. I walked into the room and was shocked at how silent they were. JSS 1 has 58 students and they are a force to be reckoned with. JSS 2 has 30 students and they are all completely quiet the entire time.

I was also sick for the first time. I have an on again off again cough here and the chalk dust made my chest feel like it was on fire. During JSS 1 I gave a quiz and had to keep leaving the room to have a cough attack. Seibatu was worried.

“What are we going to do?!” she asked me. I said nothing – it was just a cough and I could take medicine if it got worse. She later told me she contacted the Peace Corps to tell them I was sick and they told her it was my responsibility to call the doctor if it was serious. She felt bad about reaching out.

At school we redid the elections and someone voted twice again. We scrapped the papers despite the fact there was still a very clear winner and instead had each student stand in a line behind their nominee. The winner was announced and he tried hard to conceal a proud smile.

I was also starting to get more school responsibilities. Seibatu didn’t trust any other teacher with the storage room key so I was the only one who had it. Parents have to come sign out textbooks for their children so one day when I had to teach three double periods, I had to keep leaving my classes to check out books. I felt terrible leaving them, especially JSS 2 as they were still getting used to me.

Some days I was the only teacher at school until after first period had already started, meaning I was trying to gather nearly 100 students for assembly by myself. I was getting increasingly frustrated and finally asked my favorite teacher what was going on. We had a long heart-to-heart about how most teachers here don’t get paid, and some wait years and years to get a ‘pin code’ from the government which means they get a salary…sometimes. Two teachers at my school have had pin codes for over a year and yet still have not received any pay. Even though this teacher is still waiting for a salary, he is the most responsible by far and said he prefers to lead by example. He encouraged me to do the same and to ‘rise above’ everything else.

One day at school, two male health trainees who were training at the nearby clinic came to visit me. One of them spoke about sitting in class when he was younger watching white men extract minerals from the river. He talked about how Sierra Leone could be so wealthy if the resources were used properly and for the people.

At the end of the school day, we had a competition for the first time. All of the JSS 1 and 2 students sat on one side while JSS 3 sat on the other. One student would stand up and very formally greet their opposition, introduce themselves, then spout out numerous random trivia questions, such as, “Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of JSS 3. My name is Musa Massaquoi. Name the layers of the eye. Who invented the car engine? When was the first earth tremble (earthquake) in Sierra Leone? And…spell constellation!”

For nearly every series of questions each student asked, the opposing side would shrug and say, “No idea.” Finally one student from JSS 3 asked what true books are called which I had just taught my JSS 1 students hours before! My best student bravely stood up and answered…non-formation. He glanced at me. So close to the correct answer of non-fiction.

One student kept asking a question about mammals with ‘bobis,’ or boobs, but no one could fully understand the question, so he kept saying bobi over and over again until everyone was bursting out laughing. The rowdier it got, the more students started calling each other out for talking which would then make a team lose a point. The only problem was that students were calling out students on their own team.

“Let’s clap for her honesty!” one teacher said after a student outed her own team. I once again thought how this would never happen in America.   

After school I watched some boys cook and cut a monkey and then a student showed me a giant iguana he had captured in the bush. Seibatu told me affectionately that they were going to keep the iguana in a basket so that Gabe could see it too. He was on his way to visit my site for the first time.

I sat with Mimi, Klua, Salematu, and Sia and waited for his car to arrive. Each time a car passed they all leapt up in excitement and asked me if it was him. When he finally did show up, everyone ran to the street to greet him. I was grateful the sun had just set and we could walk back to my house without everyone yelling out to him after his 10-hour trip.

The next morning we walked around and so many people shouted to me asking if he was my man. Wuyata had encouraged me to only introduce him as my friend but everyone seemed to know better than that. We walked up the hill I jog on and some kids followed behind us. The kids took us on a walk through the forest where we visited a palm oil farm, got lost, and then somehow made our way back out. Back at my house, I was extremely shocked at all the privacy I was getting. Not a single person came to my veranda or tried to talk to us. In the days leading up to his visit, two kids who live next to me had been coming over constantly to color pictures or practice reading. At one point it rained and Gabe held the door open for me as I brought rain water inside. I wondered what my neighbors must think.

At school the following Monday it was pouring rain. I’d been told students wouldn’t show up in the rain but Mimi encouraged me to go with her anyway. A handful of students were there alone, so we all piled into the JSS 1 room and played games. About two hours passed before I realized most of the students had arrived, multiple teachers had arrived, and yet I was still by myself entertaining everyone. The second I walked out of the room the rest of the teachers got up and started teaching.

A teacher was missing after my period with JSS 1 so they asked me to stay longer. We continued our language arts lesson and so many of them participated, asked questions, asked me if they could answer questions on the board, and volunteered to read aloud. There were students who I had previously thought were illiterate who offered to read. Sometimes I catch girls quietly whispering the text to themselves just loud enough for me to hear and yet they won’t raise their hands. I call them out and they get proud little smiles – I think they’re nervous but want me to know that they can do it.

That night I jogged with 15 kids. My group got bigger and bigger as I walked to my starting point and passed students’ houses. It was almost embarrassing running with so many people but they all loved it. As soon as we started one of them farted and the rest of the group burst into giggles. Three younger kids fell and did belly slides in the muddy road. The further we went the more kids dropped out, and as I walked back I was left with six kids, four of which were my female students. They started telling ghost stories and tales of kidnappings.

“We don’t bathe in the river because it will drain our knowledge and then we won’t go to college!” Mamenatu, one of two female JSS 3 students, said.

“And you’ll get pregnant!” Zainab, a JSS 1 student, added.

“And die!” Mimi finished. Was this Mean Girls??

They told me people don’t go out past 8 p.m. because devils live in the bush and will kill you. Zainab started hopping on all fours to demonstrate how they move. They told me if I stay out late I’ll be kidnapped and someone will cut me up and sell my body parts. Zainab showed me scars she has from a dog biting her on her thigh and also shared war stories from her mom. Her mother told her she had to drag corpses off the road during the war and would drink out of muddy puddles in the street when there was no water.

Everyone was rapidly and excitedly talking over each other trying to tell me the scariest tale they’d heard. Suddenly we saw a man walking behind us and they all started speed-walking and saying he was going to cut us up. A man on a motorcycle stopped next to us and asked to be my friend. I said I already had enough friends and he left. Zainab praised me for sending him off and said if I would’ve accepted, he would come to my house and kill me. This was getting a little out of hand.

“Are you scared?” Mimi asked with bright eyes. How could I politely tell them that I didn’t think anything they were saying was true?

The next day at school it rained again in the morning and all the classrooms were locked. I arrived on time again and stood in the hallway talking to my students. I had ‘Crime and Punishment’ with me and they all asked me whose book it was and what it was about. Zainab showed me a random picture of the Queen of England she had found in a book. Class finally started halfway through second period.

Then for the fourth time that week, I was told about someone in the community dying. The body was at a house next to the school and people were going there to mourn. Mimi asked me if I wanted to go and I said no, and then another student asked me and for some reason we went. I stood outside the house and saw the body covered in cloth as dozens of women crouched around him wailing and weeping. I walked back to school and saw Mr. Swaray sitting alone.

