Sonder Salone

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.

After getting back from site, we all had a debrief at the training center and some trainees had less than ideal experiences in their communities. I felt extremely grateful that my own visit had been so amazing. The next day we spent the whole day making lesson plans for our upcoming summer school. We would be teaching summer school in Port Loko for two weeks to prepare for our actual schools.

On Saturday we had another Village Day to practice teaching and this time it didn’t go as smoothly for me. I was already in a bad mood and I had shown up to the training center late. When we got to the village the chief was a bit abrasive and then in my class not a single person wanted to participate. At the previous Village Day my class had flown through the lesson and everyone was eager to participate. I was teaching the same lesson to practice making it longer when I actually had to try to make it shorter.

On Monday summer school started. We began with morning assembly where the students had to sing a religious song such as “Good Morning, Jesus,” or, “Tell God thank you,” then they said the Lord’s prayer followed by the national pledge and the first stanza of the national anthem. First period lasted for 40 minutes followed by a five-minute break and then the second teacher taught for another 40 minutes. Afterwards we had club activities and students could choose to be in English, science, or math club.

We only had 12 students the first day which we were warned about. Students didn’t really start to show up until Wednesday. For my first class I made my lesson Thai-style by including lots of games and activities. They didn’t understand my opening game at first but started to catch on at the end which showed a lot of potential for the two weeks. On the other hand, one student slapped another in the face in the middle of the lesson so classroom management will definitely need to be worked on.

I had to wash my clothes after the first day of summer school because I was unable to over the weekend. My weekly bruk battle was getting worse and worse. This week as I was washing clothes, a neighbor woman came to sit across from me simply to stare and laugh. I normally wouldn’t say anything but I decided to stand up for myself.

“Do you want to help me?” I asked in Krio.

“What?”

“I said, do you want to help me?”

I continued staring at her waiting for her to get the hint. In my head she was going to say no and I was going to say then please stop laughing and leave me alone, but instead she shrugged and actually started walking over to me to help. For the hundredth time in this country, my heart shattered into a million pieces.

“Oh…no. You don’t have to help me. I just.. don’t want you to laugh,” I said awkwardly. Here I was trying to challenge her and she was actually going to come wash my clothes for me.

I again repeated the process with Mariatu where I would do all the hard work scrubbing away at my clothes just for her to redo them. This time I was scrubbing every part and using every tool I had: a scrub brush, a washboard, and rubbing the fabric out with my own hands. I stood over the washboard like the locals do and didn’t dare stand up to take a break. She still redid it.

“Do you see dirt on that shirt?” I asked as she was rewashing one.

“No,” she replied.

“So I already washed it,” I said.

“But not fine,” she replied. I exploded in my head.

Then later as I was standing over the washboard Mariatu began laughing.

“We don’t have washing machines here!” she sang.

“I’m handwashing them!” I said defensively.

“I know, but we don’t have machines like you,” she kept laughing.

“Well I don’t have a machine with me now, do I?” it felt like a true sister quarrel. “If you come to America, I won’t laugh at you.”

I felt bad for lashing out but was just so tired of having this same battle each week. I thought we had gotten in a huge fight but she just kept on singing and rewashing my clothes without a care in the world. I thanked her when we were done.

For the second day of summer school my two neighbors, Abu Bakkar and Ibrahim, were waiting for me outside the house. I walked out at 7:40 a.m.

“We were waiting a looong time for you!” they said.

“School doesn’t start until 9 o’clock!” I replied. It was a five-minute walk away.

They both attended my class even though only one of them was actually the appropriate age. I taught transition words such as first, next, then, after that, and finally, and also discussed how to give proper instructions. Pairs of students decided what they were going to give instructions on and then presented to the class.

I was totally blown away. I had taken the lesson from a JSS 2 handbook and they were JSS 1 students, yet they all seemed to already know the material. I was worried they were all just going to copy down the example I had written on the board but each pair had come up with something unique: how to go to church, how to wash clothes, how to cook, how to go to school, and more.

During English club that day, one of my students came up to me and asked me to be her mom. She also asked me to give her my phone so I think she was trying to go with the cute approach first before asking for what she really wanted.

After training I went to an ataya base for the first time. An ataya base is a tea and coffee shop that men tend to hang out at. We drank tea while a YouTube video played showing the wealthiest soccer players’ homes and cars. A youth soccer game was happening next door so we watched for a little bit after the ataya. The field was so small that each team was basically just kicking the ball all the way across repeatedly, but when someone finally did score, hoards of people would storm the field and cheer for whoever scored.

On Wednesday I taught my class directions and they again knew exactly what to do. During English club we had groups write their own stories and draw pictures to go along with them. I noticed they had their own standard way of drawing houses. In America kids tend to draw a square house, a triangle roof, two square windows, and a rectangle door. In Salone, kids draw a long, rectangular house, a thatched roof, and a grooved pathway leading up to the door. It’s the small things.

On Thursday when my co-teacher Paul was teaching math, one student randomly yelled, “Give us homework!” and the class erupted into cheers and screams demanding homework. Paul and I were confused but he gave out homework as they wanted. He then said they could either play a game or take a quiz and they all chose the quiz. They finished with a few minutes to spare, so a couple kids came to the front of the room to sing religious songs. During the last song as the bell was ringing, the class again exploded into dancing, singing, clapping, and stomping. It was the wildest math class I’d ever seen.

During English club my group wrote an original story about a principal who ends up in the hospital with gonorrhea, so a dog and a fox have to battle each other to decide who will be the next principal. I kept staring at their faces to see if anyone was laughing about gonorrhea, but no one did so I decided they weren’t trying to be funny…I think. When I got home that night, Mariatu and I ate chocolate cookies and popcorn and looked at the stars together.

Over the weekend some of my family members were sick with colds. I was eating breakfast alone by my room when my uncle walked over.

“We’re taking exams now at the college,” he said. “I have this cold. You have good medicine in America. Here we don’t have good medicine. Sometimes they sell fake medicine.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds and then he walked away. I felt like he was asking me for medicine but I’m wary of just handing things out, especially to people I’m not close to. I thought about it all day because it would be so simple to hand over ibuprofen, but then would I be opening the floodgates for other requests? Would I be perpetuating the stereotype that we are all rich Americans with every resource at our fingertips? In the end I didn’t give him anything and he was perfectly healthy the next day.

I also went to the college with Wi-Fi over the weekend and this time four kids came over to watch what Gabe and I were doing. I had my laptop and was attempting to post this blog (shout out to my lovely mom who posts them all for me because the Wi-Fi is never strong enough for me to do it myself. Love you!) They were all fascinated at my typing and kept reading random words. One girl sat by my legs and rubbed her hands up and down my shins remarking that there was no hair there. I sat cross-legged and one of the boys said I was sitting like a Chinese person, whatever that means.

As I was walking around on Sunday, I ran into Anne playing volleyball with a local team. I’d heard about people playing with them before and wanted to give it a try. I felt so much pressure to be good because I was representing women, Americans, the Peace Corps, and myself. The team was nearly all strong, young men with only one or two women.

So of course in the beginning I was terrible. Balls were flying all over the place and none of my serves made it over the net. But after warming up for a bit I started to improve and I miraculously returned three seriously hard hits in a row. My team was getting more excited with each save and at one point the ref even yelled, “Yeah, Fatu!” and gave me a thumbs up. When it was my turn to serve again, a little boy tried to tell me to underhand it. I said I didn’t know how and then blasted the next five serves over the net overhand. Then I stopped while I was ahead and went home (also felt dizzy from dehydration).

Our second week of summer school began and the students were getting used to us. Classroom management was getting slightly easier with practice but was still a challenge every day as students talked, stood out of their seats, hit each other, raced to the board on top of each other, and yelled answers instead of raising their hands. During language club my group scrapped the gonorrhea story and instead wrote about a school in a village that throws a concert. Phew.

At training, I’d been having a problem for a few weeks: language. The Peace Corps only wanted to teach education volunteers Krio when many of us wanted to learn our local languages. Another issue was that I felt many of us were unfairly graded on our mid-PST language checks. Only four out of 52 of us supposedly scored intermediate mid and were allowed to learn local languages. There are a lot of great Krio speakers in my group and I refused to believe there weren’t more intermediate mid scores, including myself. I majored in Spanish in college and put a lot of effort into teaching myself Thai during the year I was there. I knew my language abilities and was getting extremely frustrated that I was being restricted.

So on Monday I just walked into the Mende class and said I was learning Mende now. No questions were asked. The Krio class I had been forced to go to was still reviewing how to pronounce the word for ‘like,’ which is ‘lek.’ We learned this on the very first day and I was losing my mind at having to review it. Mende felt challenging, stimulating, and useful and I was so glad to go.

But the next time we had language class my dream was shattered. The language coordinator stopped me on my way there and asked which class I was going to. I said I was in Rashid’s Krio class, which is the truth. She said she’d heard I had gone to Ishmail’s Mende class, which was also true. In the end she said I had to keep going to Krio because if I didn’t then everyone would go to their local languages, which I said was a great thing because everyone should go to their local languages. Then I had to do a walk of shame back to Krio. ☹ But shout out to my friend Nick who encouraged me to go to Mende with him, supported every decision I made, and even talked to some staff about letting me in. You’re the real MVP.

I played volleyball again and this time a group of seven young girls watched me. They yelled my name, smiled, and waved to me when I was on the court and then I felt even more pressure to be good, even though I was glad they could at least see a woman playing a sport with a bunch of men. A little while later two of my male students from summer school ran up to the court beaming and yelling my name. They seemed so excited to see me there.

“Ms. Brittney! Ms. Brittney! You know how to play?!” they asked me. “Do you know how to play soccer too?!” I said that I did and they looked at each other with open mouths.

At school the next day, Abu Bakkar told me he had also seen me playing volleyball.

“You were wearing a blue shirt!” he said to prove it. “Women here don’t play sports because they are lazy.” Cue rant.

Abu Bakkar lives with his grandpa and that comment made me wonder what kind of conversations are going on in that house. I told him that women in Salone were definitely not lazy, especially when they spent every day cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children. I said if anyone is lazy it’s the men because I always see them sitting around talking to each other and relaxing. He laughed nervously.

At summer school we started to discuss the code of conduct for exams. Cheating, or spying as they call it, is a big issue here. Students simply don’t see it as a problem. My host mom, Khadija, even once bragged to me about how when she was in college, she would read one part of the homework, her friend would read the other, and then they would sit next to each other during tests. She didn’t even say it to be scandalous, she said it matter-of-factly like that was the smart way to get through school without doing more work than you need to.

We ended summer school with a review day and then exams. My class was great at reviewing and everyone seemed to know everything. Every teacher proctored a different class’s exams and the class I was in was flawless. Not a single student tried to cheat. When I graded the exams later, many students passed and only three students received zeroes. My English club group finished by writing and drawing our village school story on a book made out of rice bags. These two weeks of teaching were very eye-opening and I think they will help me a lot when it comes to actually teaching at site.

On Saturday morning I drove to Pujehun district with two other trainees and all three of our supervisors. The morning air was cool and foggy as we raced down the highway surrounded by open fields and the rising sun. We made a pit stop for food and a large group of children followed us around asking us to be our friends. We made another stop in Bo to buy mattresses and I noticed the family in charge of the shop was Lebanese. There is a large Lebanese population in Sierra Leone and it was nice to not be the only apoto for once.

