8:00 a.m. – As I write, we are nearing the two week mark in “Stand Fast” mode here in Kenema City and it would seem there is no end in sight. We’ve had fits and starts of progress with small glimmers of hope only for them to be dashed by new, unforeseen circumstances. Here is a brief run-down on what’s happened…
As I said in my last submission, Sierra Leone held its elections two Saturdays past on the 17th to what international observers and numerous groups within the country alike hailed as “free and fair”. Sure, there were complaints about certain precincts counting more votes than the number of registered voters but that isn’t terribly unusual…hey, in Chicago, we were always reminded to vote early and often! But not wanting to be too flippant about this, the cause for concern over voter irregularities seemed to be a terribly overwrought. When results were finally announced late in the afternoon Friday, November 23rd (with over 87% of the registered voters casting their ballots, by the way), the incumbent, President Ernest Bai Koroma, was re-elected by a margin that would deny any doubt that abnormalities played a part in his victory. The President garnered over 58% of the vote (as you may recall, 55% was necessary to avoid a run-off which we all feared) while the Green guy held steady with just a bit over 37% of the popular vote. It seemed that this 20% spread was clearly significant.
The night of the announcement, Tony and I went over to the University Canteen with numerous other lecturers, a mixed group of Reds and Greens, while the radio blared out the long-awaited news. When Koroma’s winning percentage was announced, a hushed, but nonetheless, distinct murmur of voices was evident, not in the room but from the city itself. It was evident that just about everyone in Kenema was talking but whether it was angry or supportive, we could not discern. But, the white noise-like rumble in “surround-sound” was certainly disquieting. Not long after, Kenema was quiet.
To my mind, a combination of things contributed to the surprisingly calm night that ensued. A drenching rain began as the sun set which kept a lot of people in their homes and off the streets. Coupled with that, planned or not, the electricity went out about 7:00 p.m. Finally, the winning margin itself was simply too great to rationally dispute this clear win so most people in the city were caught in the rain, in the dark, without a leg to stand on. Or so we thought…
Saturday proved to be amazingly calm, too, but Sunday, the day the commission was to announce the results of the Parliamentary seats, found unrest in both Bo and here in Kenema. A flash mob was reported mid-afternoon in Bo City and a group of demonstrators rallied near enough to Tony’s house that we clearly heard them coming and I could see them on the other side of the university soccer field as they coursed through the streets waving placards and shouting political slogans. As a precaution, a curfew went into effect Sunday night and the streets were, once again, silent all night.
That brings us to today, Monday, November 26th. The campus awoke slowly and students, singly or in small groups, shuffled to class while we awaited word from Peace Corps that Stand Fast would finally be at an end. What we got, though, was a text message from our Country Director saying she’d be calling soon to discuss plans for our “unique” situation. Hmm. That sure sounded like Stand Fast was still standing; and for us, it was. We learned that the seeming morning calm on campus was an illusion. In fact, almost right under our own noses, a number of nearby downtown businesses had either been bombed or burned last night and word on the street was that tonight targeted residences would be hit. Thank goodness Peace Corps, as always, played this with safety uppermost in their minds. We had about 45 minutes to pack, secure the house, and board the already waiting Peace Corps vehicle to be whisked off to a secure setting.
8:00 p.m. – So, with the power on, I’m sitting in my little living room, returned to my quiet little bungalow in the bush and am happy to report real quiet…well, other than the rumble of thunder and the tapping of rain on my metal roof as yet another rolling storm lumbers through the area. I’m totally safe and sound!
From this experience, there is one thing I know for certain abdout Sierra Leone which has been echoed in many, if not all conversations I’ve had of late…the people are tired of war and will go to any lengths to prevent a repeat of that horrible civil war of ten years past. I truly believe them and even more importantly, I believe in them. Peace will prevail here!