“I am just thinking,” he said. “He died from appendicitis. He needed 1.5 million leones ($150~) for surgery and his family couldn’t come together when he was sick. Now they’re here crying for him and giving money.”

He told me he has 26 siblings and that his father has four wives. He wants to break the poverty cycle for himself and only have two children that he can take care of.

After school I went to Auntie Vero’s because she had offered to make French fries for me, but she wasn’t home. I saw Seibatu on my way back and told her what I was up to. She immediately started slicing potatoes and finished making fries by solar light. It was so kind, and I had to be adamant that I wanted to share the fries with her nieces and not take them all for myself. When I got to my house I shared some with my 5-year-old neighbor, Mariama.

I honestly felt different in the community as I walked to school for the first time. I had a purpose and a schedule now. I stopped at Seibatu’s house first and Mimi came bursting out of the door.

“Seibatu, I’m going to school!” she was thrilled.

Dozens of primary students were toddling across the street to school, their oversized backpacks nearly covering their entire bodies. Many of them called out to me and waved enthusiastically. Mimi and I headed further down the highway to the junior secondary school. When we arrived, students were already there sweeping dirt out of the rooms, placing garbage cans outside, and fetching water.

The day began at 8 a.m. with assembly. The students say a prayer in Arabic and then the Lord’s Prayer in English followed by announcements and then either the National Anthem or National Pledge depending on the day.

During announcements, Seibatu and Veronica both introduced me and explained that the students should respect me like any other adult in their life. They all filed into their classrooms and I checked last year’s class schedule which we would be following until a new one was made. I was supposed to teach JSS 1 (seventh grade) language arts. I noticed their first class was literature and my stomach dropped.

“Seibatu…who teaches literature?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

I walked into the room totally unprepared. What was I going to do? The class stood up to greet me and then sat back down. The other English teacher, Alhaji, followed in after me. I asked him how I was supposed to teach literature when all they had given me was a curriculum for language arts.

“Well, you use the same book and just pick out the literature lessons!” he said. And then I was alone with the class.

I decided to use that time to play name games and get to know everyone. I had two bouncy balls from America that I would toss to a student, have them say their name, and then toss back to me. Everyone laughed and loved the little game. I knew the period was supposed to end at 9:10 and someone was supposed to ring a bell, but it was now 9:30 with no end in sight. I called Seibatu over and she said, “You tried!” and let me leave the class.

I walked back into the teachers’ office feeling happy that I had survived my first class.

“Did you give them homework? I hope you remembered to give them homework,” Alhaji spouted off. “You’ll be observed on Thursday! That’s why I showed you those observation forms you know.”

Alhaji had come to my house a couple times to show me the Lesson Plan Manual which I had already learned about during training, and some observation forms that an official from the Ministry of Education will use to observe me. He had been extremely kind during those one-on-one visits and now in the presence of five other young, male teachers, he was putting on a show.

“I’m a teacher. I know what to do,” I stared straight at him.

Students were still coming to do interviews so I sat with four other teachers and observed. They would tell the students to feel free as they read aloud from a book, but the second a student couldn’t read or messed up a word, they were falling all over each other to shame the student first.

“She can’t do it! She’s been staring for 30 minutes! A baby could do it!” one teacher said while smirking. The rest of the boy’s club laughed. I was drowning in the testosterone and told myself to bite my tongue – it was only the first day of school.

After the student left, I asked who was in charge of ringing the bell.

“Oh, is the period over?” a teacher asked me. “What period is it?”

“I…don’t know?” I glanced at the large schedule hanging on the wall in front of all of us. 

Lunch was from 11:50-12:30, and I went back to Seibatu’s house to eat. The clock was ticking closer and closer to 12:30 but we weren’t budging.

“Should we…go?” I finally asked.

“What time is it?” Seibatu responded. The lack of organization was killing me.

I had language arts after lunch where we went over rules and practiced some English introductions. The students had math next, but the teacher wasn’t there. He had gone to Bo after lunch. Seibatu asked the students who was good at math and who would be willing to teach the class. A student named Mustapaha (Ja’s son) stood up, held a piece of chalk, and burst out laughing.

“What is funny?!” she scolded him.

“I don’t know math!”

This all drove me insane so I decided I would teach math so that they didn’t have to sit in an empty classroom doing nothing. The only curriculum we had was for the third term but I used it anyway and we discussed sequences and number patterns.

Back at home, Ja asked me what I thought of the school structure and I admitted I was extremely confused. He laughed. He asked Mustapha if he understood me and Mustapha looked over sheepishly. I sat atop the ledge on my veranda with my ankles crossed and Mustapha’s five-year-old sister, Mariama, sat opposite me the exact same way. We both stared out.

I walked to Seibatu’s house and saw Veronica there. She told me a student named Amie who is living with her sprinted home to tell her all about the ball game and introductions we had done in class.

“The students are speaking highly of you!” Seibatu said. “They like your style!”

Seibatu asked me to be the class teacher for JSS 1 and I agreed. As far as I know I have to take attendance for them and write all their report cards. Taking attendance will help me learn all of their names so I don’t mind at all. Seibatu then showed me notes her fifth-grade niece had taken in language arts that day. All she had written was in, on, under, over. I thought about volunteering at the primary school too but didn’t want to get in over my head yet.

The next day it rained until 7 a.m. so most students and teachers came late. First period started 15 minutes late, and two teachers signed in just to immediately leave for Pujehun town. Every teacher except one signed in at a fake earlier time. One teacher asked me what I thought of all the students cleaning the school – he was worried I would be offended. He was worried I was offended at them cleaning their own messes and not at the way the teachers were insulting students during interviews yesterday?!

Another student came in for an interview and it turned into a 40-minute screaming match. She had very badly attempted to forge her report card in order to make her dad proud. She cried, her dad cried, a parent waiting outside was brought into the debate, and finally it was settled that she could enroll. I was baffled. The report card was very obviously forged, and in America this wouldn’t even be a conversation. Yet here everyone was talking in circles and humoring each other and repeating themselves. Why wasn’t anyone saying, “This is forged. You can enroll in the appropriate class. Next!”

I didn’t have any classes that day so I spent the afternoon talking to Seibatu about her Ebola conspiracy theories. We then had a meeting with Veronica where she informed us a man had been hiding in the bush near the school last night and attempted to kidnap a child by luring him over with candy. I went home and Mimi showed up with some bread saying Seibatu had just bought it off a bread truck. Moments later Veronica showed up with more bread, and then Mada arrived with a bunch of bananas. I played Uno with Mimi and then we jogged again. We passed the teachers who joked they could run 30 miles straight and would catch up with us later. Some more boys and a new student joined our group that day.

The next day at school the other English teacher was late. Two teachers tried to convince me that I should go teach his class.

“Did you discuss your schedule with him?” they asked me.

“Why would I discuss my schedule with him? He’s not my boss. Seibatu is the principal,” I said. They laughed. “Is something funny?”

“No, nothing is funny…but if he was sick, you could teach his class, right?”

“Is he sick?” I asked.

“No, he’s wandering the town.”

“Then I guess he should come teach!” I had taught the one extra math class and I promised myself I would never do that again. No one was going to get in the habit of ditching class and expecting me to pick up the slack. As usual, I felt guilty and rude but knew I needed to stand my ground. He showed up a few minutes later.

