I have been back at work for two weeks now and have got little done. This place makes it easy for one to do nothing, and I am determined to snap myself out of the holiday mood and concentrate more on my work. The exams are coming up for the students at Fatima, and I will finally be free of my teaching responsibilities when I have marked the exams. I have set up a project board , who will be meeting next week under my control to organise the projects we will undertake this year. The return to the council has been uneventful. I have slotted back into work without any major issues, though it is clear that some people are very wary of me.
Natasha has been organising games of Ultimate Frisbee, which is a surprisingly great game and provides an excuse to bring the expats of Makeni together. As much as I have made efforts to integrate into the community and make Salonean friends, the foreign crowd are an important component of my social network. I naturally have more in common with Europeans and North Americans than Africans, and it is usually more socially comfortable. There is also the fact that they can empathise with being away from home (knowledge of life in the Western world!) and there are fewer cultural or language barriers.
I escaped the small town confines of Makeni last weekend in the form of a trip to Freetown and Lakka beach. It was Natasha's birthday so we had an excuse to spend a couple of days pretending that we were on holiday at a beautiful beach resort, oblivious of the country's issues or our real reason for being here! It was great fun down at the beach, and I had the best food I've had in Sierra Lone: freshly caught Bonita Fish with homemade chips. My favourite part of the weekend however, was walking through the Eastern part of Freetown, and two women were speaking about me in Krio. One turned to the other and said, “that white man has a fine body,” the other just shrugged and made a typical Salonean dismissive sigh, bringing me back to Earth with a bump!
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Thursday, 8 January 2009
Into the New Year
So, after Natasha and Gearoid perused the previous entries of the blog they have pointed out some inaccuracies. I feel I should come clean-
In the incident involving the spider (see blog entry 30th October, 2008) I did not “dispatch” the spider in such a masculine fashion as I made out. The fact is that I saw it after taking a shower, shrieked in a higher pitch than I would care to admit, and called upon Gearoid for assistance. His help came mainly in the form of laughing at me as I sized up the spider wearing only a towel and proclaiming over and over again that it was a very large spider.
Anyway, back to the present. New Year's Eve was pleasant, I spent it in the comfort of my own porch, with three friends. I had a good night, and I treated myself to a swim the following day at the hotel. I have spent a lot of time playing football and at the village where the boys live, I have made some good friends and I love the greetings I get from young and old alike; three kids holding each of my hands, whilst others jostle for a hold on the white man, and exchanging Temne greetings with old ladies, trying to avert my eyes from their bare, drooping breasts.
I have agreed to return to the council on a part time basis. They have acted on some of the issues I raised and have asked me to return to help to clean up the system. I thought about it long and hard, but the politicians seem committed, and the administration needs to be cleaned up. I feel sorry for the people who are genuinely trying to do their job, and I decided to stay and try to help, and try to achieve something with the organisation I came here to help.
The rest of my time will be spent in a new role at The Fatima University. I have given up the lecturing, I have decided that teaching definitely not for me. I will stay on as a Development Co-ordinator for the Institute, starting a number of income genrating projects and working on their existing good governance project, which involves training councillors in all of the Northern Districts in the country.
So after four months, I am finally in a working situation with which I am happy. I have the freedom to move between the two organisations, and I have made it clear to both employers what I am prepared to work on and what I am prepared to tolerate.
In other news, the UN Human Development Index was updated at the tail end of last year, and Sierra Leone is...... still bottom. It may seem difficult to understand how it actually manages to perform worse than countries like Somalia, which is in turmoil and has no government, but when you consider the indicators (healthcare, education, gender opportunities, governance) Sierra Leone really does have so far to go.
Who knows? Maybe we'll get them off the bottom of the list by the time I leave!
In the incident involving the spider (see blog entry 30th October, 2008) I did not “dispatch” the spider in such a masculine fashion as I made out. The fact is that I saw it after taking a shower, shrieked in a higher pitch than I would care to admit, and called upon Gearoid for assistance. His help came mainly in the form of laughing at me as I sized up the spider wearing only a towel and proclaiming over and over again that it was a very large spider.
Anyway, back to the present. New Year's Eve was pleasant, I spent it in the comfort of my own porch, with three friends. I had a good night, and I treated myself to a swim the following day at the hotel. I have spent a lot of time playing football and at the village where the boys live, I have made some good friends and I love the greetings I get from young and old alike; three kids holding each of my hands, whilst others jostle for a hold on the white man, and exchanging Temne greetings with old ladies, trying to avert my eyes from their bare, drooping breasts.
I have agreed to return to the council on a part time basis. They have acted on some of the issues I raised and have asked me to return to help to clean up the system. I thought about it long and hard, but the politicians seem committed, and the administration needs to be cleaned up. I feel sorry for the people who are genuinely trying to do their job, and I decided to stay and try to help, and try to achieve something with the organisation I came here to help.
The rest of my time will be spent in a new role at The Fatima University. I have given up the lecturing, I have decided that teaching definitely not for me. I will stay on as a Development Co-ordinator for the Institute, starting a number of income genrating projects and working on their existing good governance project, which involves training councillors in all of the Northern Districts in the country.
So after four months, I am finally in a working situation with which I am happy. I have the freedom to move between the two organisations, and I have made it clear to both employers what I am prepared to work on and what I am prepared to tolerate.
In other news, the UN Human Development Index was updated at the tail end of last year, and Sierra Leone is...... still bottom. It may seem difficult to understand how it actually manages to perform worse than countries like Somalia, which is in turmoil and has no government, but when you consider the indicators (healthcare, education, gender opportunities, governance) Sierra Leone really does have so far to go.
Who knows? Maybe we'll get them off the bottom of the list by the time I leave!
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