And then we were flying down the highway to Pujehun – I almost literally mean flying. The road from Bo to Pujehun is by far the worst road I have ever driven on. It is filled with deep pot holes that the driver had to zigzag around for about an hour. At times we had to veer off the main road due to construction. There are two nice bridges being built and another trainee told us that children will sit under the solar lights on the new bridge to do homework at night. Once the bridge is actually open, they won’t be able to do that anymore.

My village was the first one out of the three of us. A teacher from my school appeared on a motorbike and them zoomed off to go inform the village that we were almost there. Seibatu was beside herself with excitement and all of a sudden reality set in for me. I was moments away from seeing where I would be living for the next two years and I began to feel anxious. When I went to Thailand I couldn’t wait to get out of Bangkok and get to my site. Here I felt apprehensive.

I saw dozens upon dozens of children standing in the road. They saw the car and ran to the side. Everyone in the village had come to welcome me and they were all singing, clapping, dancing, and chanting, “Welcome! Welcome!” For some reason I had assumed I would simply drive up to my house and quietly make my way around the village with Seibatu.

I got out of the car and took solace in the fact that for at least the next thirty seconds, no one knew which of the three trainees was their new teacher. I could hold onto my anonymity for a few more moments. The children surrounded each of us and many of them grabbed my hands and arms. They were buzzing but nervous – some had no issue grabbing my hand while others swatted at my skin as if they were expecting to be shocked.

I turned around and noticed a girl of about eight years old slowly creeping toward me in the way you would if you were approaching a sleeping bear. She was slightly crouched and her arms were held defensively in front of her chest. She quickly shot her arm out to touch mine and then ran away completely and utterly terrified. Imagine the face everyone in Jurassic World made when they saw that giant dinosaur for the first time. That was what she gave me.

I said goodbye to my friends and briefly watched the car drive away. For the first time since coming to Salone I was completely alone. Except not really because the whole village was still with me. What the actual fuck was I doing? Honestly, what the fuck? If anyone would’ve asked 10-year-old me, or even two-months-ago me, if I ever pictured myself standing alone in a rural West African village as maybe a hundred people surrounded me like I was the President, I would’ve laughed.

We began to move in a slow bunch to the school up the road. It was the most overwhelming, exhilarating, awkward experience of my entire life and nothing will ever compare. A woman asked me to dance with her as we walked and I bashfully did. Someone in a grim reaper mask was also dancing and kept trying to hold my hand. Another man in a traditional devil costume made entirely of grass walked near me. The chanting, clapping, and singing didn’t stop until we finally made it to the school.

Everyone sat under a gazebo and I sat in the middle. I didn’t know where to look. Every single eye was on me. How should my face look? Did I have a strange smile? Should I try to smile? Was my eye twitching? Could they tell I was screaming FAKE IT TIL YOU MAKE IT in my head?

One of the English teachers began to talk to the crowd. He thanked me immensely for coming and explained how the village had been hoping for years to get another Peace Corps Volunteer. They’d had one in 2014 but when Ebola hit they were all evacuated. He thanked Seibatu for all of her hard work with Peace Corps and for getting me to site. Seibatu told the community to protect me and she told the kids to not call me apoto and to not crowd my house which I was very thankful for. An imam, a priest, and various chiefs gave speeches of thanks and everyone said a Muslim and Catholic prayer together.

The next stop was my house. I’d heard it was nice but didn’t know anything about it. Once again we moved in a giant, slow, loud circle down the street. As we reached the house, a woman came powerwalking over to me followed by a man. She introduced herself as Veronica and I immediately loved her. She was small and old but strong and mighty at the same time. The man introduced himself as Ja, a teacher from the primary school and my neighbor.

The house looked wonderful. It was big and yellow and had a nice veranda. Veronica and Ja walked me to my front door. Veronica told me how to say thank you in Mende and then everyone dispersed. I was surprised at how easy and quick it was. My experience from demyst made me believe people would be standing on my veranda the entire time I was there.

• 

• 

Veronica said I must be tired and that I should relax. She left and shut the door behind her and then I truly was alone for the first time since leaving America. But now I had a decision to make. I could hide out in my house or I could make an amazing first impression and open the door.

In 2014 I spent a summer teaching English in Panama. I lived in a large yellow house with 15 other people, and one day a random woman simply walked through the front gate as we were all working outside. She was a Peace Corps Volunteer going door to door in every surrounding village introducing herself. I was seriously stunned. It was the bravest thing I had ever witnessed. She was actually just walking up to people’s houses? And talking to them? In Spanish?! I decided my lifelong dream of being a Peace Corps Volunteer was over because there was no way I could ever do that.

And now it was my turn. So I opened the door. I sat on the veranda and looked outside and watched people sitting on their porches, walking around the neighborhood, cooking, cleaning. I looked at the blue sky and the green trees and the mud houses. A group of women began to yell out to me. I had no idea what they were saying, so I took a deep breath and walked over to them.

They continued saying something in Mende and then laughed in a friendly way when I said I knew zero Mende. Other neighbors started to walk over and I introduced myself to them too. I then made my way back to my house where a different neighbor called me over. She was cooking in a tent-like structure made out of grass and she invited me to sit on a log with her.

She told me her name was Jenny and then even more neighbors gathered around. I met a spunky woman named Francess who spoke completely fluent English and explained she worked at the clinic. I immediately liked her too and was already feeling grateful that everyone was so kind and friendly. Everyone decided my local name would be my principal’s name – Seibatu Rogers. I wasn’t that fond of stealing someone’s whole name but I didn’t seem to have a choice. Francess told me that she actually lived with Seibatu so we walked to their house together.

We sat for a short while and I asked Francess if I would be able to visit the clinic sometime during my visit. She said we could go right then – it was a very small building the size of a house directly across the street. A lot of young children live in front of the clinic and they were all excited to greet me. I was excited that I didn’t hear a single apoto, or pumuey as they say in Mende. Instead some called me Brittney and some called me Seibatu. Word was traveling fast.

At the clinic Francess told me the World Health Organization had visited two days before. They want to help expand the building, specifically the maternal health area where women give birth. There is only one bed, and although they haven’t had this problem yet, they don’t know what they would do if two women ever came in at the same time. Additionally, the freezer where they store their vaccines is broken so they have to keep them all at a clinic at the next village and they pick them up every Friday.

Patient privacy is not exactly a thing here and I unknowingly walked in on a woman lying in bed who had just given birth a few days prior. The woman was given no warning that I was coming – we didn’t even knock on the door.

Francess and I sat outside the clinic and talked about the Peace Corps mission. There was one other nurse present and I again had the feeling of what the heck am I doing right now? I’m sitting at a clinic that the freaking World Health Organization had to visit a few days ago discussing local health issues with some nurses I just met. Life is wild.

Francess told me Veronica lived nearby so we then walked to her house. Her house was absolutely stunning. It was huge with tile flooring, leather furniture, high ceilings, large rooms, and giant beds. I learned she moved out of Salone when she was 17 and has spent her entire life in London. Her husband, children, and grandchildren all live there, but she came back to Pujehun to visit her sick mother. My house also had a humongous bed and lots of smaller items that had apparently all been gifted to me by Veronica.

“I told you to relax but I heard you were greeting people instead,” Veroncia said. “That’s good! I was glad to hear that.” Score.

We then planned to go to the chief’s house but it started to rain so we went back to Seibatu’s house instead. She made me dinner that tasted seriously amazing. It was the same food I’d been eating in Port Loko but the Mende cook it differently and I was all for it. After eating they again told me I must be tired and wanting to rest and this time I agreed. I went home and passed out at 8pm.

The next morning I was up at 5am. It sounded like an entire school assembly was taking place on my veranda. Kids were screaming and I couldn’t figure out why. I later learned a group of kids sits in that grass tent right outside my house and chants the Quran in Arabic every morning and night in an attempt to memorize it.

I took a bucket bath in my bathroom which was so nice. The inside of my house has one main room and then four side rooms, two on each side. On the left is my bedroom and the bathroom and on the right are two empty rooms that I think I’ll turn into a kitchen and a yoga room. The indoor bathroom was life changing – it even had a toilet and a sink! (They didn’t work, but no more squatting over a pit latrine or using a chamber pot in the middle of the night.)

I relished in my last few seconds of privacy and then opened the front door. My neighbor, Ja, immediately came over with a basket of supplies from Veronica. She had tried to deliver them last night but I had fallen asleep early. I told him the lock on my front door was faulty and he called out for the carpenter who just so happens to be Seibatu’s nephew. His name is Mada, and he came over instantly and fixed the door. While he was fixing it, Ja took it upon himself to come into my house and rearrange what few items I had. Hmm. They then had me test open and close the door a few times and then they left me to drink tea on my porch.

Veronica came over with two hard boiled eggs from her mother. She told me a paramount chief had died and she had to leave that day for the funeral. Seibatu came over next to introduce me to a 16-year-old student named Sia who lived near me and would be my helper…for two years. I talked to Sia and then she walked me to the giant mango tree across the highway next to the clinic that gets cell service. I have zero service by my house.

As I stood under the mango tree, the kids who live nearby started to get curious and walk over. My phone was going crazy with over 300 messages loading and I felt bad standing there waiting for everything to load while they stood around me staring. They didn’t speak Krio and I didn’t speak Mende so we all just looked at each other.

After the messages loaded I left the tree and visited Francess at the clinic. She formally invited me to come back the next day to observe and then I went back to her house. Josephine, Seibatu’s daughter, was cooking and Bara was sitting nearby. We had a long conversation about Josephine wanting to be a doctor and how supportive and proud her family is, gender issues in school, all of the projects a previous Peace Corps Volunteer did (including starting an NGO for the village that has been running for six years) and how I shouldn’t compare myself to him, differences between America and Salone when it comes to privacy, waiting for marriage, and following your dreams. Josephine is only 16 but incredibly intelligent, motivated, and wise.

As we talked, I watched about 25 students pile into a moving truck to go to a nearby village to take the BECE exam. Every teacher was leaving including Seibatu. Families donated jugs of palm oil for cooking or money for the students.

After they left I met a man named David. He was a board member for the schools along with 13 other people. He told me he had studied abroad in Canada for a year and loved it, especially watching hockey, to which he had been gifted season tickets. Snow was okay to him but he said ice made him hide inside and I agreed. He loved KFC and would eat there every weekend. He had plans to build a volleyball and tennis court in the village through the board and he was also head of a women’s microfinance group in a different town.

I took a nap in the afternoon and then went back to Seibatu’s house with Sia. Seibatu left for the BECE but her family invited me over to watch Nigerian movies. If you have never seen a Nigerian movie, you should find one. The cinematography is terrible, the plot doesn’t make sense, there are no happy endings or redeeming moments, and everyone dies. The first movie we watched was about a military coup so you can imagine how graphic that got.

The following day Sia came by and attempted to sweep my house for me. I told her to relax and drink some tea, there was no reason for her to clean my house for me. I could tell she was uncomfortable with the idea but I was uncomfortable with her idea. Later I explained to her that in America we like to be independent, we don’t want to take advantage of people, and we appreciate privacy and alone time. She told me in Salone everyone helps everyone with everything and that the community is very important.

We went to the clinic to observe and I watched three people get malaria tests done, including Mada, the 30-year-old carpenter. When Francess pricked his finger he physically leapt out of the chair and cried – I was told Salone people hate shots. The tests and medicine are all free, although some clinics choose to sell the supplies anyway. Francess and I walked over to the mango tree to get service when a man yelled across the street to us.

“He asked me if you are a virgin,” she said.

“What?! Why?” I asked. Why would Francess even know that information?

“Because men here are scared of virgins. Now it is illegal to touch women inappropriately so the men are afraid of being accused. It’s a good thing. I told him you’re a virgin.”