The Mende teacher offered to let me observe his class but then tried to quiz me in front of the students which I didn’t appreciate. He apologized afterwards but my defensiveness was growing. One teacher left in the middle of the day saying he had typhoid (he didn’t – Veronica said everyone self-diagnoses themselves with that). We had more meetings with Veronica and the teachers complained about having too many meetings. Something else that’s very different here is that meetings last forever and everyone talks in circles. I couldn’t even really follow what was going on.

The next day at school we went over the eight parts of speech and the students lost their minds because I wasn’t listing them in the “correct order.” They had apparently learned noun, pronoun, adverb, and I was saying noun, pronoun, adjective as was written in the curriculum.

“Mistake! Mistake!” they yelled and pointed to the board.

“It’s not a mistake! It doesn’t have to be in the exact order!” I explained. The style of learning here is through EXTREME rote memorization. Ask any student any definition of anything and they’ll spout off the exact meaning like a robot. But that doesn’t help critical thinking.

After class, Alhaji was designing the new timetable. We are not supposed to teach more than 16 periods and he was hell bent on making sure I at least reached 16. We agreed I would teach JSS 1 language arts and literature and JSS 2 language arts. I was excited for that because JSS 2 was half the size of JSS 1 with only 28 students and Sia was in that class.

As we talked, community members used machetes to cut down the part of the forest the kidnapper had been spotted in last night. The chiefs came to school to ask Seibatu to help pay for food for them. When she told me, I wondered if I was also expected to pay and truly didn’t know. Everything here confuses me. It’s the first place I’ve been that I literally don’t know what to do even in the simplest of situations.

I jogged again with a group of about five boys and five girls, and after a while the boys all got tired and left but us girls kept going. Sometimes community members would clap and cheer for us as we went by and I loved being in this all girl group dashing past. The longer we ran, the longer they wanted to keep going. If we slowed down, a student named Isata would yell, “Faster!” and we would all speed up. It was the furthest I’d run here.

“Let’s run to the next village!” they said. I asked how far it was.

“Nine miles!” I wasn’t sure if it was actually nine miles away but I told them we were maybe running two miles here and there was no way we could run 18 miles there and back.

“Brittney can run 26 miles!” Mimi said.

“Mimi, I cannot run 26 miles. I just told you that’s how far a marathon is.”

And then it was Friday. I’d made it through my first week of school. Seibatu and I showed up in traditional clothing as is custom on Friday and the rest of the teachers showed up extremely casually in shorts and t-shirts. No one had bothered to tell us that they decided Friday would be a cleaning day where students would weed around the school.

On Saturday I ventured back to Bo telling myself it literally could not get any worse than the first trip unless I got murdered on the way there. This time the driver was extremely friendly, but I was met with Creepy Man 3. He asked me if he could be my friend and if he could visit my village.

“No, I won’t be there. I come, I go, ya know.”

“So, when should I visit?” he wouldn’t let up.

“I mean, you can go but not to visit me.”

“I will send you food.”

“I don’t want it, thanks though.”

I had to focus on this trip because I was getting my iPhone back after breaking it my second week here. It had died from the heat and another volunteer brought it back to America with her and sent it to my family. My family shipped it out and got it fixed, sent it back to the volunteer, and then gave it to a different volunteer who lived near me. The van drove through her town and she handed it to me in a plastic bag through the window. Success. 

In Bo I confidently made my way to Ruri’s to meet up with Nick and Riley. They showed me around the city and we went to the bank, two supermarkets, and an open market with a woman from their community. Nick and a random boy from the street showed me how to get back to my car park and I coincidentally ran into the same driver who had brought me there. He yelled out to me like an old friend and I waited in the van to head back.

I was feeling way better after this trip. I made it back to site, talked to Seibatu for a bit, and then started walking home. But the second I turned out of her house, I ran into a teacher who greeted me in a very high-pitched voice.

It’s extremely rude to do that and people here will do it to mock westerners’ voices. This teacher had actually already done it once before during the first week of school and I had calmly asked him not to do it again while also having some second-hand embarrassment for him and wondering if a grown ass man was seriously trying to make fun of me during the first week. Apparently yes, a grown ass man did indeed find it funny to speak to another adult like a child.

This time I was not as friendly. I shouted about how rude that was and how I’d already asked him once to stop. He immediately got defensive and swore up and down he was just greeting me. I told him I knew what he was doing but we could go ask Seibatu. He agreed.

We walked around her house and I explained the situation. Whenever I have tried talking about the high-pitched voice thing to people here, they always describe it as shouting and it all gets lost in translation. She told him to stop shouting at me and I stormed off to my house. I decided to shave my hairy legs and eat chocolate cookies to cope.

Veronica visited me the next morning and informed me that she and Seibatu had gone to the teacher’s house and asked him if he wants to drive me away. He was still in denial and said he was just going to ignore me from now on. It was Saturday, so I went to school to attempt to call my family but the connection was terrible and I could barely get out a sentence about the stressors I’d experienced the first week without the connection dropping. Hot, angry tears started to fall.

In the end my mom used an app called Rebtel where you pay to call but get a perfectly clear connection. I felt a lot better after talking to her and then wondered if I should go home and throw a pity party for myself or go ask Mimi if she wanted to play Uno. I decided on Uno. While playing, Mada brought out a dead bush rat which sort of looks like a possum. His four-year-old daughter, Salematu, carried it around by the tail. I watched him burn the hair off over a fire and then chop it to pieces to cook. I’d never seen an animal get slaughtered – brown goo was spilling out everywhere, internal organs were bursting out, bones were popping, muscles were snapping. I wondered if I should go vegetarian.

I visited Veronica’s house as numerous children were deep cleaning the four outdoor latrines she owns. When they heard us talking, they all stopped to peek out of the doorways.

“I don’t hear brushing!” she snapped without ever turning to look at them.

She explained that everyone who lived around her came to her house to use the bathrooms because they didn’t have their own. She also complained about people not thinking to hire someone to dig a hole and build a latrine or bath area, and that her neighbors could do that because there were no wells nearby meaning there would be no cross contamination. I asked her how much that would cost and she thought for a second.

“I suppose it does cost money,” she finally replied.

Later in the afternoon she hosted a 25-person party in her beautiful home. Having lived in London for most of her life, her house is nothing like those around her. She has four bedrooms with large beds and private bathrooms that have flush toilets. There is a large living room area with couches and cushioned chairs. She shipped a generator over from the U.K. that she uses occasionally, giving her the chance to utilize the numerous fans lying around. The floor is covered in clean, shiny, cool tiles.

Her extended family had gone on a religious pilgrimage and were now on their way to a smaller village near Pujehun. They stopped at her house to eat and catch up. It was an interesting mix of people – the young man sitting next to me was wearing a t-shirt and jeans with his car keys dangling from his belt loop. He was playing Words with Friends on his smart phone while the elderly relatives next to him adorned traditional clothing and sat silently. We ate fish and rice and Veronica’s mother gave a speech and said a prayer. Money was exchanged, and even though it has been explained to me three times now, I’m still not entirely sure who was who or what was going on, but it was a cool experience anyway.

