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.

On Saturday I bruked completely alone for the first half of it and had a lot of mixed feelings. I complained every single week about Mariatu washing my clothes for me but now… where was she?! She didn’t want to spend time with me anymore? Was I actually washing my clothes the right way?… then she joined me and we went through the same process and I felt happy and annoyed all at the same time.

While we bruked, I watched my other host sister Fatu sit on the back of a motorbike while the family placed an adult goat in her lap. Its feet were tied but she was struggling to hold it. They decided to tie its front and back legs together around her in what sort of looked like a fluffy seatbelt. I wondered if they fell off if the goat would cushion her landing.

She was traveling to a village to pray for a Muslim holiday called Eid. Everyone sacrifices a goat on that day and is supposed to share the meat with the next forty houses. In the end they decided she couldn’t safely hold the goat so they untied it and brought it back to the pole in front of my room.

I had asked my family a few times if they were going to pray in Port Loko and they said no. It was something I wanted to see so Mariatu asked our neighbors to take me which I was slightly bummed out about, but then on Sunday morning she decided she would come with me instead. I got ready at 7 a.m. and then sat around waiting until 8:50 a.m. Mariatu gave me a hijab and we started walking to the mosque (after taking a bunch of pictures obviously).

The call to prayer started going off and we took off running with everyone around us. It was raining and kids were screaming, ‘Apoto!’ and, ‘Ms. Brittney!’ at me as I ran and tried not to slip and fall while also keeping the hijab on correctly. We made it to the mosque, put our prayer mat on the ground, and began standing up and kneeling along with the group. It only lasted five minutes and then we went home. It took me a week of asking Mariatu to come with me for her to finally agree to sit through a five-minute prayer?!

“So where are we going today?” she asked me as we walked back.

“Uhh I don’t know,” I said. We never really went anywhere. “Where do you want to go?”

We decided we would finally bake brownies, something I’d been wanting to try for weeks. We bought the ingredients at the market and then prepared the batter at home. We poured all the batter into a metal bowl and placed the bowl on top of four rocks inside a rice pot over a coal pot to make a Dutch oven. Normally to start the fire, someone will light a plastic bag on fire and melt it over the coals. This time Mariatu took some burning coals from the neighbors.

It was eerily quiet with all the kids still gone on vacation and the rest of the family at nearby villages for Eid. It was just me and Mariatu outside with Khadija resting inside.

As the brownies baked, she told me she actually loved the peace and quiet. She also told me her lifelong dream is to work on a ship and travel to other countries. She wants to get married before 25 so that she never has to live alone. She hopes to never get divorced and she only wants to have children after she’s married.

Our brownie batter was extremely thick and I definitely should have separated it into two pans. After forty minutes they still weren’t done and I was beginning to wonder if they ever would be. Mariatu left for a few minutes and when she came back she noticed the edges had started to burn. She took the pot off the coals using scrap pieces of paper as pot holders and repeatedly burned her fingers.

“You should have removed it!” she said. I tried explaining that the edges were destined to burn and the inside was destined to be gooey with this setup but she wouldn’t have it.

The bowl cooled and I tore off a chunk to try. They were…not good. Even though all the ingredients were fresh, they tasted stale. They also tasted extremely smoky. My friend Kayla baked brownies with her family all the time and they were amazing! Now I had to give some to Mariatu to try…

She took a bite and kept throwing the burnt bits into the yard. We both stood over the bowl and stared at this nasty conglomerate of goo and crust in front of us.

“So… what do you think?!” I asked as if these weren’t the worst brownies in the world.

“They’re good…” she said, although we both knew that was a lie.

“Do you… want more?” I asked.

She paused and stared. “Oh.. what?” We kept staring at it.

I had to go to the training center after that and as I was leaving she asked what she should do with the brownies. I told her to eat them, share them, throw them away…whatever she wanted. I was too afraid to ask what she ever did with them.