I’d heard good things about the new President Bio. Right before I left for Salone he declared a state of emergency due to the high number of rapes in the country. Now the laws were changing, but were the police actually acting?

Back with Josephine, she and Sia spent the afternoon quizzing me on my religious beliefs.

“Do you believe in God?” they asked me.

“My family is Catholic…” I gave a non-answer and hoped they wouldn’t notice.

“Okay but… do YOU believe in God?” Damn.

I said sometimes yes and sometimes no. I wanted to share my beliefs just to expose them to other views while also remaining respectful and respected. Josephine then preached to me for 15 minutes straight about why I should believe in God and how miracles are real if I just believe hard enough.

I walked back to my house and talked with my neighbor Jenny about life in America. Sia kept pointing out things in the village, such as an orange tree, asking if we had it in America, and then assuring me they must be different. She thought our chickens, fruit trees, and farmland must be different and I explained it was all the same.

Josephine brought me eggs and bread for dinner but I was still stuffed from lunch. She confided in Sia that she thought I didn’t like her cooking which I felt bad about, especially since I truly loved the food, it was just too much and she had been making me four meals a day. I tried to tell both of them that in America we eat our last meal at 5 p.m. so I was okay with not eating another meal at 8 p.m. They told me that for most families, they only ate one meal a day and it’s usually late at night. Sia said she goes to bed early so that she doesn’t have to feel hungry.

I didn’t know families were only eating one meal a day. In Port Loko all of our host families were constantly trying to overfeed us and now in Pujehun I was getting four meals a day from Josephine along with random food from Veronica and even some snacks from Mada while my neighbors had nothing. I know this will be something I struggle with because I’m the kind of person who wants to give away everything I have to people in need and I know that wouldn’t be a smart or sustainable thing to do here.

Earlier that day, Sia had also confided in me that she had been raped a few years ago. She told me the entire story and how she was terrified to tell her friends and family because she thought they would laugh at her or beat her. She said that when I had been discussing gender issues in school with Josephine, that story came to mind and she wanted to tell me but couldn’t, especially not in front of the principal of her school. It was heartbreaking.

The next day Veronica came by to give me breakfast. I still had some hardboiled eggs, corn, cucumbers, and two bunches of bananas. I ate some of the meal and then gave it all to Sia. I truly had no idea what to do with it because no one would tell me where to throw garbage away, throwing food away here isn’t even an option, I was stuffed, and I only had one more day at site. Despite the fact Sia had just told me how hungry she always was, she took the food home to share with her brother and mother.

We walked around a large portion of the village together greeting new people and visiting new sites, such as the stream. I spent the day hanging out with 20 kids on my porch, listening to Nigerian music, eating, and talking to Josephine about love. She said love always wins, even if the man is cheating on you, and I said no it absolutely does not, please love yourself first and ditch the man.

I went to a different spot for service to call my mom. As the phone rang, three boys picked up large rocks and logs, yelled BING BING BING while pressing their fingers into them, and then held them to their ears like phones. The three of them walked in a circle around me going, “Hello? Hello? Free call? Hello?” on their rock phones while I laughed on my real phone.

At night I went to a 30-minute Catholic prayer session and Seibatu came by to tell me she had come back from the BECE.

It was my last night at site. I woke up at 2 a.m. to pee and heard my bedroom door slam shut behind me as I walked out. I didn’t think anything of it until I got back and realized I had locked myself out of the room with the keys inside. I spent an hour trying to get the lock open to no avail. I used a knife, a semi-empty tube of toothpaste, scissors, a fork…nothing worked. I slept on the hard cement floor using a seat cushion, my damp towel, and a reusable bag as bedding and a table cloth as a makeshift mosquito net. At 6 a.m. I stood by my door and yelled out to the first person I saw to go get Sia. I didn’t have cell service to contact anyone and I was wearing shorts which meant I couldn’t just walk outside and get someone myself. I made a mental note to always keep a spare outfit in my main room, along with, ya know, keys.

Six people eventually showed up and Mada had to break part of the door frame to then shove something in the lock to pop it open. Apparently some of them thought I was locked in the bedroom to which I had to explain that I had actually just locked myself out. I tried to apologize for my own stupidity but they wouldn’t have it, they assured me they were just happy I was safe. I thought of my family in America and what choice words they would have for me if I locked myself out of my room for four hours.

I had to get ready in a hurry now. I shoved food down my throat, bathed, packed, cleaned, and was out the door waiting for a car to get back to Port Loko. As I was getting in the car, Seibatu handed me a bowl of spaghetti that I then had to carry across the country for eight hours (but it’s the thought that counts).

In Bo a man demanded I be his wife. In Maisaka a drunk man jumped and sat on top of our moving car and stayed there for about ten minutes down the highway. In Port Loko, my host family greeted me and then informed me that all of my younger siblings had gone to a nearby district on holiday and wouldn’t be back until after I’d permanently left for Pujehun. So much for those reading lessons.

It was an exhausting adventure but one I’m glad I had. I really loved my village and can’t wait to move back at the end of August!

Something my cohort does for me that no other group has ever done is make me feel recharged just by being with them. As a life-long introvert, I typically prefer to decompress alone after a long day, but here I feel lifted up after spending time with people which was a strange thing to experience for the first time in my life. After feeling terrible about the Mariatu situation I couldn’t wait to get home and do nothing by myself, but then some people started exchanging poop stories, everyone laughed, and all my stress melted away. Thanks, Salone 9.

I still went home to read but did so outside my room instead of inside. Mustafa approached me and began spelling the words she saw in my book.

“Do you like to read too?” I asked her.

She glanced up at me with the most innocent face, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “I don’t know how.”

How was this possible? Mustafa is 11 years old and everyone in her family is fluent in Krio, Temne, and English. She runs around all day spelling words, spelling my name, asking me how to spell things…and yet she couldn’t read.

We walked over to the giant blackboard my family keeps outside and I wrote the alphabet. I realized she couldn’t recognize letters on their own – she had to say each letter leading up to the one I was pointing to. It was all memorization. We went through the first six letters and some of our other siblings joined us. Gbrilla, who knows how to read perfectly well, took pride in shouting out the answers to every question I asked. I told him this was for Mustafa and he had to sit there quietly and let her learn. He laughed.

I’d only taught phonics once before when I volunteered at a Youth Center called Kwah Dao in the north of Thailand for five weeks. I tried to conjure up all the lessons I’d gone over there and started piecing together letters and sounds for Mustafa. It was slow but steady. After an hour I gave each of them a word search I brought from home and explained how to do them. They loved them – especially Gbrilla who excitedly called out to me every time he found a new word. I promised I would bring home some kid’s books from the training center the next day.

As I walked home the next day I saw Gbrilla and Mustafa in the street. When they noticed me they took off sprinting toward me and they barreled into me with hugs. I actually felt like a mother coming home from work. We walked to the house together and I showed them two books I had taken from the training site. They were ecstatic. They flipped through the books together while I ate dinner and then I read them out loud a few times. Fatu came over to listen in while also studying for the BECE, a national exam. Mustafa wanted to try to read, so I would say the word first and then she would repeat it. The extreme repetition in kid’s books truly helps foster reading skills. She began to recognize words like ‘woof’ and ‘bath’ in our book about a puppy refusing bath time and my heart swelled with pride.

Gbrilla once again tried reading over her shoulder to show her up and I told him to knock it off again. I originally said the books were only for Mustafa but decided it wasn’t fair to deprive everyone else from them. They began telling me popular kid’s stories from Salone they liked including one called Jezebelle, a movie about a mermaid. They were shocked when I told them I knew what a mermaid was.

The following day I brought five more books home of varying levels. Kids in the neighborhood had heard about it and seven kids showed up outside my door to read. It quickly became overwhelming and got out of hand as they argued with and pushed each other.

Junisa, my five-year-old brother who likes to throw fits, stormed over and demanded I give him a bandaid for a non-existent cut. He had seen the ones I had given Mariatu and Mustafa for actual injuries. He then grabbed four books and held them tight in his arms, refusing to let anyone else take them even though he didn’t know how to read and had no intention of even flipping through them. The kids began to complain to me.

“Junisa, you can take one book or you will have no books.”

“No. Two.”

“No. You can have one or none.”

“No! Two!”

I took his books away and set them aside. Eventually I gave him a different book to hold and the first thing he did was bend it backwards so that the spine cracked. I took that book away too and continued reading a different book to the other kids. I switched off reading pages with my neighbor Abu Bakkar.

As I was reading, Junisa announced to the group that I didn’t know how to speak correctly and then he called me ‘apoto,’ white person. I told him that that was enough and it was time for him to leave. He didn’t budge, so I said if he wasn’t going to leave then I was. I took all the books back and went in my room. My soul was crushed the entire way. I hate disciplining kids and I’ve never really set any personal boundaries in my life, but I knew I couldn’t let myself get walked all over like that. All of the kids left except Gbrilla who called my name a few times outside my door and even tried to tell me that Mariatu was calling me to get me to come back outside. I didn’t budge but my heart was exploding into a million little pieces. Did I actually just confiscate a bunch of books from a group of children? I told them we would try again the next day.

The next morning I felt pretty awkward around my siblings. Did they hate me now? Did they think I was scary? I greeted each of them and they all smiled back at me which I took as a good sign. But I also had other things to worry about. It was a big day – supervisors conference. I was meeting the principal of my school. Chairs were lined in rows and we all sat down among principals and clinic supervisors, not knowing who was with who.

The conference began with an open discussion about how communities can help nurture successful volunteers. A woman in a beautiful lapa dress was randomly chosen to give her opinion, and she said it’s important to give the volunteer space and privacy, to not parade them around town, to give them time to acclimate, and to protect them from kids who are most likely going to endlessly follow them around, call them apoto, and possibly look in their windows. It was a beautiful answer. As she was talking, I glanced at her nametag and realized my village name was there – she was from my school. I was relieved.

Someone then read a list of names and we were paired up with our supervisors. We hugged and walked outside to begin discussing what the site is like. She told me her name is Seibatu (Say-bah-too) and she was ecstatic to have another female at the school. She is the only woman among six men and she said she was looking forward to us teaming up.

“So will I meet the principal this weekend?” I asked her, referencing our upcoming site visit. She stared back at me, took a step back, and opened her arms in a bravado fashion.

“I am the principal.”

• 

• 

• 

• 

What!!!! A female principal with all male teachers? What a complete and total badass. But then I felt terrible for assuming she was just a teacher. She had told me she teaches classes as well so I thought the principal had sent her as a representative. It’s also not very common to see women in positions of power, so I was shocked. But I also felt extremely lucky that I was going to be paired up with this amazing, strong role model for the next two years. I felt like we could accomplish so much together.

The rest of the day we had different sessions on how we could all work together and Seibatu remained very vocal in all of them. She had strong opinions on everything and her opinion was always right (in my opinion). At one point she marched up to a flipchart in the middle of a presentation to take over speaking. She also discussed how volunteers will need guidance when it comes to adjusting to local customs and we shouldn’t be abandoned. She also told everyone about the time she went to the village chief to discuss flogging in school. She formed a safety committee and personally handwrote over 200 letters (no computers, printers, or copiers) to send out to parents about what actions were being taken.

We took a few selfies and she showed me pictures of the village, school, and her 16-year-old daughter Josephine. We then said our goodbyes and I went back home rehearsing how I should ask my siblings if they wanted to read again. When I walked in the door I asked if they wanted to come look at the books and they all nodded. Gbrilla took it upon himself to hold every book in his lap and he handed out one book at a time to three of his siblings. Everyone sat on the floor and quietly flipped through their book alone.