The next day was my second church visit and I was way more anxious this time, specifically because I was wearing the most unflattering dress I have ever owned. It was a gift from Wuyata and she was so excited to give it to me. The colors were bold and the frilly sleeves were bolder. I walked out of my house with the same fear I’d have if I were walking around totally naked.

As I locked my door, a girl darted up to my veranda and zipped up the back of the dress. I thanked her and wondered how many people saw my bare back and bra. Walking across the whole village was difficult because the fabric was waxy and sticky, causing it to ruffle up. I was already self-conscious and this was making it worse. I stopped multiple times to smooth it out and then finally made it to Wuyata’s room. She was thrilled I was wearing it and couldn’t stop complimenting me while also pretending she didn’t know who gave it to me so anyone listening in wouldn’t make any judgments about her.

She had me take a few pictures so that I could show Gabe and my family how gorgeous I apparently looked and then we went to church. It was way less eventful than the first time and they made me say the closing prayer where I rambled about how grateful I was to be in their community and how I wished everyone good health and endless happiness.

Seibatu was using her generator after church and offered to charge my phone and laptop. I spent the afternoon listening to music and crocheting as rain poured for hours. After a while I snapped back to reality and realized I had briefly forgotten where I was – busying myself by myself to the lull of the rain without the fear of anyone randomly showing up was so peaceful. I had momentarily felt normal and totally like myself again without ever realizing I had stopped feeling that way. It’s a hard thing to notice as it slips away so gradually but I vowed to be more conscious of my emotions.

That night as I was walking to get cell network a man asked if I wanted to play a board game with some people. I said I had to talk to some family and would be back soon, but 20 minutes later he walked past me and said he had waited but had to go. My heart sunk. Was I missing out on integration opportunities to use my phone? Was it a sin to try to contact some people for 30 minutes a day?

That night I had two dreams. In one I was in a hospital texting and a nurse confiscated my phone saying I was distracting everyone around me. I stared out the window and saw a nasty storm over an ocean. In the second dream I missed a friend’s wedding because none of them had bothered to tell me about it.

The next morning I walked all over the village greeting everyone purely out of this insane guilt I was feeling for not playing the board game the night before. I even ran into the board game man and emphasized that I still wanted to learn how to play. I got back to my house feeling relieved. I used my Afrigas, a tiny, single-burner gas stove, for the first time to make oatmeal and fried plantains. I was hunched in the corner over the thing since I didn’t have an actual kitchen setup yet but I felt accomplished.

I visited Wuyata and a nurse named Mariama and they went on and on about how much everyone in the village loved the dress I wore to church.

“Everyone said you looked so beautiful! And they admire the way you walk and how you smoothed the dress down like a lady. We can tell you come from a good home and you have manners. I told Auntie Seibatu, look, we got a good one. Some Americans are…frisky…you know!” Wuyata said while laughing.

“You look like an African baby,” Mariama nodded along.

“What?!” I didn’t understand.

“The style of dress you wore,” she continued. “Usually we dress babies like that. We call it baby style.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing but I’ll take it.

I learned another fashion-related thing from Sia that day. When a woman gets her hair cut, they save the hair and throw it down the latrine so that no one can steal it and put a curse on them. Even if you go to a professional barber, they will give you your hair in a bag so that you can get rid of it.

The next day I had visitors. It was a man named Philip from an NGO called the Thaakat Foundation who I had connected with through a friend. Through some crazy coincidence, I had run into an old friend at a party in Chicago about a week before coming here. She told me she worked for an organization that did work in Sierra Leone. Of the 52 places I could have been placed in Peace Corps, I was placed the closest to the NGO’s work site – about four miles away.

We drove down the highway to a very tiny village in the bush. The foundation is building a state-of-the-art health clinic right at the beginning of the town. There will be showers with running water, multiple rooms and beds for women giving birth, electricity, housing for the nurses, and more. I took pictures to send back to my friend and then we moved onto the old clinic.

The former clinic was barely a shack. The ceiling was so low we each had to duck through the doorway to get in. There were only three small, dark, dusty rooms. There was a single bed and a mat from UNICEF on the floor next to it. Only two nurses worked there and they each had to share one room with their entire families. They didn’t even have space to cook.

Philip drove me back and talked about how I could be a sort of assistant to them as well as a trustworthy liaison. I excitedly agreed. I sent all of the pictures to my friend and then headed home. I greeted a woman in Mende as she walked by and she called out in a sing-song voice, “I think you are here to stay. You are learning our language. Yes, I think you are here to stay.” It was a good day.

Philip drove back the next morning and talked to Mada about possibly working for him on some latrine building. It was a cool connection to see and I hope it works out for him! I visited my village’s clinic again where the head nurse asked me if I could help her improve her English. I told her I would, but her English was already near perfect. What did she want help with?

“Well, I will tell you later. I don’t want them to laugh at me,” she said.

My head almost exploded.

“Everyone here laughs at me. You even laugh at me,” I called her out. Everyone stopped. It was the first awkward silence I experienced in this country.

Language learning has been a huge struggle. I came to site wanting to master Mende more than anything, but the constant laughing, rapid yelling, and lack of help has made me want to never try again. Without having any sort of foundation to build up from, I’m always left blankly staring and shrugging. No matter who I explain this to, everyone assures me time and time again that no one really wants to make fun of me. I don’t believe it.

Another nurse started talking about how soft my hands are since I haven’t lived a life of labor.

“If you slapped Wuyata, your hand would go right through her, it’s so soft!” she exclaimed. “Go ahead, let’s both slap her!”

One of the nurse’s young grandsons was running around who had previously liked running up to me, but was now starting to become terrified as the nurses shoved him toward me and made him question if I was actually safe to approach. He started screaming and wailing any time someone tried to get him to come near me. Wuyata and I attempted to explain that he wasn’t afraid of me before and now he was going to be, but everyone else was too amused by him to care.

They commented more on how quiet I am and I said I couldn’t contribute anything when everyone was speaking Mende the whole time. Wuyata reminded them every time I was there to speak Krio around me but they never did. I was beginning to wonder if these nurses actually liked me and what the point of all of these callouts was – my hope of volunteering at the clinic was slipping away quickly.

The next morning my jogging group grew even more. Nine kids ran with me, and Mimi, one of my OG joggers, tried sprinting ahead to show them up. She began losing steam halfway to the hill and yelled after us to slow down, so we did. Five kids stopped to stare at a dead bird. At the top of the hill they demanded we run to the next village 2.5 miles away – we didn’t even make it across our own village! We ran back down the hill and some kids said they were tired again and stopped. Others yelled that we should keep going. Then they all looked at me.

I felt guilty leaving anyone behind but I personally wanted to keep going. For now I said we would walk, but if anyone wanted to run ahead alone they should do it. No one did.

The next morning a group of young kids crowded around my window. I discovered if I stick my arms out the window and hold my phone at a certain angle, I can sometimes get the network to work. But now here I was trying to do that while about seven tiny faces stared up at me. I gave up and told them to walk around front.

I sat on my veranda and attempted to play with the kids without having any way to communicate with them. They touched my legs all over and mostly just stared at me while playing with each other.

I went on another jog the next morning and before I left, Ja asked me if I was actually running or just walking.

“I run,” I said sternly.