On Tuesday we had the summer school awards ceremony. Every student was invited and they were all very eager to see their exam scores, especially because the first three students in each class would be getting a prize of two notebooks, a ruler, and a school book. First place also received a certificate.

I left two hours before the ceremony started and two of my students joined me. I told them they were way too early and that Peace Corps wouldn’t let them in yet but they didn’t care. They asked me what their scores were the entire walk there and I finally gave them their papers when we arrived. One student got 13/17 and the other got 14/17. They seemed happy. Over the weekend when I was grading the exams, Abu Bakkar and Ibrahim came over to find out their grades and Ibrahim started a rumor in the neighborhood that multiple students had gotten zeroes. When I was walking around, students would stop me and say they’d heard they’d failed. I was so confused until I discovered what Ibrahim was doing, but also impressed that everyone cared about their grade so much.

When the ceremony actually started it was complete chaos. Students kept trying to storm the doors and there was no direction given as to what we should be doing. Staff entertained them all morning and then they split them up into groups so that health volunteers could give hand washing and tippy tap demonstrations. To build a tippy tap, you put two sticks in the ground and lay another across them. You hang a plastic jug from it, poke a string through the lid, and then tie another stick to the bottom of the string so that washers can step on it, tilt the jug, and wash their hands. You also poke a hole through a bar of soap, tie it to a string, and then hang that next to the jug. The volunteers explained that if you don’t have soap, you can wash your hands with ash which I never knew!

After the demonstrations, we all went inside to hand out awards. There weren’t enough chairs for everyone so many students stood. It was very crowded and hot. We had planned for the teachers to announce their classes, but a staff member announced every name instead. The students who had walked with me that morning kept running up to me to ask when they would get their prize and I had to explain that only the first three students were getting a big prize. At one point I saw my host brother, Augustine, get second place – I didn’t even know he was attending summer school!

Every student received a pencil, snacks, and juice. Some students from my class looked heartbroken, and when Abu Bakkar discovered he wasn’t in the top three, he laid his head on his hands and didn’t look up the rest of the ceremony. He had gotten second place in language arts but had only answered one question on the math exam.

Our clubs were supposed to show off what we’d accomplished in the two weeks, but that was skipped and all of the students were led out the door. I never got the chance to give the rest of my students their exams and I had no idea if I’d see them again.

After the ceremony I went to the tailor and received my swear-in ashobi. Peace Corps had given each of us fabric to get matching outfits, or ashobi, made for swear-in. Mine wasn’t exactly what I asked for but it was nice for what it was. It was a sort of dress with slits up the side and fancy white embroidery all along the edges and chest. It cost about $8 to make.

The week leading up to swear-in went by in a blur. We had our final language test (I somehow went from intermediate low to intermediate high in just two weeks with about 37 minutes of Krio lessons during that time. Amazing! Imagine what I could’ve accomplished if I would’ve been learning Mende!) and we also had a sort of final medical exam and education project framework exam that no one had told us about beforehand. The Peace Corps let us all stay at the training center until 10 p.m. one night just to hang out and staff spent the whole morning teaching us how to make local street snacks like peanut cookies, butterscotch, and fried dough. We also attended a female genital mutilation (FGM) talk where we learned about how it happens in Sierra Leone, traditions, and the slightly changing culture.

One thing our presenter told us was that men are beginning to prefer uncut women because that’s what they see when they watch western porn. Before coming here I read an article about the UN using unconventional and possibly unethical means to get aid to villages impacted by Ebola in the Congo. One example was providing illegal drugs to militant groups that were blocking the roads so that they’d let them pass. So here’s my unethical idea: western porn for all.

Over the weekend some friends and I went to a soccer game at the Old Port Loko stadium which already looks like an ancient ruins site. The bleachers are a giant slab of cement that look rustic and daunting in a way. After watching professional soccer games at the cinema for so long, it was interesting to see local teams play. When the game ended, we climbed to the top of the bleachers and got a beautiful view of the sun setting over the forest.