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Stand Fast
I’ve been in Kenema City, in the eastern province of Sierra Leone, with two other of my fellow Response Volunteers, for a week now. We shifted into what has been called a modification in our Peace Corps Emergency Action Plan, referred to as “Stand Fast” in the lingo. Stand Fast is the lowest significant level to be initiated when political conditions in a country become tenuous and where there is potential for violence or danger. Kenema, as is the entire eastern region, is one-sidedly supportive of the Sierra Leone People’s Party which we refer to as the Greens since they wear green garb while the incumbent party wears red…er, they are referred to as the Reds. I am happy to say it has been almost pastoral here so quiet are the streets.
Presently, the populace is patiently poised for the results of last Saturday’s elections and it is, predictably, taking a long time for the vote count. News blurbs this morning indicated that a very peaceful and successful election was held and International Observers praised this little country for its ability to hold such a contest given that only ten years ago they were in the throes of a violent civil war.
Even though we’ve been without water for almost two days, we have had electricity most of the time and I have to say we are living like kings and queen! The street food is delicious and bountiful and the Star beer is still Le 3000 a bottle. For Thanksgiving, we are going to go out and get a Guinea hen or large chicken (there are no turkeys in Sierra Leone) and Tony, the consummate cook with all the equipment, is going to treat us to a feast as he has a few times already. It’s always interesting to see how you can substitute ingredients when virtually nothing American is available…especially as far as this holiday goes. But Tony has been in Peace Corps for over five years in both South Africa and Madagascar and has learned all the tricks so it’s bound to be great!
Back to the election, in the final count, if no candidate for president has won 55% or more of the popular vote, a run-off will need to be held on Saturday, December 8th. According to all news sources, this would be the time for civil disturbance to occur. I have to say, when PCRV Jessica and I walked through Bo on our way to pick up a taxi to Kenema, the streets were replete with Greens in what appeared to be a city-wide political rally. The experience, even from the windows of the taxi, was frighteningly crazy. People, drunk on palm wine or the general cacophony, and bedecked in palm fronds and silly hats (hmm…sort of like our own national presidential nominating conventions) milled everywhere blowing whistles and shouting fervent political epithet for their man (and woman…the Green’s vice-presidential running mate is female!). The almost frantic feeling I got, however, left me with the taste of how potentially dangerous a crowd like this could be if they were rallying nearby the opposition and an altercation broke out. So, for the time being, we Peace Corps Volunteers are happily clumped together in small clutches for safety’s sake and good reason, living the good S.L. life, and standing fast! I’ll send out more when we know something; I could be off until January or teaching this coming Monday. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and you enjoy the long weekend! We’ll be here in Kenema where it is easy to be Green.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Teaching 101
Quite a number of you have asked about the teaching aspects here in Sierra Leone and the truth is, we are still doing rather little of it. Coupled with the fact that we started the term over three weeks late, and that we are currently closed through the 26th of this month for the Sierra Leone presidential election on the 17th (which could very likely extend through the first week of January if there is a run-off; which is expected), and one scheduling problem after another, I have only met three of my five assigned classes thus far. So, what am I teaching you may ask? Here is my schedule this semester:
- LIT 331 – American/Sierra Leone Prose (Monday and Thursday @ 8:00 a.m.)
- LIT 441 – Euro-Western Literature Seminar (Monday and Thursday @ 10:00)
- ENGLISH LANGUAGE 101 (Tuesday and Friday @ 10:00 a.m.)
- ENGLISH LANGUAGE 202 (To Be Announced—not scheduled yet)
- LIT 631 – Cross-Cultural Literary Studies (Scheduled to meet on Bo Campus Tuesdays) and
- Chairing five doctoral dissertations
I’ve never taught anything even close to these classes before but it is refreshing to dig into new material and offer a fresh perspective on their tried and true courses. For example, after the first of the year we will be reading Pushkin’s poem “Eugene Onegin” in LIT 631 and then I’ll be showing them Tchaikovsky’s full-length opera of the same title on DVD. That’s not something anyone on the faculty here would have conjured, for sure!