“I’d like to see that!”

“Then come,” I challenged.

“Tomorrow,” he laughed.

“Everyone says tomorrow!” I walked away. Countless people here tell me they want to run and when I actually invite them, they all say tomorrow. Sure.

I had a few more conversations with Seibatu leading up to the start of school. There was still no class schedule, and every time I asked her about it, she simply told me to feel free. I learned from Seibatu’s daughter that students will make fun of teachers who don’t flog them. Would they make fun of me? Seibatu also explained that an organization called Marie Stopes will come to the school to give out the birth control arm implants for free but girls will have it removed at the clinic. She said some girls will see their friends with babies so then they decide they want babies too.

Wuyata was in Freetown getting her pin code, a very important number meaning she would finally be getting paid for her job. She has been a nurse for seven years and has never received a salary, but now that was hopefully going to change. The teachers experience the same thing – they work with no government pay. Sometimes even if employees have pin codes, they still don’t get paid. I learned that two teachers at my school have been waiting for over a year now since they received their pin codes.

Wuyata called me and asked me how everything was going in the community. When I explained some worries I was having in regards to integrating, she cut me off.

“Brittney, stop worrying about the community!” she said. “You need to live your own life too!”

Those words made me think. I felt immense pressure to be the ‘perfect’ volunteer who focused on everyone else above myself, but maybe it didn’t have to be that way, especially if community members didn’t see it that way.

I walked home. My three weeks of total freedom at site were finally, thankfully up. Tomorrow was the first day of school!       

I had three weeks to kill before school started and no idea how to do it. I felt like a pinball shooting around hoping to get somewhere and praying I wouldn’t fall. I spent most days with Seibatu and her nieces playing Uno – SO much Uno – or listening to music or trying to get kids to be less afraid of me. I hunted for good cell service and tried to deal with hordes of kids always following me. I learned random Mende words and carried around a piece of paper and a pen to retain it all. I discovered who had been using my gutter and encouraged them to use it whenever I wasn’t. I handwashed clothes in the privacy and peace of my own home and my neighbor, Amie, came over to help me spread them across my clothesline.

On Saturday night, Wuyata knocked on my door and invited me to church the following morning. I was slightly wary of going because I didn’t want people to expect me to go every weekend, especially if it was an eight-hour service, but I agreed. I was looking forward to the experience and knew it would help me integrate.

“What’s this?” she touched two giant zits on my forehead.

“Uhh pimples…I’m always hot and sweaty,” I said.

“Oh,” she scrunched her face and looked sympathetic. “Please bear with us. This is Africa.”

We went to church at 8 a.m. the next morning and no one was there. There isn’t an actual church in the village so the nurses and some children meet outside of the clinic for mass. As we waited for others to arrive, Ja walked by and announced he wanted to start his own Catholic congregation.

“I’ve been here a year and I didn’t even know you were Catholic!” Wuyata said. “You’re just jealous that my friend is here!” They both laughed.

She invited him to stay at church and he literally ran away, but I said if he started his own congregation next week I would go. Church finally started at 9 a.m. with just 13 of us. A sweet nurse named Massah was leading and trying to teach us a song. As we sang, a giant group of dozens upon dozens of women came stomping by. We sang louder and they chanted louder while the front women held something above their heads. The group circled the clinic a few times while we all sang and stared at them. It started to feel ridiculous and I couldn’t help but laugh.

A young boy tried to dart out of the church to see what the women were doing and a nurse whacked him with a stick and he came back. A high school boy named Christopher suddenly stood up and yelled, “I’m leaving!” above the commotion, but another nurse grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him back down. I couldn’t hide my laughter anymore and Wuyata, Christopher, and I burst out in giggles. Church lasted about two hours but I didn’t mind – it was the most entertaining and unpredictable service I’d ever been to. I later learned the group was the women’s society and they had been performing a ceremony because one of the women had a dream that a pregnant woman in the community died.

After church Wuyata explained a tradition to me where if a woman has twins, she is expected to give birth to a third child and name them something specific. She has twin girls but told all her loved ones she wouldn’t be having a third kid, to their dismay.

“If you follow every tradition here, you’ll have 100 kids!” she said. “I told my family they’ll see that I’ll be okay.”

Later that night I showed Wuyata a family picture book my sister made for me before I left.

“Your mom is so beautiful!” she exclaimed. “I know this book is special to you, but don’t look at it every day. Is this a cat or a dog?” she pointed to a picture of me holding a raccoon at a pet café in Thailand. I said it was a raccoon. “Well yes, but.. cat or dog?”

The next day Sia again knocked on my door in the early hours of the morning. Every part of me wanted to give in and open it and act like everything was fine, but I absolutely did not want that to become the norm. I explained again why my door was still shut and then we jogged together. It was Monday which meant a village about seven miles away was having a luma, a giant market that people from every surrounding village attend.

A World Vision jeep drove me to the market and Sia followed shortly after on a motorcycle. I thought the markets would be comparable to the ones I went to in Thailand but they were not at all. This market was extremely crowded and overwhelming – I wanted to leave the second I got there. I followed Sia around and only bought a few items. When we tried leaving, no cars were headed back the way we came. We sat by some other people and a woman got mad at me because I didn’t recognize her from Dandabu. A boy argued with me on whether or not I like a snack called pop which is basically rice mixed with sugar in a gooey paste.

We waited for an hour before I asked Sia if she was truly sure no cars were going back. Two minutes later we were in a car going back. A woman reached out and tried to touch my face. I realized too late she was only trying to move my hair from my sweaty, sticky cheek, but it was still alarming. The day had been long and stressful and as was becoming the norm, my patience was gone.

At home I noticed my neighbor’s dog’s tail had been cut – it looked like a hot dog sticking out of a hairy bun.

“Amie,” I called. “Is this your dog? What happened?”

“Daniel cut his tail!” she replied. Who was Daniel? Why?

I walked to a network spot hoping that reaching out to a few people would help me feel better. A group of kids followed me again, stood directly in front of me, and shouted my name repeatedly until I looked at them. They grabbed for my phone, played with my hair, and laughed when I tried to explain I was busy and wanted them to leave.

One person I reached out to was my host mom from Port Loko, Khadija. I sent her a text saying I missed her and then walked to Seibatu’s house. I explained how kids kept bothering me when I was trying to talk to friends and family and I wanted to know what I could say in Mende to make them understand.

“I will tell their parents!” she said.

I tried explaining that I wanted to handle it myself, but third-party intervention is a huge thing here. I felt uncomfortable at the idea since in America it would be a strange approach, but I figured she knew best. She gave me a Mende phrase anyway, but she also talked to their parents.

A reply from Khadija came through. Something along the lines of, “I was expecting a call your first day. I have changed my opinion of you.” Great.

I was sitting in a chair with my head leaning against the wall thinking about the day. It had been tough but it was finally over. Seibatu must have noticed my mood because she began telling me her life story, all of the trials and tribulations she’s been through, and how she never wanted to live in the village. In fact, when she first arrived, she wanted to quit.

“Kids always played around here,” she motioned around her house. “I had no friends and I wasn’t even cooking. But now it is better.”