This week I also got an ashobi made with Mariatu as a parting gift. We each got shirts made from a swirly pink, orange, yellow, and white fabric. Mariatu told me we would both wear them on Tuesday and walk around the whole town for everyone to admire us.

Tuesday came and that’s what we did, even though it was drizzling. We marched around in our matching shirts and Mariatu excitedly greeted every person we passed. We talked about her boyfriend, who was now her ex-boyfriend. She said she didn’t know where she wanted to go, but we somehow managed to end up at the local bar where we ran into some other trainees. We took more pictures and listened to music and a man even approached us and said we looked the same. I said I know, look at our shirts! And he said no, I mean your faces! You look similar! True sisters.

On our walk back I heard two men say “black American.” They thought Mariatu was in the Peace Corps with me. Right before reaching the house, Mariatu asked me, “Did you hear that? Those men just said look at the white Peace Corps and look at the black Peace Corps…” A true testament to our sisterhood.

The day before swear-in our Cultural Integration Facilitators, or CIFs, came from each of our sites. We had a conference with them where they learned about diversity and American culture and we FINALLY learned some of our local language. We covered greetings, which most of us had forcibly learned during site visit, and a few other phrases like where we come from and where we’re staying. It was extremely useful and only made me wish even more that we could’ve learned it sooner.

At the end of the conference we made travel plans to get to site. This was something new the Peace Corps was doing that many of us were not happy about. Instead of dropping us off in Peace Corps vehicles, they wanted our CIFs to help transport us and all our things back to site using public transportation. Public transportation consists of squishing seven people into a car, stuffing everything in the trunk, tying things to the roof, and hoping for the best.

Luckily they decided last minute that they would drop our things off at site a few days after we got there, so we just needed to bring day packs. But if they could bring all our luggage, why not just bring us too and give us one nice, final farewell? In their eyes, the community would feel less responsibility to our safety and protection if they drove us. I’m not sure I’m buying it.

The following day was finally swear-in! After ten long weeks of training, 52 out of 57 of us made it. Everyone arrived looking their best in their ashobi and the training center was decorated with red, white, blue, and green banners to represent both flags. Classical music played in the background. The ceremony began with a prayer, the Salone national anthem, and the US national anthem. A woman from the Ministry of Basic, Senior and Secondary Education spoke followed by a man from the Ministry of Health and Sanitation. Our Director of Programming and Training gave remarks and we all recited the Peace Corps Pledge with her to officially swear in. Finally, the U.S. Ambassador gave a speech that was partly in Krio.

A volunteer from the cohort before mine gave a welcome speech in Krio and then three new volunteers in my group gave speeches in Krio, Temne, and Mende, which was very impressive to hear. We all ate lunch afterwards (well, kinda…they ran out of a lot of food by the time I got there) and then everyone went home to pack. All of a sudden everyone received a text that Peace Corps vehicles would be coming to our houses at 4:30 to collect our items – that was in 45 minutes and I hadn’t packed a single thing.

I ran home and literally threw everything I owned in my trunk and suitcase. Mariatu watched me run back and forth and when I finally finished, we took pictures in the yard together. Then I sat and waited. And waited. 5:30 came and there were still no cars. It was our last day together as a group and we were all stuck sitting at our houses. I labeled my items with my name, left them outside my door with locks on them, and set off for the shawarma restaurant.

My group spent the night celebrating at Summers, the local bar. The next morning my host family told me no one had ever come to get my stuff, so I’m glad I didn’t sit around waiting all night. I texted staff asking and they said I hadn’t sent in my name to the list. I had to send in my name?? Wasn’t it expected that we would all be giving our items to them??

I grabbed my backpack and awkwardly walked up to Khadija as she was brushing her teeth in the yard. I said I was leaving and she said okay. It all felt oddly impersonal after having such a close relationship for ten weeks. Was this normal Salone culture? I gave her a pack of notebooks for the kids for school and hugged her goodbye. Then I hugged my aunt, grandma, and finally Mariatu. Mariatu and I stared at each other with smirks and I quickly thanked her for everything before I could get choked up. Then I walked outside.