“Junisa isn’t going to disturb us,” Gbrilla said. “I stood outside your door yesterday but you didn’t come.”

“I know,” I said. “I was mad yesterday. But now I feel better.”

I brought out a Peace Corps magazine called WorldView and they loved looking at all the pictures of people inside. They pointed to a photo of a black American.

“Is this an American?” they asked me. I said yes and they were in disbelief. We flipped through all 30+ pages and they pointed to every single person asking, “Is this an American?”

I’d heard tales from other trainees of their families being shocked that black people live in America, but my family had personally met black trainees so I didn’t think they had the same confusion. As we were discussing race, Mariatu approached us to tell us she had just walked back from the college by herself. Now I was confused – didn’t she recently sprint back in the dark after she thought I had left her?

The next day was part two of the supervisors conference. I awoke to a text from Seibatu that read, “How did you sleep? Feel free. I will do my best to protect you.” We had more sessions throughout the day and then ended it with discussing how we were going to get to site. We planned to meet at the training center at 8 a.m. where a car would be waiting for us to start the eight-hour journey.

That night my siblings looked through the WorldView magazine again. This time they found a picture of a white man standing next to a black woman.

“Are they married?” Gbrilla asked me.

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re friends.”

They all snapped their heads toward me immediately.

“But… it’s a man and a woman!”

“Men and women can be friends!” I said.

Khadija walked over to us and announced I had been falling asleep too early. I said 8:30 wasn’t thaaat early, and besides, I was exhausted.

“When I was in college, I woke up at 5 to fetch water. Then at 6 I cooked. After that I had to go to class.” Was she reminiscing or was this the Sierra Leone version of ‘I had to walk uphill both ways?’

“And you never cook. You sit over here and relax,” Khadija added. It wasn’t exactly accusatory but it still hit a nerve with me.

“When? In the afternoon?” I asked, because during the week I was never home to even witness them cooking.

“No, on the weekends.”

“I’m not even here most Saturdays!” I said. The few times I had seen Mariatu cook I had sat next to her but I was never given any real tasks. I told my family my first week with them that I wanted to learn how to cook, so where was the disconnect?

“Well, I’m going to bed,” Khadija said. I glanced at my watch.

“But it’s only 8:30!” I called after her.

“I know. Hahahaha. Oh, Britt.”

Gbrilla and I continued our conversation about different races in America. He said black Americans don’t exist because black people are only born in Africa. Again I wondered what he was thinking when he met black American trainees. I tried to explain you didn’t just have to be born in Africa to be black but he wasn’t having it.

That night I had to pack for my site visit. It was my first time sifting through my suitcase in a while and I noticed a mouse had eaten straight through a small package of cookies I had forgotten about. Not a single crumb was left. I crammed as much stuff as I could into my giant suitcase to leave at site and then fell asleep.

The next morning I started dragging my million-ton suitcase through the gravel. Mariatu sat on a bench watching me as I silently yanked my bag across the yard. Once I got to the other side, she decided there was no way I was strong enough to drag that thing on a ten-minute walk to the training center. She asked our 17-year-old brother, Augustine, to help me.

My bag was over 50 pounds and he had no issue hoisting it up onto his head. He held it with one arm and casually walked all the way to the center while I freaked out inside. I had never seen anyone tote such a heavy object and he didn’t seem to be struggling in any way. I asked him if it was heavy and if he was okay and he just smiled.

On Sunday I slept in as long as I could just to test the limit. Privacy and alone time are not really a thing in Sierra Leone. I wondered how long I could stay in my room before someone in my family came by to wake me up. The answer was until 9 a.m.

“Are you enjoying sleeping?” Mariatu shouted through the door with a hint of mockery.

I opened the door and told her I’d been awake. I didn’t want her to think I was lazy, and I hated the perception my family seems to have of Americans – that we never do manual labor or hard work. On the other hand, I wondered what she’d been doing since probably 6 a.m. Bruking, cooking, child rearing, and many other tasks came to mind. And yet on the other, other hand, I thought of all the times I offered to help or asked if I could do something and was met with a no each time. Where was the middle ground?

But then Mariatu and I decided we would cook lunch together. Great! I’d asked a few times to help cook but it hadn’t happened yet. An hour later I was walking out the door to go hang out with some friends.

“What time do you want to cook?” I asked.

“10:30.”

10:30?!?! In the month I’d been here I had never seen them cook lunch earlier than 1 p.m. I was sure she would start in the afternoon. I told her I would be back but I had no idea what time that was going to be. In the end I missed cooking.

I came back to eat and then was out the door again to watch the Women’s Soccer Finals. There is a cinema about 20 minutes away from my house that is basically a large, empty room with lots of fold-up chairs and a TV where games are broadcasted. There were no local women. There was a decent crowd of local men and Peace Corps volunteers/trainees.

Everyone acted as if they knew each other, discussing the match, getting in friendly debates, and even asking us where we were from and who we were rooting for. A man in the front row had an American flag themed shirt and hat. Although no women were present, I thought it was really cool that the men were getting so animated about a women’s match. When the U.S. won, everyone cheered.

Later that night the local bar/restaurant was having a Fourth of July party in honor of the Peace Corps. They even made fliers and announced it on the radio. While I’m sure it’s mostly a business decision for them, it was still heart-warming to see all of the red, white, and blue directions and to listen to some American throwback songs. I had told Mariatu about the party a few days before and she was excited to come with. I told her I would be leaving at 4 p.m. but she wasn’t at the house at that time. I asked everyone in the family where she was and no one knew. I waited…and waited…and finally left around 4:40 p.m. As I was walking out one of my host sisters who I’d never talked to before came with me. She was apparently being sent to the party with me.

Like me, her name is Fatu but she goes by Aw. I tried making conversation as we walked but she was extremely shy. When we walked into the bar she looked like a deer in headlights as she observed the dozens of Americans in front of her. She was the complete opposite of Mariatu who had no problem talking to everyone and dancing. I had no idea what to do and felt terrible that she was so visibly uncomfortable, but I was also slightly annoyed that my family had even made her come with me when it could’ve been a time for me to just unwind with the other trainees. I was conflicted.

I bought her a soda and asked her if she was okay. She assured me that she was but I wasn’t convinced. I told as many people as I could what the situation was and everyone went above and beyond being kind and talkative and dancing. The DJ eventually changed the music to local songs and Aw started slipping out of her shell. As the night went on she looked genuinely happy to be there and I hope she remembers her random night with all of the Americans as a positive one.

We walked back home after the sun had set and I saw Mariatu sitting outside, half of her hair in braids and the other half out. I had been nervous the entire walk about how she would react when she saw me, but she simply asked how it was and explained she had been getting her hair redone and hadn’t come back until after 5 p.m. Phew, disaster avoided!

Until the next morning.

Mariatu walked to my room, sat on the veranda, and said, “So… you left me behind.”

“I did not!” I said. I felt like I was actually quarrelling with my sister. “I said I was leaving at 4 p.m.!”

Mariatu laughed and shook her head. I had to walk 30 minutes to the Catholic school for training and wound up being a few minutes late for the first time. I had my language class with a different teacher who told my group he was a triplet too! The number of triplets I’ve met here is insane. Everyone is either a multiple, has multiples, or knows multiples.

That night I brought out my single bottle of red nail polish and painted Aw’s, Neyma’s, and Mustafa’s nails. I had painted Mariatu’s a few days before and word had gotten around the house. I had nail polish on my toes still so we all matched and it was super cute and fun! When I was packing I had decided against bringing multiple bottles because I had never used the ones I brought to Thailand, but of course now I was using them. As everyone fanned their nails, my 5-year-old host brother Junisa marched over. Junisa likes to think he runs the house and he frequently throws fits to get his way. He saw that he was being excluded from our nail painting party and demanded I paint his nails too. The girls all laughed.

I told him it was normally for girls but that I would paint a single nail to humor him. I was just about to put the brush on his nail when Mariatu yelled to stop. I have no idea what the Sierra Leonean response would be to a boy with nail polish but it probably isn’t good. Mariatu again explained that nail polish is for girls and he couldn’t have any. He threw a fit and part of me took some joy in the fact that for once, the women of the household could just enjoy something together.

After just one day I noticed that all of their nails had chipped almost halfway down. After two or three days their nails were practically bare again. For Neyma, the 3-year-old, I guessed it was from playing, but for the older girls it had to have been from all the labor they do day after day. I’ll still have remnants of nail polish for weeks and just a few days’ worth of work had cleared theirs off.

The following day I was walking to training when a random man asked me, “How’s New York?!” I said I was from Chicago. He shook his head and yelled, “I’m tired of Africa! It’s hot! I’m sad!” and kept walking. Okay then.

At the training site our Peace Corps doctor regaled us with dramatic tales of bravery. He’s been working as a PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer) for years and years and has told us many stories of carrying volunteers off planes who were dying from malaria, flying low in helicopters to help a volunteer who was having an asthma attack, and helping a couple back to health after they fractured their hips and collarbones in a bus accident. That day we also did a stress activity where three trainees held varying sizes of water bottles in their outstretched arms for a while. The point was that the water may have been easy to carry at first, but after a while it starts to take its toll. The same with mental health or any problems we’re having at site, battling it alone for too long can add up.

After training I showed some people to the tailor attached to my house. Junisa was having a kindergarten graduation party and music was blasting down the street. Everyone wore matching purple shirts with his picture on them. People were dancing outside and special food was being cooked inside. My friends were shocked my house was so loud until I explained it was normally pretty quiet, but we had a kindergarten graduation to celebrate dang it!

And then the big day came – site reveal! They divided us into our district groups and then had us solve puzzles to figure out which district we would be in. I was placed in Pujehun district, the furthest south in the country, along with two other trainees. We each received site files on our villages (I’m not actually allowed to say the village name for safety reasons) but after flipping through my file I was absolutely ecstatic – the site had everything I wanted.

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I went outside and called my mom. Everything seemed to be working out perfectly. I had an amazing host family, I was having a great time in a country I didn’t even choose to apply to, and now I was being sent to a dream site. It felt like I was finally making it in the international world.

When I got home I told Khadija where I was going and she told me she was sad I was going to be so far away (although I later found out her previous host son was twice as far as I was). Khadija is determined to visit me, or to at least have Mariatu visit, and I genuinely hope they do!

The next day I was on the verge of being late to the Catholic school again. Khadija gave me breakfast late in the morning and I told her I would just take it with me. She looked distraught and asked me to go sit down and eat. So I did.

“Do you think you’ll be late?” she laughed, like time didn’t matter at all (because here it doesn’t seem to).

“Er.. yes.” She laughed some more.

The next day, Khadija and I had a long discussion about Ebola. After learning about Uncle Joe’s experience with the CDC, I wanted to hear how the epidemic had impacted my host family. She told me the street name in Port Loko where Ebola first hit and said everyone thought it was fake. Twelve-person households were getting entirely wiped out, one neighbor after the next. She compared Ebola and AIDS victims in their appearances. People began turning away visitors. In the market, customers would place money on the table and the seller would pick it up so that their hands never touched. At Khadija’s school she shooed away kids who got too close and handed out assignments from a distance. Everyone washed their hands in bleach.

She went to the hospital with typhoid and watched a man stumble out of the front doors with an IV still in his arm. He dropped dead on the ground in front of her and another man told her it was from Ebola. A team in hazmat suits arrived, wrapped his body in plastic, and took it away. Bodies were buried still in the plastic. Khadija had a colleague who washed a dead body as is tradition and he caught Ebola and died.