She talked about how money isn’t everything, and how to her, keeping your self-respect and character is what matters. She said she always tries to make friends wherever she goes. Maada, her nephew, walked me back to my house and as I laid in bed, a text from Gabe randomly came through. My house is a complete dead-zone, and as I type this post nearly three months after it happened, I have yet to come anywhere near getting a text in my house again. Thank you, texting gods! It was such a happy, little moment after a long day.

The next day was much better, and as I’ve been told here, we’ll experience our highest highs and lowest lows. I visited the clinic again without Wuyata to try to build trust with the other nurses and it worked! They said they were impressed I came alone. I visited the nursery structure and hung around for a bit watching. I visited a family’s palm oil plantation in the middle of a beautiful, cool forest. I spent time with my neighbor Amie and helped her peel groundnuts in front of our houses that she would then sell.

Ja joined us halfway through and asked me all sorts of questions about America, such as how far Washington, DC is from me and if we have farmland there.

“But it’s not like our farmland, right?” he said. “Your farmland is much bigger.”

I explained how in Illinois we have sprawling cornfields and that my middle and high school were built on farmland. People here tend to think we all live in cities and have never seen a farm animal, so I also threw in that my middle school would put a cow in the courtyard once a year. He was amused.

That day I also learned that Daniel was Amie’s son who had introduced himself as Moses to me. He cut their dog’s tail because he said it was part of the Muslim religion. He asked me if I want a pet and then said he’ll look for a cat for me.

I also texted Khadija back despite how flustered I was at her response, and she immediately forgave me and asked how I was adjusting. That’s another thing I’ve noticed here – grudges are non-existent and even what I see as a terrible fight is often overcome pretty quickly between two people.

The next day Seibatu had to travel so she left me the keys to her house. Students were coming for interviews so I had to hang out all day in case they showed up. I was there for eight hours and not a single student arrived. I played Uno on and off the whole day and watched the pastor sit in a network spot for four straight hours while no one bothered him. I was jealous of that privacy.

Seibatu returned around 5 p.m. and I immediately returned her keys and ran away. It had felt like a full day of babysitting and I had the type of headache I used to get if I studied for too long. Being ‘on’ here 24/7 is mentally exhausting.

I may have sat around playing Uno the entire day but that included never having a free second to myself as Seibatu’s three nieces wanted my constant attention, greeting dozens of people who walked by the house and again dealing with not understanding Mende or having to explain to them why I did not yet know or remember their names, handling kids straight up staring at me and trying to touch me and my things, watching Maada’s wife Yatta cook for two hours straight and not letting me help in any way, etc. And I’ve found that even if I think things feel fine on the surface, subconsciously it’s all building up and I don’t tend to notice that until it’s too late.

At home I laid in my bed and did absolutely nothing. Before coming here I pictured myself keeping busy with all these hobbies but as I continue to adjust, sitting in private silence is what makes me the happiest. At night I ventured to a network spot and this time only my favorite neighbor boy, Jameson, followed. He laid his tiny head in my lap while I messaged friends. He ran off, but when I walked back to my house, he sprinted naked from his bucket bath and held my hand all the way to my front door.

The next day I took it easy. I hid at school all morning making phone calls where no one could see me. At home, I had finally convinced a neighbor to show me where to throw my own trash away (they kept insisting I just give it to a kid to throw out) but when I tried to walk there a different neighbor yelled at me to stop and had a small boy take my rice bag full of garbage from me. I walked with him to the spot anyway and thanked him for tossing it.

There was a dance happening that night which they call a jam and Maada had asked me yesterday if I wanted to go. I didn’t really want to go and watch all of my students dancing with each other but I thought it would be interesting to see once. He didn’t mention it to me all day though so I thought I was in the clear. That night at 11 p.m. I awoke to him screaming my name outside my door.

There was absolutely no way I was opening my door at 11 p.m. for anyone after only being in this village for a few short weeks. I ignored him and hoped he’d go away, but as I’ve learned with Sia, people are persistent, and ignoring their knocks will not deter them. He walked around to my bedroom window and shouted my name some more. I finally yelled back and said I wasn’t coming.

The next morning he apologized and said he felt bad for forgetting to invite me again yesterday. I assured him it was perfectly fine and that I’d just go to the next one. I had big plans for the day – I was going to attempt to travel alone to the nearby city of Bo for the first time. I sat on the highway at Seibatu’s house and waited for a car to come by. She gave me some papaya even though I’d said I’d already eaten breakfast when she asked and then a crowded van came by and I jumped inside. Then my phone died. And my charger.

The only way for me to charge my phone here is to go to the charging station. A woman has dozens of power strips connected to a generator and for only 2,000 leones, or about 20 cents, you can charge something. The problem is that she doesn’t charge every day, and I somehow have gone to this station on every single off day. Seibatu lets me use her solar charger, but I don’t like hogging it.

So here I was in a car by myself for the first time with no idea where I was going and no way to contact anyone. I was sitting in the front seat and the man next to me slowly let his hand drop until it was slightly resting on my knee. I wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not since we were squished so close but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I flicked his hand and he moved it.

This van was going about -10 miles per hour. Vans here will also carry jugs of palm oil or bags of rice, so we made numerous stops dropping these items off. What could have been an hour and a half drive to Bo turned into two and a half hours, and I’d already waited two hours that morning for a car to even come by. I kept asking the driver if we were headed toward Fenton Road and he kept telling me we’d get there.

My anxiety and anger were growing. At one point we drove down a street and passed three other Peace Corps Volunteers walking. My brain completely froze and I didn’t even think to tell the car to stop so I could get out. We stopped further down the road and then I was too scared to get out and go back. What if they weren’t there anymore? Where even was I?

I was now sitting alone in the front seat of the van while they unloaded even more supplies. A group of men was sitting a few feet away from me peering in. Creepy Man 2 approached the window.

“Hey fine girl, I want to be friends,” he slurred.

“No.”

“Hey man, leave her alone, she doesn’t want to be your friend,” the driver said half-heartedly before walking away. “She doesn’t want you.”

“Kiss me!” Creepy Man 2 said.

“..no?” I replied.

“With tongue?”

“Fuck off!” I yelled. That’s a common phrase here.

He wiggled his tongue out of his mouth.

“Go away,” I shouted.

“Give me 10,000 leones and I’ll leave,” he said.

“Or you can just leave,” I replied.

He continued slurring ‘fine girl, fine girl,’ and then eventually gave up and left. My heart was racing and tears were staring to well up. It was all so overwhelming, and I definitely couldn’t leave the van now. What if he followed me?

Another man approached the window and I braced myself, but he was genuinely nice and just wanted to say hello. The van finally departed again and I was the only passenger left with the driver and his apprentices. I lost my shit asking what was taking so long, why we kept stopping, why no one was actually telling me where Fenton Road was. They all laughed. I rhetorically asked if they thought this was all funny and the continued laughing and said yes. I know I looked like a dumb, crazy foreigner but the emotions were bursting out.

We finally reached Fenton Road. I tossed my money into one of their hands and stomped off having no idea where I was supposed to go. My destination was Ruri’s Restaurant. I began asking random women selling things where Ruri’s Restaurant was. Do you know how hard it is to communicate ‘Ruri’s Restaurant’ to people whose local language doesn’t even have the R sound? No one knew what I was saying or talking about.