What other challenges are there? Well, here is my class of first-year English students; by the way, Snake Man Musa (from last blog entry fame) is leaning forward in the front row with the white shirt.
Every time we meet, and this is true for all my classes, it is in a different room…that’s because there are no room assignments. It is first come, first served. You just go to the Faculty Building and hunt for your class or set it up to have one of your students call your cell phone and tell you where they have congregated.
In fact, this room on the fourth floor was totally empty when we arrived and, like little ants, the students, uncomplaining, went up and down the outside veranda hallway grabbing empty desks from other classrooms and dragging them in here. Once a room is found, there is the constant problem of no chalk or erasers and the chalk boards are generally plywood painted black so they are as rough to write on as they are to erase.
One thing that is very different from the U.S. is that Peace Corps hired me to be a lecturer. At first, I just thought it was the British version for the word “professor”, but here, they MEAN for you to lecture. I know Dave Brown is rolling his eyes…but it’s way they do it here! I am to present material for the entire class period and the students gladly take notes the whole time. After class, the students go back to their rooms in the hostels and assiduously study their notes in expectation of the final examination (the ONLY evaluation there is throughout the term). The truth is, I’ve got students in my classes that I know are not officially registered for class (we haven’t been issued class lists either) but if they make payment by the end of the semester, then and only then can they sit for finals!
Another unexpected snafu has been the expected difficulty of the students having no materials. As I mentioned early in this blog, they simply cannot afford to purchase books after they’ve strained their purse strings on tuition, room, and board. So institutionalized is this situation, we don’t even have a bookstore here on campus. So, how do they get books? Well, I won’t be tapping your own generous offers to donate funds across the sea. It turns out there are underground, duplicated copies of all the books we are to teach floating around and they just magically appear when needed. Along with the students sharing and some finding books on the internet for free, we’ll just have to see how this plays out as the term unfolds but so far, it’s working!
“I hate snakes…!”
…spouted Indiana Jones. Well, after today, I can only rejoin, “I’m not too fond of them, either!”
At the risk of portraying the Sierra Leone experience as predominantly a problem of critters, I must add this tale just experienced. I had finished my 8:00 a.m. lecture early (duh, how much can you say at that hour of the morning on any subject?) and had headed back to my bungalow for a second cup of coffee before my 10:00 a.m. class convened. I entered my porch, unlocked my kitchen door, and there, lounging in the window, was a four-foot green snake staring at me. Yes, I was to learn later that they are poisonous but my first reaction, the snake being rather far away, was to take a picture of it. I mean, he didn’t seem like he was going anywhere so I ran and grabbed my camera:
He flicked his tongue at me (I seem to remember that’s the snakey way of smelling) but didn’t move to attack me. The second thing I did was to call my friend, fellow lecturer, and hero, Philip Thulla, who did away with that black cobra over a month ago. Reticently, he agreed to come down the hill and see what he could do but, from the tone of his voice, I knew this wasn’t the way he wanted to start his day!
“Oooo! Dis na di problem-o!” he burst out in Krio. As quickly, he bolted from the kitchen, headed out the front door and deeper into our little university neighborhood and returned with a couple of boys who, “Aren’t afraid of snakes!”
Musa, taking charge, immediately asked if I had any Shell-Tox. “Are you kidding?” I gloated (I had just bought a back-up canister the week before…you can never have too much Shell-Tox). He ran into the kitchen and began to spray the heck out of the snake, who now opened his mouth showing his poisonous fangs. I quickly became overcome by the fumes and retreated to the living room to retch.
By the time I got back to the kitchen, Philip, with his ire up and manning a huge stick stolen from the neighbor’s fence, was madly whacking away at the crazed snake, now retreated into the back corner of a cabinet below my rather crude kitchen counter. He was able to injure it in a couple of places allowing them to fling it out onto the porch floor.