Yet she also knows many survivors and she said life eventually returned to normal. I’ve heard there are signs around town that say to not discriminate against Ebola survivors but I have yet to see them myself.

On Saturday we had something called Village Day where education volunteers went to three different villages to practice teaching 20-minute lessons to a class. Even though I’ve taught abroad before I’ve never taught in Sierra Leone and I was slightly nervous for how it was going to go. I had no idea what to expect as we loaded onto the nice Peace Corps bus and set off on our 45-minute journey.

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When we arrived in the village we had to meet with the chief who didn’t seem to realize we were visiting for the day. He wore a white tank top, shorts, and beanie, and welcomed us to the town. From there we went to the school and taught for three periods. I taught a lesson on informal letter writing since I hope to start a pen pal program with my actual students and I wanted to test the waters first. Everyone knew the answers to everything and it went amazingly well. The lesson only took about half the time and then I showed them how to play ‘telephone’ the rest of the time. I don’t think they realized the last person in the circle would have to say the mystery sentence out loud because the last guy got really awkward and everyone else was a mix of laughter and awkward silence, but they had a good time nonetheless.

For lunch Khadija gave me intestines and liver, something I occasionally had to eat in Thailand and absolutely hated. My stomach had hurt that morning and even though I felt better by the afternoon I said I still wasn’t hungry. That night my family was hosting some sort of party. Many guests were over and all the women were cooking food in an absolutely massive pot over a fire in the yard. It felt like a bonfire as the sun set, people mingled, and I shared some American music with my siblings (they weren’t fans. They’ve also never heard of Taylor Swift). Gbrilla was amazed at my laptop and said he wants to learn how to use computers and eventually go to America. He wanted me to teach him but I had no idea where to even start. I showed them a Word document and typed basic sentences that they all got a kick out of reading back to me.

And finally on Sunday, I was told it was ‘too cold’ to bruk so I went to my friend Kayla’s house to learn how to bake brownies in a coal pot! Everyone here uses a metal basin and charcoal to cook and Kayla figured out how to create a Dutch oven with some pans over the fire. We had brownies and banana bread and by the time I got home it was apparently hot enough to bruk. My host grandma even complimented me and said I knew how to bruk (even though she was slightly upset that I had only given her a small part of a brownie to try).

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At night I learned how to play a kid’s game called balance ball. Two kids stand a short distance away from each other facing one another while another kid runs back and forth in the middle trying not to get hit by a ball. If you get hit you die. If you manage to catch the ball instead you earn one knot, and the first to 50 knots wins. As with other games I’ve attempted to learn here, no one explained the rules or purpose of this game so I spent the first ten minutes running in circles while children threw a ‘ball’ made out of plastic bags at me while yelling, “Die! Die!” Eventually I figured it out and even won – yeah, take that 11-year-old kids.

The whole time I was playing one of my aunts sat to the side watching, laughing, smiling, and beaming, and I felt proud of my little integration moment. It was turning out to be my favorite day yet in Salone, until that night. After balance ball I went to a college that has Wi-Fi with another trainee and Mariatu. The second we arrived, Mariatu disappeared and I didn’t see her for two hours. It was pitch black outside and we began walking home.

I walked into the compound and started talking to Gbrilla and Mustafa. I asked if Mariatu had returned yet and they said no. Suddenly Mariatu came sprinting in behind me completely distraught.

“Where were you?! You left me!” She yelled through tears. “I had to run in the dark! I fell!”

She showed me a deep cut on her elbow and a split toenail that was bleeding. My heart sank. I ran to my room to get Neosporin and band-aids and cleaned her up. I told her she had disappeared for hours and I assumed she had gone home. She said she was just sitting behind the building. I felt terrible and ashamed and angry and sad all at once. Didn’t she hear us leaving? Why didn’t she sit by us like she normally did? Why was she running in the dark when she had a phone with her? Why didn’t I just yell out her name before I left?

I went to my room and cried for the first time since coming here. The guilt was real. The next morning while walking to the Catholic school I swallowed back tears and stayed silent the whole way. I took deep breaths and thought I was fine until I arrived at the school and saw all of the other wonderful education volunteers. I got the feeling you get when you’re trying to be strong but then your mom hugs you and you start ugly sobbing. I power walked to the bathrooms and cried some more, then took a deep breath and walked into training. But then I saw Grace who immediately asked me what was wrong and I started to cry again. We walked outside together and she listened to me, hugged me, and made me feel significantly better. Thanks, Grace! The next time Mariatu and I went to the college, I made sure she stayed in my line of sight the whole time.

P.S. Ow di up en down in Krio = What’s up? 😊

Losing my iPhone meant I lost a lot of resources such as notes I’d taken to include in this blog, music I could have shared with my host family, language translators, a ukulele tuner, and an app called maps.me, a map app that doesn’t require data or Wi-Fi to work. So on Saturday when I attempted to find a sick trainee I felt like I was back in my elementary school days wandering around the neighborhood looking for people and hoping my friends were home.

I started by crossing the street to another trainee’s homestay hoping he was sitting outside. He was, so we set off together to find our friend who had gotten sick during demyst. A 30ish minute walk somehow turned into a 2-hour rescue mission (for us) as we walked in the wrong direction, took the wrong streets, and generally had no clue where to go. We finally all met up and sat down on the veranda drinking water when Uncle Joe approached us.

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Our friend told us Uncle Joe had worked with the CDC during the Ebola outbreak. He walked home to get an official CDC pin and then showed it off to us with pride. We learned that during Ebola everyone sat away from each other and no one shared meals which is usually the opposite. Everyone washed their hands with bleach, and death happened so often all you had to do was yell out your window and an ambulance would arrive.

I walked back home thinking about what it must have been like to live during such a scary and uncertain time. It started to rain. When I was near the house, Mariatu saw me on the street and yelled out to me.

“Where have you been?!”

I didn’t even know how to answer. That night I melted away into a deep, physically tired, peaceful sleep. I stayed in bed as late as possible the next morning just to test the limit, yet no one came to wake me up. I took a long bucket bath that I called my spa bath because I clipped my nails and even shaved my legs. Black water riveted down my legs as I shaved – I had probably accumulated a lot of dirt and dust after aimlessly wandering the entire town the day before. A soft breeze blew and I read a book outside my room while my hair air dried down for the first time. Most of the family was either at church or school and it was unusually quiet and serene.

Mariatu came over and we talked about her exams. She recently finished high school at 18 years old, a huge accomplishment in an education system where repeating grades multiple times in order to be able to take certain exams is the norm. If she passes five subjects on the WASSCE (West African Secondary School Certification Exam), she would like to study business. If she doesn’t pass, she’ll still be able to study nursing. We then went to the market together and it started downpouring as soon as we arrived. The path for the market is hilly, bumpy, and muddy, and I was wearing flimsy flip-flops. I pleaded with every God I could to not let me wipe out in front of the entire market where everyone was already yelling out to me. I slipped and heard an ‘Ooh!’ sound all around me. Mariatu tried to hold my hand as we left. My independence and dignity knocked down a few notches.

Back at the house we made ground nut soup – or should I say Mariatu made ground nut soup and I peeled peppers while my family acted amazed that I was ‘cooking.’ Cooking is an entirely different ball game here – families use coal pots. They begin by melting plastic bags over coal and then making rice followed by a sauce. The entire process usually takes hours and I’m still not sure how they manage to not burn everything when there’s no temperature control that I can see.

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I graduated from peeling peppers to smashing them together with onions in a giant bowl with a stick. I was ecstatic to tell them I already knew what to do since Thailand has a similar tool. As I worked, a lapa seller appeared and held out three lapas to me. I was confused and then remembered she’d stopped by the week before to ask if I wanted to buy one and I blindly said yes. I picked a blue one in a rush because I didn’t really know what to do, my host family was watching me, and I had peppers and onions to mash, dang it!

“Do you love this one?” the seller asked. ..Sure!

We played soccer again that night in a neighboring town and this time Mariatu joined in. She tried telling me she didn’t know how to play but she was amazing. I’m glad I could watch her play because we almost didn’t even make it – the rain was coming down so hard that the road was flooded and we had to inch forward slowly. We’d passed some other trainees walking in the rain and piled them into the keke so that seven of us showed up in this tiny vehicle that comfortably fits two. The more I thought about it the more hilarious the mental image got – seven of us stuffed into a red tin car inching down the street in the pouring rain while Nigerain music blasts all around us. Ah, memories.

This week was our first week apart from the health volunteers for technical training. The education volunteers go to a Catholic school while the health volunteers stay in their town. Host families are supposed to provide lunch on those days and there was some confusion with my family so I set off for school with a piece of bread and some Laughing Cow cheese. It felt very old fashioned – walking a mile and a half with nothing but bread and cheese.

My host brother, Gbrilla, guided me there. He’s 13 years old and immensely proud, in a good way. I once watched him lean almost his entire body into a gigantic water jug to scoop water out and his face was just beaming as he saw I was observing him. I was worried he was going to be late for school until he told me that the Catholic school was his school – oops.

We got to the school and Gbrilla went off to class. We began with language lessons held in unfinished houses – it had an eerie but adventurous feel to it. We learned about our overarching project framework as Peace Corps Volunteers and at the end of the day, my neighbor saw me just starting the long walk home with Mariatu and gave us a ride. That night, my host grandma gifted me a red lapa and an apple.

On Tuesday I decided to wear the lapa as a skirt in public for the first time. Before I left the house Mariatu came over and retied it for me so that it was actually tied in the back and not just tucked into itself. I thought she was assuming I either tied it incorrectly or wouldn’t be able to walk properly but I later learned it’s considered very strange and unprofessional to just wear lapas like that. You can bring them to the tailor and get a tie string added and then it’s magically professional.

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This week I also learned that there is a college down the street from me with Wi-Fi! I was so happy to learn this because since my phone broke I had no way to contact anyone to let them know my number changed. I went to the college with Mariatu to attempt to download Facebook messenger but I couldn’t get it to work. Mariatu suggested we go ask someone which I thought was a weird idea. I hit the download button and it didn’t work, what was anyone else going to do?

Boy was I wrong. They have an app called Xender that allows you to transfer apps to other phones, so a nice stranger sent me messenger and it worked immediately. I was in such a good mood walking back that turned even better as Mariatu began discussing her secret boyfriend with me like we were actually sisters. She also told me that she was annoyed at her complexion so I offered to show her what I do for my skin.

I brought out my L’Oreal facewash and Walgreens brand zit zapper. The idea of soap specifically for the face was foreign to her and she initially tried rubbing it on her skin like lotion. I showed her how the process works and then we washed our faces together. When she rinsed the soap off, she looked over at me and asked, “That’s it?” “That’s it!” I assured her, as long as she did it every morning and night.

The following night Mariatu and I had to walk around the whole neighborhood in the dark looking for the next season of Asintado, a Filipino drama that has dozens of seasons and is loved by every family I’ve met. I’ve only seen two episodes: in the first one a man and woman were finally able to be together despite the fact their love was forbidden and in the next episode they hated each other and were on separate teams plotting against each other.

We approached a house where a woman called out to me and said she had an American living with her.

“Really? What’s their name?” I didn’t know another Peace Corps Trainee lived so close to me.

“Well, he’s been here for eight months,” she replied. “He’s my son. He goes back next month.”

Oh…

No one had the DVD so we went home. On the way a girl gave us some ground nuts (similar to peanuts) and Mariatu handed me a few. I was focused on walking in the dark and not falling on the uneven terrain when Mariatu asked me, “You don’t know how to peel nuts?!”