I continued walking down the street and told myself I wasn’t going to be a little bitch and cry (while also telling myself that getting lost in a city in West Africa was probably the most appropriate time to cry). I saw a Lebanese man in a store and thought he might know the place. Luckily he did and I had been walking in the right direction all along. He told me to turn at the next intersection, but when I got there I realized I didn’t know which way to turn. I stood on the corner frantically looking around.

“The food is that way,” a man walking by selling sunglasses said.

“What?” I was confused.

“The chop? It’s there,” he pointed to the left. I was elated – this random man knew exactly what I was looking for. A huge smile grew on my face and I was so eternally grateful.

“Oh…thank you!!!” I nearly shouted.

He smiled back at me and also seemed a little confused at my whole spin of emotions.

So I finally made it to the restaurant. A whole group of Peace Corps Volunteers was already there. Everyone hugged me and someone even bought me a beer. I ate a burger and fries, charged my phone, and sat there. I had wanted to walk around the city a bit but I think just being able to physically get there was enough of an accomplishment for the day.

On my drive back to site a tire popped and we had to stand on the side of the road while the driver fixed it. All I could do was laugh.

I walked down the street and waved goodbye for the last time to all the neighborhood kids. I met Anne at the college and we waited with maybe 15 of her family members for a van to come get us. Peace Corps had thankfully arranged a driver for us and we would be paying him a hefty one million leones to get to Pujehun. After he picked us up, we drove to the training center to get our CIFs. A staff member talked with our driver and asked if he thought everyone’s backpacks would fit along with whatever we would be buying along the way. The driver said yes. What else was he going to say? We all looked at the space skeptically.

We then set off for a hotel to get three Salone 8 volunteers and then the village of Maforki to get a health volunteer. As the last person piled into the van, the driver began to debate the price with us. I’m really grateful we had three Salone 8 volunteers with us because they immediately shut him down. We gave him some money upfront to pay for gas and then made it about 45 minutes. The fumes in the car were so bad that our Salone 8 pals decided to get another car. It was definitely roomier but I was slightly worried the driver would change his mind again without them around.

A few hours later the car began violently bumping up and down. The driver stopped to inspect the wheels and then we set off again. All of a sudden, a tire exploded.

“Jesus Christ!” my CIF yelled from the backseat.

We all got out and stared at the popped tire. Our driver had a spare – yay! But no car jack – boo. We stood and waited. Luckily another group was right behind us so their driver stopped and helped ours change the tire. Thanks, Peace Corps.

We made it to the city of Bo where we stopped to buy supplies for our houses. I’ve been to Bo twice now and each time the city seems huge, crowded, and overwhelming. I’m praying for the day I actually have a sense of direction there. My CIF confidently marched us through alleys, streets, and markets and I bought a lot of essentials. When we got back to the car, the driver was mad that we were taking so long.

And then the final stretch – we were on the Pujehun highway. We dropped off Merit, the health volunteer, and then I was next about an hour later. There was thankfully no parade this time, just my principal, some kids, and Sia. They all excitedly greeted and hugged me and argued over who would carry my items to my house.

At my house, I noticed that a lot of things were different. During site visit they had asked me if I wanted a smaller bed and I said no, yet here it was. The mirror I had in the corner was gone. The big, blue water jug in the bathroom had been replaced by a smaller black one. I was missing a chair. None of those items had actually been mine but I had expected them to still be there when I went back. It almost felt like they had been putting on a show before.

People were still walking in and out of my house and my things were strewn all over the floor. Sia plopped down in a chair and a girl stood by the door. On the surface I felt mostly okay, but subconsciously something was brewing. It was admittedly a lot of change to go through in two days, and this day alone had been one thing after the next. Now I was finally in my space and I still felt like I had to entertain strangers. I was far past my introvert capacity.

“Okay, thank you,” I said. “I want to be alone now.” Someone had told me being blunt was best.

Sia said something in Mende to the girl.

“She said she’s not ready to go yet,” Sia said. I think my eye twitched.

I knew they were excited for me to be there but I truly had no energy to give them at that moment. I kept repeating that I just wanted to be alone to eat, unpack, and settle in. It took me a while to convince Sia that I also meant her which I felt bad about, but they both finally left. Boundaries.

I ate, moved some things around, and walked outside to find network so that I could tell people I’d arrived. As I sat in front of Seibatu’s house waiting for a signal, a boy I hadn’t met before sat next to me. He started reaching over me to tap my phone screen, and when I asked him to stop he only did it more. My patience was delving into the negatives. I told Seibatu and she scolded him. I couldn’t get a good signal.

I decided to walk home and fall asleep immediately. But as I was walking it started to downpour and I suddenly couldn’t exactly remember where my house was. Just as the panic was beginning to rise, Augusta, the kind nurse I met during site visit, appeared out of nowhere with an umbrella.

She greeted me with a big smile and walked me the right way to my house. It felt like a good omen, and as I locked the door and looked around, I began to notice that the changes they made were all for the better. The bed frame was brand new – it even still had plastic wrapping on the handles – and my mosquito net fit significantly better with this one than it did the old frame. The water jug was slightly smaller, but it also fit by the door of my bathroom now and not in the back, meaning my wash area was bigger. It had felt cramped during site visit… As for the missing chair, a boy came by with a brand new wooden one that still smelt of varnish. It was fancier than the plastic one I’d had before. They weren’t putting on a show before, they were simply trying to make my space more comfortable, as Saloneans do.

The next morning I woke up and instantly got to work. I had my giant suitcase from site visit and I truthfully didn’t even fully remember what was in there. I discovered glow in the dark stars I had bought from the dollar section at Target with my mom’s advice. I stuck them all over my ceiling and by my doorframe – thanks, mom! While organizing, my CIF, Wuyata, stopped by.

She told me she wanted to come greet me first thing in the morning but she knew western people didn’t like that. She asked me what I thought of her not coming by, and I told her I hadn’t thought anything at all. In fact, I was grateful she hadn’t come because I valued my space and privacy. She looked pleased that she had guessed just what I wanted. We talked for a while about our cultural differences, especially how people here want to do everything for strangers whereas us Americans want to do everything for ourselves. She told me I’ll just have to get used to their ways and I agreed.

She left, I bathed, and then I walked over to her house where my principal, Seibatu, also lives. Wuyata began to point out very observant things she’d noticed about me during the swear-in ceremony. She said she admired the way I sat silently by myself while the rest of my group moved around and talked (I have friends…). She also said she watched me talk to Gabe and say goodbye to him at the training center.  

“I really felt for you!” she said. “I know you must be missing him. And you were so quiet in the car!”

I assured her I was okay and that this was just a transition. I was honestly impressed and flattered that she paid so much attention and was so in tune with me. She said she’s going to ask me about Gabe and my family every day so that I “liven up” and “my mind doesn’t go too far away.” The rest of the day was spent meeting people, getting a gutter installed on my roof so that I can collect rain water, and talking to Auntie Vero, a woman I met during site visit who moved out of the village when she was 17 and has been living in London for the past 50 years. She explained to me that the village had a town crier who she was going to pay to walk around in the morning to announce a welcome meeting for me.

