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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you going to school?” she asked.

“…are you?”

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

“Is Seibatu?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It is rude?” Mimi asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are there hills in the sky?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Is she hurt?”

“Sometimes.”

“Is someone hurting her?”

“Yes.”

“In her house?”

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We can’t! We’re stuck!” we replied.

“Oh…come forward!!!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“When is the next boat?” we asked.

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

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

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

“We’re married.”

“All of you?!”

“Yup.”

“But I can text you?”

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

“Okay, how about we just send images?”

“Oh…wait what?”

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

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

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

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

“Oh….right.”

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