I tried to say I definitely knew how to crack open a nut but it was a little difficult to do when I was blindly walking through the streets. She took them from my hand anyway and peeled each one like I was her child. Even though Mariatu is only 18, she is immensely responsible and mature. She basically runs the household because she does the cooking, cleaning, child rearing, and more. One weekend I watched as she simultaneously prepared ground nut soup, controlled all the kids, darted out into the rain to set buckets all around when it started to downpour, and then calmly walked back to finish cooking.

And then it was the Fourth of July! The holiday started for me around 2 a.m. when I woke up to the sound of rustling. Other trainees had talked about mice, cockroaches, spiders and more in their rooms but I had yet to experience any of it…until now. I had left a package of cookies on my table and I could hear something eating them. I turned on a flashlight and watched a mouse leap away. Oh my God. I was more upset that the only snack I had was ruined since I’d been trying to ration them carefully. I threw them in another bag and fell asleep.

At 5 a.m. I awoke to more rustling. I forgot my host mom had given me popcorn in a bag a few nights prior and I had left them on a dresser in the front room leading to my room. I again turned a flashlight on and saw the black bag jutting out in every direction as the mouse moved around inside. I was too tired to care and I turned the light off. Suddenly I heard a crash and realized that the cup of popcorn that was in the bag had fallen onto the floor.

At 5:45 a.m. I finally got up and noticed that the bag had actually fallen into my wash bucket. Yes! I caught a mouse without even trying! But then my stomach started rumbling and I had to make an emergency dash to the bathroom. When I came back I decided it was time to conquer the mouse. I brought the bucket outside and rapid fire grabbed the bag to shake it out. Nothing happened. The mouse had somehow climbed out of the steep bucket. (We’re still roomies and now I lock my snacks up.)

We were having a Fourth of July party at the training site and everyone was allowed to bring one host family member. I’d asked Mariatu two days beforehand if she wanted to go and she looked really excited about it. She asked me what to wear but wasn’t thrilled when I said she could wear whatever she wanted, even suggesting gym clothes since I knew we’d be playing soccer and volleyball. Sierra Leoneans love to dress up – or ‘bluff’ as they say in Krio – and Mariatu showed up in a nice shirt and pants.

Sierra Leoneans also run on Sierra Leone time. We were told the party started at 12:30 but families didn’t arrive until around an hour later. Some current volunteers worked hard all morning to make dozens of hot dogs that they served with apples, watermelon, chips, and soda. It was amazing. So amazing that Mariatu stashed five hot dogs in my bag and only told me as we were getting ready to leave.

We listened to a mixture of American, Nigerian, and Salone music and all of the younger host siblings had a blast dancing. We played soccer, volleyball, and football, and even taught some siblings and Peace Corps staff how to throw the ball. The look on the younger kids’ faces melted my heart. They looked so happy to be running around with their American sibling, learning new games and trying new foods.

We left around 4 p.m. and when we got home it was total madness. All of my younger host siblings had gotten into some chocolate and were literally putting pieces on their hands and licking them all over. They were hyper and talkative and wanted to play soccer which I didn’t really want to do since I’d just spent hours playing that and more. Mariatu and I sat outside my room talking and then we all went to bed.

The next day was the first Friday I had Afrikana clothes to wear! It’s custom to wear them on Friday or Sunday and the tailor had finished my dress pretty quickly. As I was getting ready it started downpouring like I’d never seen before. I waited as late as possible to see if it would let up but it didn’t, and I had a 30 minute walk to the Catholic school ahead of me. I put on my raincoat that’s really more like a cheap poncho and then waved goodbye to my family as they stared at me in amazement, asking why I was still going.

If this storm was in Illinois there would’ve been 12 tornadoes around me too. I met up with two other trainees and we walked with our heads down all the way to the school. The thing about my dress was that I’d never washed it before and dye tends to bleed out of lapa the first few times. Red dye was cascading down my legs like I was Carrie at prom. It even dyed my tan bag a purple-red color. I told myself I was thankful to not be hot and sweating for once.

During my language class that day Gbrilla appeared and sat outside the house almost the entire time. I tried to participate even more than normal to set a good example for him and to show him I was trying my best to learn the language and culture. That night when I got back he repeated almost everything we’d learned that day word for word and quizzed me (while also occasionally laughing at my accent). Mariatu and I had a photo shoot with our fancy lapa dresses.

And then it was National Cleaning Day! This initiative was started by the new President Bio. On the first Saturday of the month everyone is required to clean their homes and neighborhoods from 6 a.m. to noon or else you’ll get arrested. Literally. (Really? This is the issue the police are cracking down on?) A little before noon my host uncle tried leaving the house and stopped to ask, “Is it noon yet? I don’t want to get arrested.”

I told Mariatu I wanted to help clean the streets but as I expected, they just told me to sweep my room.

“Do you know how to sweep?” Mariatu asked me.

“Yes.”

“Show me.” Oh my God.

They use different brooms here that are basically bundles of long, thin sticks tied together at the bottom. You have to crouch down and push the bundle sideways to sweep properly, unless you’re sweeping over gravel in which case you hold the bundle straight up and down and brush garbage away over the rocks. I half-heartedly showed Mariatu that I did indeed know how to sweep and she gave me a skeptical but slightly approving look. I swept my room and then had to wipe it down with a rag.

Afterwards was round three of handwashing my clothes. Each week was getting more and more tense as people continued to tell me I didn’t know how to do it. This day Mariatu was blatantly rewashing everything I washed – there wasn’t even a façade anymore of me helping.

“Mariatu.”

“Hm?”

“I am washing. And then you are washing.”

“Mhm.”

“We’re washing twice.”

“Mhm.”

“Why?”

“Your clothes need to be clean.”

“But I need to learn how to do it.”

“Mhm.”

So we compromised and continued double washing my clothes.

When I only had black clothes left Mariatu went inside to grab something. I grabbed a black shirt as fast as I could, swished it around the water without really washing it, then raced over to the line to hang everything before she could redo it. I could still see deodorant marks on the shirt and knew it wasn’t clean in the slightest but wanted Mariatu to believe I’d cleaned the last four pieces of clothing quickly by myself.

She walked back outside, saw my empty bucket, then walked over to the line. She grabbed the shirt.

“This shirt is not clean.”

“Oh…..why?”

She pointed to the deodorant marks. Well hot damn.

After that Mariatu did three more loads of laundry: hers, her mom’s, and her grandma’s. I sort of offered to help but also felt kind of stupid. There’s no way she would let me help when I couldn’t even properly wash my own clothes. I sat on a stool next to her and she helped me practice my Krio.

Her uncle, Mr. Sesay, walked through the front door. He told me he was the principal of the Catholic school I’d been going to for training – I had no idea. He also told me he’s been to America five times and was leaving for Ohio in a few weeks to spend his summer vacation there. He would like to retire there with his kids to give them more opportunities and he also absolutely loves our connecting highways and large airports all over the place.

Yet the whole time he was talking about his grand adventures and dreams, Mariatu was still beside us doing the back-breaking work of washing the family’s clothes.

“So how do you like Mariatu?” he asked me. Wow.

I said she was perfect and amazing and helped me with everything. He said she was brilliant and they were all proud of her. Mariatu said nothing.

After he left, she announced we had to walk to the water pump to get more water. My first time pumping water – I was nervous but excited to experience such a large part of living here. We walked one block away to the pump where numerous buckets were lined all around and a few people were waiting for their turn. All of the families living around the pump watched us and I was happy to show that I could pump water too (you literally place a bucket under the pipe and then pull a lever up and down. Easy peezy lemon squeezy). But then came the hard part.

Sierra Leoneans carry everything on their heads. Buckets full of food they’re selling, water jugs, speakers… I’ve even seen my tiny, 11-year-old host sister walk from the river all the way back to the house with a huge bucket full of sopping wet clothes on her head. I thought the most difficult part would be balancing it but again, boy was I wrong.

To get the item on your head someone will help you pick it up and place it there. They usually have a lapa piece that they bunch up in between their heads and whatever they’re carrying. I just had a medium bucket of water. I picked it up with Mariatu and placed it on my head and then my neck exploded into a million little pieces and I died.

What do I do? What do I do? I have to carry this…must…integrate.. into the community!! My neck was screaming. I couldn’t turn my head or look at the ground to even walk away from the pump. I couldn’t balance the bucket so I had to hold the top of it which made my arm and back muscles pop out of my body and run away.

Mariatu calmly stood beside me the whole time with her own jug effortlessly on her head. We started walking. Water was sloshing. The front of my shirt was getting soaked and water was dripping down my face into my eyes. People continued to stare. One block suddenly seemed like ten. Every step I took I wanted to quit. I wanted someone to run up to me and take the bucket and I would probably fake protest and say I could do it but they’d do it anyway and I’d secretly be happy. But no one came and I kept inching forward.

We turned onto our street and a child RAN UP TO ME AND HUGGED ME AROUND THE WAIST. All I could do was make a sound that sort of sounded like, “Ehhhhhnooooooehhhhh….” while I tried to think of how to say DO YOU WANT ME TO DROP THIS ALL OVER YOU in Krio. And then he walked away and I made it to the house and I did it! I toted my first bucket of water!

I declared I had to take a nap and walked to my room thinking about how physically weak I was. Mariatu had done four loads of laundry and toted water and still had more to do.

My first weekend in country was spent doing more training on Saturday followed by a free day with our families on Sunday. Everyone was a bit nervous about what we’d be doing with all that time. When I woke up on Sunday, the first thing I did was bruk: handwash clothes.

To handwash clothes you need two or three buckets, soap, a scrub brush, and a ridged board. You separate the whites first, soak them in soapy water, and then hand scrub them by rubbing the dirtiest parts together. You then turn the clothes inside out and scrub areas like the armpits and collars, and then you quickly run them over the washboard. The washboard has a special technique that I’m not sure I’ll ever master. It makes a distinct sound when you’re running the clothes quickly and hard enough that I’m nowhere near to. You wring the clothes out, throw them in the next bucket to rinse and repeat before finally throwing them in another bucket to make sure all the soap is out. You rinse and wring and then hang them on the line to dry.

Khadija set up a washing station for me in the back corner of the house by my room. Mariatu was across the yard cleaning her own clothes. I was worried about looking stupid even though I technically knew what to do so I asked Mariatu to go over it with me one more time.

“You don’t know how to bruk?” she laughed.

She washed my clothes with me even after I told her I was okay and could do it myself. She gave me a knowing look and laughed when I tried using the washboard and I laughed along with her. Mariatu washed and rinsed an entire pile of clothes in the second bucket in the time it took me to turn a single shirt inside out and scrub it. If she wasn’t helping me I have no idea how long it would’ve taken. Sweat poured down my face, pooled on my nose, and dripped off. My back ached and when I stood up from bending over, Mariatu asked me if I was tired. No!…you’re tired! My three year old host sister who everyone claims to never understand roasted me from across the yard and suddenly everyone understood her. “Fatu doesn’t know how to bruk!” she said in a sing-song voice.

I took a nap after and felt extremely weak. Other trainees in my cohort tended goats, walked miles to the market, did laundry, and more, and I knocked out after barely washing clothes. But we all needed our energy – there was a big soccer game happening in the next town against local children that we were invited to.

When I told Khadija I was going, she said Mariatu would go with me and then asked what I was going to wear. I motioned to myself – I was already wearing leggings and a t-shirt. She wanted me to wear dress pants and a blouse. I tried to explain that I was going to be running around playing soccer before eventually changing into a bigger, longer t-shirt. She said that was okay, and then Mariatu came back out wearing nice jeans and an orange blouse.