The snake, mortally wounded but still writhing, was whisked out the door with my trusty broom and here he is in his last breath. That leaf, by the way, is about nine inches long…
Musa lifted him onto the end of Philip’s big stick and was about to fling it into the bush behind my house but Philip convinced him to, “Put it where we can always see it…so we’ll KNOW it’s dead!”
Here is its final resting place, the result of a nice shot, some twenty feet in the air.
Just another dull day in Africa!
At the risk of portraying the Sierra Leone experience as predominantly a problem of critters, I must add this tale just experienced. I had finished my 8:00 a.m. lecture early (duh, how much can you say at that hour of the morning on any subject?) and had headed back to my bungalow for a second cup of coffee before my 10:00 a.m. class convened. I entered my porch, unlocked my kitchen door, and there, lounging in the window, was a four-foot green snake staring at me. Yes, I was to learn later that they are poisonous but my first reaction, the snake being rather far away, was to take a picture of it. I mean, he didn’t seem like he was going anywhere so I ran and grabbed my camera:
He flicked his tongue at me (I seem to remember that’s the snakey way of smelling) but didn’t move to attack me. The second thing I did was to call my friend, fellow lecturer, and hero, Philip Thulla, who did away with that black cobra over a month ago. Reticently, he agreed to come down the hill and see what he could do but, from the tone of his voice, I knew this wasn’t the way he wanted to start his day!
“Oooo! Dis na di problem-o!” he burst out in Krio. As quickly, he bolted from the kitchen, headed out the front door and deeper into our little university neighborhood and returned with a couple of boys who, “Aren’t afraid of snakes!”
Musa, taking charge, immediately asked if I had any Shell-Tox. “Are you kidding?” I gloated (I had just bought a back-up canister the week before…you can never have too much Shell-Tox). He ran into the kitchen and began to spray the heck out of the snake, who now opened his mouth showing his poisonous fangs. I quickly became overcome by the fumes and retreated to the living room to retch.
By the time I got back to the kitchen, Philip, with his ire up and manning a huge stick stolen from the neighbor’s fence, was madly whacking away at the crazed snake, now retreated into the back corner of a cabinet below my rather crude kitchen counter. He was able to injure it in a couple of places allowing them to fling it out onto the porch floor.
The snake, mortally wounded but still writhing, was whisked out the door with my trusty broom and here he is in his last breath. That leaf, by the way, is about nine inches long…
Musa lifted him onto the end of Philip’s big stick and was about to fling it into the bush behind my house but Philip convinced him to, “Put it where we can always see it…so we’ll KNOW it’s dead!”
Here is its final resting place, the result of a nice shot, some twenty feet in the air.
Just another dull day in Africa!
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Yeah, U.S.A.
I suspect that there is only one group of people just a smidgen less ecstatic about President Obama’s re-election than we Americans and that would be the people of Sierra Leone! I am in Bo today and was bargaining for a portable radio so I can listen to BBC all the time when the young man waiting on me baited me by asking if I had voted for president.
I excitedly told him, “I voted for Obama in late September! In Freetown. Before I came here to the south!”
He said, “But, he’s black!”
To which I replied, “Why should I care? He’s the greatest American alive today!” Then I began to cry for happiness! He gave me a huge hug and a 10,000 Leone discount!
Way to go America!
This and That
Well, the Dark Daze continue here but the good news is that the Vice-Chancellor has set in motion an initiative that will allow the Bo-Kenema Power Company to take over our power situation. I talked to him this morning and it looks like we may soon have 24-hours of electricity (er, that would be EVERY day) within the next few weeks. We are keeping our fingers crossed for successful connections! If that happens, I’d be able to keep a few beers in the fridge (cold) and have a modem installed at my bungalow with internet all the time! Why, I’d be able to start living large in Njala! There is a pot of gold at the end of our African rainbow after all!
We have been having all sorts of “rolling” storms, as they call them here, as the rainy season ends. They are incredible. You begin to hear rumblings of thunder and see clouds build in the east. It takes these behemoths hours to crawl across the countryside toward us with some missing and some hitting us. This was one that went to the south but caused a lovely rainbow. I took this shot just outside my porch door.