“Everyone has to pay except the chiefs, but sometimes he doesn’t go,” she said. “One time my daughter paid 5,000 leones and he didn’t go because it was raining. I had to go wake him up! And I hope he doesn’t just stand outside of my house and yell, you know?”

I awoke to the town crier’s booming voice the following morning. I couldn’t understand his Mende but it was a strange feeling knowing he was telling everyone to go to the community barre to see me. I sat outside of my house before the meeting and watched four young girls take teeny tiny steps toward my house. They giggled and hesitated and one brave girl suddenly marched ahead of the rest. They looked terrified and none of my motioning over helped.

The meeting had about 100 men, women, and children, and community members talked about the importance of education, everything the previous volunteer did, my likes and dislikes that Wuyata had me write on a piece of paper, and ways to be respectful to me, such as yelling my name instead of ‘pumuey!’ (white person) when they see me. A woman and numerous children then sang and danced and the meeting ended.

I went to the clinic to visit Wuyata and to try to get to know the nurses more. If I have free time I would like to volunteer at the clinic or maybe even make it a secondary project. I sat down awkwardly and anxiously and listened to all the rapid Mende around me. Some people started directing it at me, and I could feel my irritation rising. They would yell something in Mende, laugh when I didn’t understand, and then yell more. I never learned any Mende during my 10 entire weeks of training because I had to learn Krio instead, a language half the people at my site don’t even speak. You see the problem.

I decided my patience was out and I wanted to leave the clinic, but it was pouring rain. Wuyata braided my hair which drew even more attention from everyone and then the rain finally stopped and I darted home. I skimmed a Thai language book just to feel happy knowing another language, did yoga to calm my mind, and fell asleep.

I couldn’t keep sitting around while everyone stared at me, yelled to me, and laughed at me, so I decided to go on a jog at 6:30 a.m. to get the nerves out. My principal didn’t want me jogging alone and had told me before that a student would come with me. I wasn’t too fond of the idea but figured it was for the best. As I walked down the highway to my starting point, Sia followed me in a black dress and slide on sandals. I was confused – was she going to just wander up and down the road as I ran? Was she going to sit on the side?

“I want to come with you!” she said.

We started jogging and three children began chanting, “Pumuey! Pumuey! Pumuey!” like I was in a race. Countless people yelled to Sia saying they admired her. We made it to the other side of the village in about five minutes and then began our final ascent up a steep hill. We had to walk to the top but I felt good and strong and empowered even if it was only a ten-minute run. On our way back, women who were washing clothes in the river jokingly asked if we were tired.

I was covered in mud walking home but suddenly had a burst of confidence and began talking to my neighbor, Ja. Wuyata came by to invite me to a malaria talk she was giving at the clinic, so I bathed and headed out. As she gave her presentation, I noticed the rest of the nurses were quick to question her and call her out if she made a mistake. She accepted it with grace and confidence and I thought about how different it would be in America.

Afterward I walked back to the front of town where we had started our jog. I had noticed a small shop and wanted to see what they had. A bunch of young men were sitting around and I wondered what I was about to get myself into. The shop owner, Amadu, greeted me and asked my name. When I told him, he said he was sad I had a Mende name already because he wanted to name me. Then he gave me a sucker and emphasized how sweet it was. I decided I won’t be going back.

As I left the shop, a man called out to me. We’ll call him Creepy Man 1. I turned and he simply said, “Come.” I slowly walked over and he began speaking Mende. A man next to him translated – he was asking me why I hadn’t cooked for him yet. I said he wouldn’t like my cooking and walked away.

Later in the afternoon I made my first phone calls at site and learned another major cultural difference – there is no such thing as privacy on the phone. I was sitting on a log and Sia sat right next to me. About ten children formed a ring around me and sat quietly listening to me speak. When I got off the phone, I walked across the street to a small structure that was being built. I learned it was a nursery and saw Creepy Man 1 again.

“Will you register me for school?” he asked in perfect English with a huge, cocky smile.

“I’m sure you can register yourself,” I replied. His smile faded. I wasn’t sure of boundaries but I was prepared to push them.

I laid in bed the next morning thinking about Creepy Man 1. Was he someone who was going to be a serious problem to me over the next two years? All of a sudden, I heard a knock at the door. It was still early in the morning so I pretended to be asleep. Whoever it was knocked six more times before giving up and leaving. When I finally got up a short while later, Sia came over and said she had knocked. I explained if the door is shut I’m not awake or ready.

I went to Seibatu’s house again and she began to tell me about school. Being the only female in a school full of young men has many challenges, and she kept saying how excited she was to finally have another female. I was excited too – I was ready to support her in any way I could. As we were talking, Wuyata and Ja came over and asked me who I was talking to on the phone yesterday for so long.

Seibatu and I walked back to the nursery and she immediately started carrying bricks to lay the foundation. She told me when the house I’m living in was being built, no one would help until she marched over and started doing it herself. So I asked her if I could help carry bricks for the nursery and she said no – but I’m hoping one day when I’m in a similar situation she’ll say yes.

The next day I opened my door at 6 a.m. to put a bucket under my gutter and then realized a bucket was already there. One of my neighbors was using my gutter. What was proper gutter etiquette? Should I move the bucket? Should I be offended someone was using it without asking? I left it and decided to jog again. This time I also asked Mimi, Seibatu’s niece, if she wanted to come with, and she eagerly said yes.

Sia, Mimi, and I took off down the highway together for the whole village to see. Both of them smiled and laughed and many people called out to them in encouragement. A boy with no shoes joined us halfway, and then two more boys joined us as we passed the river. I feel obligated to run regularly now because kids are starting to expect it. I’m not sure how well race training is going to go (there’s a marathon in May!) since we always stop at the hill, they like to run in front of me and cut me off, and they get tired and stop a lot, but I’d say the benefits still outweigh the negatives. Jogging helps me feel like I’m integrating as community members see and greet me every morning and kids feel comfortable enough joining me.

Back at home I played Uno on my veranda with some kids. More and more kids kept coming until a very tight circle of maybe 15 children formed. Little girls sat by my legs and picked loose strands of hair from my pants. I went back to the clinic after that where Wuyata showed me how she performs exams on pregnant women. She placed a cone-like piece of plastic on the woman’s stomach to listen in and then squished the woman’s belly all over. The baby kicked far out – it was my first time ever seeing a baby kick.

Sia took me to the bush in the afternoon and we walked to her aunt’s farm where people were picking cassava root and cutting off the outer layers. I watched for an hour and a half (Wuyata made me promise I wouldn’t try to cut any myself because she thought I would cut my hand) and then we made our way back. One part of the walk was flooded and we had to walk through shin-high water. Sia wanted to hold my hand through it because she thought I was going to fall? Get stuck? Drown? I’m not really sure.

Then we ran into Creepy Man 1 again and he asked me yet again why I didn’t send him any food. Because I don’t have any! I didn’t yet even know how to feed myself. As we walked away I mentioned to Sia I didn’t like how he spoke to me. She told my principal and all of a sudden the chiefs and a few other community stakeholders were walking to his house to tell him to knock it off.

The day ended with me at Seibatu’s house again talking to random people who were coming and going, laughing and chatting. I felt like I was in a little posse and it was comforting – I could get used to being here.