We found a keke, a three-wheeled vehicle similar to a tuktuk in Thailand, and drove for about 15 minutes. The driver blasted Nigerian music (look up the song Shaku Shaku!) and I loved seeing the change in scenery as we sped down the highway. We started walking to the field when all of a sudden the rain came down hard. Mariatu had never been to this town and yet we ran onto someone’s porch as if she knew them. No one was home – but then we ran to another house where an entire family was sitting outside watching the soccer game that had already started. They had no issue with us crashing their party and even let Mariatu sit with them for about two hours while I ran off and played.

The atmosphere was full of energy. Dozens upon dozens of locals stood around the field to watch. We were playing against all young boys whereas our team was all women except for our goalie, Ryan. I hoped all the little girls watching would see that girls could play soccer (and be good at it!) too. Whenever our team scored, Ryan got all the spectators to yell, “GOAAALLLL!!” Eventually another trainee named Nicole became the goalie despite never having done it before. Whenever she stopped a goal from going in, she would get so excited that the crowd would go crazy and cheer for her. It was extremely heartwarming to watch and running around in the rain was such a refreshing, fun release.

At 6pm we called it a day and the referee said we could all come back next weekend and play again. I excitedly ran up to Mariatu.

“Did you see me run?!” I asked.

“Yes… but you didn’t score a goal!” she joked with me (even though I did score one!)

• 

• 

We called the keke and went back home. Khadija nearly fainted at the site of me and demanded I go change my clothes immediately. She truly acts like my real mother and I appreciate it a lot. Every so often she likes to give me little pep talks about how she’s going to take good care of me the entire time I’m in Salone. She told me she even visited the last volunteer she had at his permanent site.

The following day marked the beginning of something called demyst. Peace Corps Trainees spend the week with current volunteers to see what their lives are like. I was heading east to a district called Kenema with two other trainees. We arrived to the training site early to receive some more vaccines and then we all piled into a car (literally – four people in the back and two in the passenger seat) and drove 30 minutes to another car park. Car parks are hectic. Multiple drivers approached us and tried negotiating prices. Women tried selling us food and drinks. We were warned to hold onto our bags because drivers might try to take them and put them in their car for you even if they don’t know where you’re going. After some time we got into a car and continued down the highway, passing two checkpoints along the way where we had to show immigration letters and copies of our passports to the officers. Drivers aren’t allowed to have two people in the passenger seat so one person will get out, walk across the checkpoint, and get back in immediately after.

The windows were down in our car which was nice temperature-wise but terrible with the wind. I thought my skin was going to rip off my face and my hair was one giant tangly knot by the end of it. We traveled for eight hours before finally reaching Kenema. It was my first city experience and our first stop was in a supermarket that had air conditioning and sold ice cream! We then met up with other volunteers at a western restaurant they liked. I had a burger and fries and was so thankful to not have plasas (leaves turned into a sort of sauce with spices over rice) again. A lot of expats visit the restaurant and I even saw two young guys get into a UNICEF truck and drive away.

As I was leaving the restaurant I took my phone out to take a picture of this new place. But it wouldn’t turn on – had the battery died? It had been charged earlier that day. Maybe it overheated and just needed to be plugged in again? (Spoiler alert: RIP iPhone in Salone, June 14 – June 24. It was a good ten days).

We got into yet another car to drive to our final destination. The sun was setting and there wasn’t much time to bathe, so we all slopped our sweaty bodies down onto mattresses we’d carried all the way from Port Loko and called it a night. The pet cat bit me all night. I felt gross. My phone was done for. I was defeated.

The following day I told myself to get over my woes and prepare for a new day in a new town. We all finally washed and ate and then we visited the high school where exams were taking place. We helped ‘invigilate,’ or monitor, two tests for business studies and home economics. Cheating, or spying as they call it, is a big problem here and students will openly look at each other’s papers, talk during the test, pass notes, and more. I felt awkward telling a bunch of random students I’d never met what to do so I mostly just observed the classroom culture and started thinking of how I’d be with my own class. If we had extra time with a class, the students would excitedly ask us questions such as what our full names were, what our parents’ names were… lots of names.

Around lunch time we went outside where ‘aunties’ were selling snacks. Any woman can be an auntie, and it’s a special sort of feeling when a group of children runs up to you yelling ‘auntie!’ We bought fried potatoes and fried dough that they simply call cake, but they were also selling rice and something that looked like raw tapioca roots. The second exam finished pretty early so we had time to go to the actual market where we purchased ingredients for dinner and lapas. Lapas are yards of fabric that you can take to the tailor to make clothes or use as a towel, blanket, wrap skirt, etc. I wanted to wait for Khadija to go to the tailor since we’d discussed it before so I used mine as a makeshift skirt the first few days.

We walked back home and about 20 kids followed us. As we sat in the front room, the kids stood outside looking in through the windows. If we laughed, they laughed. Sometimes they even repeated things they heard us say, such as, “Sucking me dry!” when another trainee was talking about money. At one point we began practicing Krio with each other and the kids were all highly amused. I decided to go outside because who better to practice with than the native speakers?

We all sat on the veranda for a while practicing our speech and listening to the kids excitedly spout off words. Some of them agreed to walk with us to the bush the next day – a forested area where many families have farmland. We had to cut our lesson short with them because a man in town had invited us over for ataya, a special kind of tea he made by pouring it back and forth from the hot kettle to a mug until it was extra foamy. It was bitter but loaded with sugar, and as we sat in his front yard on logs taking sips, a different group of 30 kids (yes, I counted) observed us.

• 

• 

• 

Walking back home as the sun set over the town was gorgeous. The mountains faded in the horizon and the trees were a bright shade of green. We of course had a photo shoot in the middle of the road and then we ended the night by making pasta with garlic bread and listening to K-Pop.

On the third day we went back to school for more exams. This time we didn’t invigilate – we graded a math test on fractions and decimals (and learned later that the class our host went to was pretty upset the rest of us didn’t show up). Many students struggled with the test but a handful scored very highly. That was the only exam of the day and then we went back home to relax, but after a short while two very well-dressed people approached us.

They explained they were contractors for UC-Davis and they were mapping different towns for some rat disease. They were also partnered with USAID and my jaw figuratively dropped – after being in Salone for not even two weeks I was already meeting people like this who literally just walked out of the bushes and gave us their business card?! Amazing.

The kids trekked us through the bush for an hour and a half afterwards and they pointed out cocoa, bananas, oranges, and caterpillars along the way. We sang camp songs while the boys pushed each other, made fart sounds, and attempted to hide in tall grass to jump out and scare us (it worked three times). We stopped at a grass hut a family was resting and cooking in. They offered us delicious roasted corn and then we were heading back the way we came. Somewhere along the way they captured a baby bird and gave it to me (aka I took it to protect it) and we walked all the way back to the ataya tea man one last time.

• 

• 

• 

• 

On our last full day we attempted to sleep in but woke up at 6am anyway. We made pancakes and I read a Lonely Planet guide book on West Africa. I spoke to a young boy named Amar who told me he was ditching school because his entire class was getting punished for something that day. He told me about his family’s religion, what the church is like, and his name all with a huge smile on his face. After he left, we lounged around most of the day. We saw the market again. We purchased more phone data. We cuddled a bush cat. At one point I got hit in the face with what I thought was a mango but was actually a ball.

The next day we had to figure out how to get back to Port Loko on our own. We waited in a car for a while and watched a man sell second hand clothes from a giant bundle. (Side note, there’s a documentary somewhere about how second hand clothes get from America to African countries… I don’t remember the name but you should look it up!) When we arrived in the city a nice government bus was waiting. Government buses are cheaper, quicker, and infinitely more comfortable, so we all felt really lucky that we were able to take one. As we waited on the bus various sellers came by to sell drinks, eggs, fried dough, crackers, and even live chickens. A woman was negotiating the price of a chicken when the doors finally closed and we left (phew).

When I was finally back in Port Loko, my host family greeted me like I was actually part of the family. Every family member who saw me lit up with huge smiles and warm welcomes. It was extremely heartwarming to experience.

And then my week ended how it began – washing clothes. This time it was by the front entrance to the yard where every stranger and their mother could watch me and laugh at me, and this time my patience was slightly waning… every time I washed something, Mariatu would take it and rewash it in another bucket. It was a slightly ridiculous process that I wasn’t sure how to address so I didn’t. What was even more ridiculous was when I told Khadija about the lapa I bought and she yelled, “Get the tailor!” and he rounded the corner IMMEDIATELY (I later learned his shop is in our house but I was still impressed at the timing).

Demystification was an amazing part of training and I’m glad I could see another part of the country while also getting a glimpse of what a day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer is like!

Nine years ago I googled something along the lines of ‘working internationally’ and discovered the Peace Corps. At a time when I embarrassingly called it the Peace ‘Corpse,’ I decided that one day I would join. The age when I would finally be eligible to apply seemed so far away, but I never lost hope and very frequently, almost obsessively, checked volunteer openings all the way up until July 31, 2018.

I was sitting at a table in my house in Thailand where I was teaching English. I’d already been there for 10 months out of a year-long grant and my next adventure was hopefully coming up. The Peace Corps releases new positions quarterly and I was anxiously waiting for August 1. I checked on July 31 just to be safe, and there they were – almost 80 new posts. Adrenaline shot through me and I applied instantly, my essays already written four months ahead of time.

I initially applied for a Community Economic Development position in Macedonia with the hopes of gaining new experiences in a region I’d never visited and hardly knew anything about. The application also had a box I could check – are you willing to go anywhere in the world? I stared at it for a while. Something in me told me if I checked that box I’d be switched to the Education sector and would probably go to an African country. Almost 50 percent of volunteers serve in Africa. At one point in my life it had been my dream to study abroad in Kenya. And after all, one of the main Peace Corps core expectations is that you’ll be willing to serve anywhere your skills are needed most, even in tough conditions. So I checked the box.

Months passed. I finally received an email that I was now being considered for an English teaching position in Macedonia. I was slightly bummed at losing the chance to work abroad in a different field, but had high hopes that I was still in the same country. And then came the next email as I was lying on the couch in the exact same spot I was at when I first discovered the Peace Corps – you are now under consideration for a TEFL position in Benin.

I stared at it and glanced at my mom standing in the kitchen. My family had already been thinking about visiting me in Macedonia and stopping by Italy along the way. I told them the news. They stared back at me with a mixture of deep concern and somewhat faked enthusiasm. My mom asked me if I was happy, and I honestly said that I still was. The Peace Corps was still my dream and I had anticipated this happening anyway.

I researched Benin and saw endless positives – I could learn French, I would gain an official TEFL certification, the country is next to Nigeria which I spent a year and a half researching at a job in college, and it’s the birthplace of voodoo, just a fun fact I could tell people. I interviewed shortly after and then while standing in the air transit train at O’Hare airport I received a call. “The education positions in Benin have all been filled. Would you like to be a health volunteer there instead?”

Absolutely not. I was willing to go anywhere but I was regrettably not willing to do anything – I’d be of no use to anyone in a clinic where I’d probably be fainting at the site of injuries every other day. I said no and then panicked – did I just reject an offer?!

I received another phone call while standing in the security line apart from my family.

“Do you want to teach English in Sierra Leone? I promise it’s a wonderful place,” a kind woman said. I enthusiastically answered yes and then told my family the good news as we zigzagged away from each other in line. I let it sink in – I was going to be a volunteer.

