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!
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hang on a bit... if the woman was speaking krio how do you know she said you had a fine body??... also you should know that the saloneans are a very courteous people and consider it v bad form to directly contradict a friends opinion. However what you took to be a dismissive shrug is actually salonean body language for " you've got to be joking have you seen the state of him"...stick in there michael don't worry it's all doom and gloom over here at the mo' so you're not missing anything
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