Out back I have a number of bushes that have these night-blooming flowers, one of which I caught just at sunrise. There is a triple bud in there and sometimes in the middle of night, the scent wafts in my bedroom window reminding me of the night-blooming cerius plants I left back at home. These are more predictable since there are almost always a few buds opening. Oh, and see the “nuts” that are there? I don’t know what they are, only that they are NOT kola nuts which is what I had initially hoped for! Some of you more “senior” folks might recall an old 7-Up commercial where Jeffrey Colder used to say in his deep resonant voice, “These are kola nuts…these are UN-kola nuts…” Well, whatever they are they are the Un-variety. Okay by me. I ate kola nuts in Freetown and they are terribly bitter. Their lure is in the high concentration of caffeine. Energy drinks, step aside. A kola nut gives you quite a rush! I’ll stick to coffee!
By the time you read this our president will have been re-elected…I hope, I hope. I voted for Obama back in September while still in Freetown but we have an election coming up on the 17th that proves to be just as close a race. What does it mean for us here in the bush? Well, Njala University has cancelled classes from November 10 through December 3 so students can migrate back to their homes to vote (and we can avoid any disturbances though they are unlikely to occur. I am glad they are playing it on the safe side in any event). We do have to make up these days at the end of the term and with the fact that if neither candidate wins a clear 55% margin, they will have to hold a run-off election which would delay classes even more! That potentially sets the entire calendar back by weeks.
So, as they work on the generators, we will go completely without power across campus for a week or two and, concomitant to that, there will be no internet, no students…just me and the neighbors…here is one munching in my front yard.
It’s likely you won’t hear from me until the first week in December when I will report on how the classes are going…or IF they are going! Yes, we struggle to get things started here!
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
We have been having all sorts of “rolling” storms, as they call them here, as the rainy season ends. They are incredible. You begin to hear rumblings of thunder and see clouds build in the east. It takes these behemoths hours to crawl across the countryside toward us with some missing and some hitting us. This was one that went to the south but caused a lovely rainbow. I took this shot just outside my porch door.
Out back I have a number of bushes that have these night-blooming flowers, one of which I caught just at sunrise. There is a triple bud in there and sometimes in the middle of night, the scent wafts in my bedroom window reminding me of the night-blooming cerius plants I left back at home. These are more predictable since there are almost always a few buds opening. Oh, and see the “nuts” that are there? I don’t know what they are, only that they are NOT kola nuts which is what I had initially hoped for! Some of you more “senior” folks might recall an old 7-Up commercial where Jeffrey Colder used to say in his deep resonant voice, “These are kola nuts…these are UN-kola nuts…” Well, whatever they are they are the Un-variety. Okay by me. I ate kola nuts in Freetown and they are terribly bitter. Their lure is in the high concentration of caffeine. Energy drinks, step aside. A kola nut gives you quite a rush! I’ll stick to coffee!
By the time you read this our president will have been re-elected…I hope, I hope. I voted for Obama back in September while still in Freetown but we have an election coming up on the 17th that proves to be just as close a race. What does it mean for us here in the bush? Well, Njala University has cancelled classes from November 10 through December 3 so students can migrate back to their homes to vote (and we can avoid any disturbances though they are unlikely to occur. I am glad they are playing it on the safe side in any event). We do have to make up these days at the end of the term and with the fact that if neither candidate wins a clear 55% margin, they will have to hold a run-off election which would delay classes even more! That potentially sets the entire calendar back by weeks.
So, as they work on the generators, we will go completely without power across campus for a week or two and, concomitant to that, there will be no internet, no students…just me and the neighbors…here is one munching in my front yard.
It’s likely you won’t hear from me until the first week in December when I will report on how the classes are going…or IF they are going! Yes, we struggle to get things started here!
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
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