And now here I am today. On June 14 I kissed my family goodbye and headed to something called staging in Pennsylvania. I met 56 other education and health volunteers and we spent the afternoon talking about our feelings, coping skills, Peace Corps history and expectations, and more. One of our facilitators was from my alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which made me smile for many reasons. Ever since I announced to the world that I would be moving to Sierra Leone, it seemed like endless connections in my life to the country had come crawling out of the woodworks.

To start, there’s a current serving volunteer who also went to U of I named Allison. I discovered U of I has a study abroad program to Sierra Leone, so I reached out to the office and started talking to a few professors. One of them said, “One of my former students is currently in the Peace Corps, do you want to talk to her? Her name is Allison.” But we’d already met! I then went to a send-off event in Chicago where a middle-aged woman approached me. She said her daughter was working at U of I and was a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) and had studied abroad in Sierra Leone. She gave me her daughter’s contact information and when I reached out she gave me loads of useful information. The email ended with, “By the way, I know a PCV there called Allison.. do you want to talk to her?” And then at the send-off event, right when I was about to leave, a mom approached me.

“You’re going to Sierra Leone, right? So is my daughter! I’ll go get her.”

And then I met Grace. I discovered that like me, Grace is a triplet. She was born about three weeks before me in the same hospital and we all spent some time in the NICU together. She also went to U of I and even graduated the same year as me, although we never crossed paths. We were both in sororities. We both spent time abroad in Spain. Before leaving for Salone, we were both working with toddlers. It was crazy! So crazy, that a public affairs guy even interviewed us about it.

And finally, about a week before I left, an old friend from school reached out to me. She was friends with a college student from Sierra Leone named Tina who was attending school by us. We all went out to dinner and I learned so much about the country I was going to be spending the next 27 months of my life in. Tina told me she’d be visiting in December and even offered to meet up if I wanted to. Of course!

But now back to staging – Manuel, our coordinator, emphasized the importance of sticking with it for the entire 27 months. He is an RPCV from Paraguay and told us that whenever he called his family upset or homesick, they’d snap at him to get over it and to remember how hard he worked to get there. If you are not willing to stay for 27 months, he said, Do. Not. Get. On. That. Bus.

The next day we all got on the bus. We drove a few hours to JFK and then flew to Belgium. After a short layover we arrived in Salone. It hadn’t felt real until our plane landed – we stepped out onto the ground and the humid air wrapped around us and bundled us up. I started feeling emotional as I stared all around and reality set in. I was doing it. I was here. I was in West freakin’ Africa and it was real.

We entered the airport and stood in line at immigration. A security guard approached me.

“I like your guitar,” he said, motioning to the ukulele sticking out of my bag. “Do you sing songs?”

“No,” I laughed. “But I want to learn!”

He walked away and when I met up with him again at the end of the line he said, “You better learn before you leave. You have two years.” I promised him I would.

At the immigration counter the worker literally threw my immigration card behind him without a second glance and he handed back my WHO card unopened. We all made it through, gathered our luggage, and then headed outside.

Some current PCVs were standing in the street with a beautiful sign. One was live streaming our arrival on Facebook, another was taking pictures, and another was leaping up and down screaming, “Welcome Salone 9!! You made it!! Welcome!!”

Now the waterworks were really threatening to come out. It was all so positively overwhelming, especially knowing that my loving and supportive family was definitely watching through that live stream as I walked through the door. I hid my face and took deep breaths. We split into groups and walked a short distance to a hotel.

As we walked, people stared. Children shouted and waved and one boy even walked silently behind us the entire time while balancing a large bucket on his head. As we all turned into the hotel, he quietly said ‘bye bye’ and crossed the street.

Our rooms in the hotel were already blasting with air conditioning, something I appreciated considering I have no idea when the next time I’ll feel AC will be. We ate our first authentic meal of couscous, rice, fish, cake, and more, and then we listened to a short speech from our doctor, Jean-Luc. He couldn’t emphasize enough how dire it is that we take our malaria medication. He told us a 24-year-old volunteer in Ghana died from malaria after she stopped taking it, and dozens more get sent to the hospital every week. That was enough to convince me – I’m 24 and I don’t want to be another story being shared by the Peace Corps doctor.

I savored my last shower and went to bed, only to be woken up a few hours later by the heaviest rain I’d ever heard. I thought I knew downpours but I was wrong.

The next morning we all piled into official Peace Corps vans and drove for an hour to our training site. Our driver blasted African songs, local sellers approached us before we took off, and as our convoy weaved around the roads, many people we passed waved with huge smiles on their faces. Kids giggled when we waved back.

At the site, we visited the chief and a council building. One of the officials we met shared with us that he was a ‘Peace Corps kid,’ the school he attended growing up had a volunteer. Another theme that gets drilled into us, and one that I think should be widely understood by everyone, is that no one is here to save the world, save a country, or save a town. No one is saving anyone or anything. It’s about personal connections and relationships. If you can change a life, then you’ve changed the world, and it’s definitely a give-and-take learning process for both.

The official told us that Peace Corps is widely respected in the country and that volunteers are greatly admired for leaving the US and coming all the way to west Africa to serve. After that we went to our official training site where locals who work for the Peace Corps awaited us. They were all dressed beautifully in traditional attire and they played music, sang songs, and one man even did a cultural dance on stilts while blowing a whistle.

We spent the afternoon going over logistics and attending sessions such as safe bike riding, proper sweeping and how to hand wash clothes, how to properly wear the traditional skirts called lapas, how to use a squatty potty (tip #1 was to shut the door, tip #2 was that we shouldn’t worry about falling in the hole because one of the housing requirements is actually that the hole can’t be big enough where that would even be a possibility…), cell phones and vaccines, and more. I received the rabies, typhoid, and Hepatitis B vaccines. Hep B felt like a brick was being shoved into my tiny veins. By the end of the day the pain was almost unbearable. Finally, at the end of it we had an ‘adoption ceremony’ where we met our host families! We’ll be living with them for our 10 weeks of training before moving into our own homes at our permanent sites.

I’ve previously lived with a host family when I studied abroad in Spain and I absolutely loved them. We still keep in touch today and I couldn’t help but begin to compare the two situations. Would I get along with my family as well as I did before? One by one our names were called until I finally heard mine. A middle-aged woman named Khadija and a younger girl named Mariatu hugged me.

We shared a plate of rice and chicken and I learned that my host mom is an English teacher and speaks English fluently. She has family living in Nigeria, Ghana, England, New York, and Maryland. I’m her third PCV – the first two were both male and she was really hoping for a girl! Mariatu is her 18-year-old cousin who recently finished high school. She took her final exams and is waiting for her score which will arrive in the fall. They asked me about my family and before I knew it we were walking out of the training site and to my new home.

I’d been in Salone for a full day but hadn’t truly walked around yet. It was just me and Khadija – Mariatu was taking a bag of rice home on a motorbike – and we made small talk along the way. She asked me what it’s like flying in a plane and I attempted to explain turbulence. She told me she knew some English slang, specifically the phrase, ‘What’s up, N*****?!” which she repeated over and over again and asked me if it was correct. I didn’t really know what to say – that certainly wasn’t my slang, so I sort of grunted and tilted my head and continued walking.

One of the first things I noticed was that there were dozens upon dozens of children everywhere. They were playing soccer, playing games, or even just roaming the streets. They yelled to me as we passed, ‘Apoto! Apoto!” the Krio word for white person. An entire group even attempted to chase us until Khadija swiveled around and yelled at them.

We arrived at the house. There’s a large gravel courtyard in the middle and then three sort of buildings that connect to make a home. Goats, chickens, and cats roam around the yard and family members also use the space to cook, clean, and play. I’m still having trouble remembering who actually lives here because so many people come and go every day. Community is big here and everyone is sisters and brothers with each other regardless of blood. But I did remember a very young girl who seems to be around three years old, a boy who is six, and then another girl and boy who do most of the chores who seem to be somewhere between eight and 10.

My room is in the very back. I have a full bed with a mosquito net and a trunk from the PC to store valuable items in. I was fortunate to be placed with a family that has electricity and a refrigerator, so I’ve been able to use the lights, charge my phone, and drink ice cold water in the morning and right when I get back at night.

I greeted the family members I saw and received a lot of dead stares from the kids. Mariatu took me around town to buy food and water and even more kids yelled apoto at me and asked me my name. Khadija gave me a local name, Fatu, which is her mother’s name and sounds similar to ‘apoto’ which she thinks is hilarious. I was determined to be as visible and vulnerable as possible though, so I embraced it and waved back and did the best I could.

After we got back home it was time for me to attempt to take my first bucket bath. Khadija filled an orange bucket halfway up with water for me and gave me a cup to scoop it. My shower area is really just an outdoor alleyway in between my room and the next. It was pitch black out so I brought my luci light (thanks, mom!) and went for it. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as I’d thought it would be – it actually wasn’t difficult at all. The worst part was that my arm hurt so badly from the vaccine I could hardly lift it far enough away from my body to even wash my left armpit. I went back to my room and tried falling asleep at 9pm. The room was a mess because I could only search for things with one arm and didn’t have the energy to be tidier with it. By 2am I still hadn’t slept and I searched again for a small fan I had bought from Walmart. What a lifesaver – an hour later I was sleeping, and two hours after that I was awake to do it all over again!

The sweat gets real at night too. I smelled pretty terrible but knew it’d only get worse throughout the day so I didn’t pay it too much attention. Khadija brought breakfast to my room and it was massive – three of four omelets and a large piece of bread. She expected me to eat in my room so I did.. and I threw one of the omelets in a plastic bag to be dealt with later. In Thailand it was extremely rude to reject food or say you don’t like it and I didn’t yet know the custom for Salone. I didn’t want to give it back and be offensive.

Mariatu walked me to training the first day. On the way I noticed I live across the street from a UN World Food Programme building. A white truck drives around every morning and I’ve been told one of their duties is to deliver something called plumpy nut to malnourished children. Along the same road are numerous shops filled with people who greet me every day. On the corner a large group of motorbikes sits with bikers who will also say hello. I then cross the street diagonally into a field and pass a courthouse where I’ve already seen multiple trials going on. It’s straight on from there to the training site where I pass more homes with kind families and eager children who yell, “Apoto! What is your name?!” even if they are blocks away from me.

The first week of training consisted of starting to learn a language called Krio. It’s a dialect of English and remarkably similar. For example, a typical greeting could be, “Ow di body?” or, “Ow di day?” Sister is seesta and neighbor is neba. But other words are more different – onion is yabas and wake up is grahp. Once we all receive our site placements we’ll have to learn another local language. I’m excited to learn more languages and put them to use.

We also learned more about health from Jean-Luc and received cell phones along with two SIM cards. We had cultural lessons where we learned it is rude to put fish bones back onto your plate because someone might eat after you if you don’t finish it all. It is rude to talk when eating because it shows a lack of appreciation for the meal (I learned this after I spent the first few days chatting away with my family as they sat by me while I ate. When I asked Khadija about it she said, “Oh, is that what they told you?” then continued talking to me. Phew!) If you are sharing food from a plate it is rude to eat outside of your own section. And there is apparently no such thing as awkward silence here. People are content to sit in each other’s company without talking which is a huge relief for introverted ol’ me.

One night I asked Khadija if we could practice Krio. I brought out my language book but she was way more interested in the English translations. We went back and forth reading Krio and English and eventually one of the kids came over to show off all the English words he could spell. He turned it into a competition with me and then tried to tell the whole family he beat me in spelling. Khadija shot him down. I attempted to show him Tic-Tac-Toe in my language book but he didn’t quite understand and Khadija was not happy I was doodling in my schoolbook.

Overall the first week was amazing. This has been the biggest culture shock of my life but the friendly people and supportive trainees and staff are making it all an easy transition.