Sonder Salone

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

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

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

“What?” Ja asked.

“1.5 MILLION LEONES!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is happening?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Integration and adapting are happening slowly but surely!!