Leaving Sierra Leone

I know it's been a very long time (or as my Dad would say, "A helluva long time"), since I updated my blog. Several of you have even personally written me, asking for an update so here we go. If I get too long on this one, I will supplement it with Part 2.

First of all, Africa changes you. No doubt about it, my memories from Sierra Leone are strong and searing, and I am having some trouble adjusting to life in the developed world again. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First a few facts, since I have not written for several months, and many of you might wonder what has been happening in the interim.

In March, our temporary Ambassador left and the other OMS had already left, so that left the running of the Executive Office to the DCM and myself. We had already been without a Political Officer for many months, so the Embassy staff was getting thinner every day. I felt like an old-timer, as the only Americans who had been there longer than me were the Public Affairs chief and the Information Management Chief. Everyone else was new or had left the Embassy. That left a lot of work to just a few people. I worked overtime from January until the day I left. I actually worked six hours of overtime on Saturday and left on Sunday. I never got another chance to get out of Freetown, which I desperately wanted to do. Seeing only the capital city is not the best view of a country.

I took a trip to Dakar, Senegal in late March for a two day training seminar on our new Employee Performance software. I had to give a presentation for the whole class and it was very well received, which was rewarding. Tagged on to the end of that trip was a 5-day trip to England. (More on the special purpose of that trip a little later in this Blog...if I remember). I had to fight like crazy to get one day off (it was Easter break so we had two paid days off and the DCM did not want to give me the one day off to bridge the gap), but finally he blessed my leave. I think he realized how much effort I had given to the Embassy over the past months and the training was very important to the Embassy. In this OMS position, it's very clear that training is a complete luxury; especially at hardship posts and small posts and African posts--all of which applied to my particular situation. No hardship post can spare a person and no hardship post can afford to pay for training. Well, if you are in a different division, with different funding, then they throw money at you to attend training all over the world. I don't understand how the local Sierra Leone staff almost ALL attended training and I could not get any training at all. I guess that's just the way the system works.

After Easter, I focused completely on packing out my apartment and getting my office ready to hand over. My replacement was not going to arrive until after I had departed, so basically that meant I had to create new files for her, create a book of duties, clean out all my old stuff, pack my office stuff to be mailed to Germany, and fit all that in between packing boxes at home and working a full time job. It was a very busy and stressful time.

The best part of that time was having friends host going away parties for me. I had a "Pink Lady" dinner party with my running group (in which everyone had to wear pink clothes), a Pink Lady farewell cake at the last Hash run (the cake was almost the size of a banquet table and everyone loved it.....although the frosting has a very funny story attached. The frosting was bright pink and I had two giant pieces of the cake over the span of a couple of days. Apparently the food coloring in the frosting was quite strong and, well, believe it or not you can produce pink poop!) The Embassy staff was too busy and too preoccupied to plan a party for me, so I arranged my own. By the time I invited everyone, it was the week before I left and everything had been packed out of my apartment. Being so adaptable, having no dishes or plates or food, didn't stop me. I catered some of the food, used up the supplies in the pantry, gave away all my open alcohol and even was creative enough to use a pretty shower curtain as a tablecloth, since everything in the apartment was white and bare and the party needed some color. Everyone had a great time. I invited just the people who really meant a lot to me--including the local staff at the Embassy. I took lots of pictures, gave a speech and had others say a few words about me. It was very touching and I was not the only one who shed a few tears.

I left Freetown on a Sunday night at midnight. Well, the flight was supposed to take off at midnight, which meant I had to be picked up at my apartment at 7pm. Unfortunately, the computers and the air conditioning at Freetown airport both chose to go haywire at the same time, so after arriving at the airport at 8pm, I had to wait in sweltering heat until 2am for my flight to take off. It was not the ending I was hoping for, but it did give me a chance to call those people I never got a chance to say goodbye to in person. All part of the adventure.

I took a flight from Freetown to Denver to attend Angela's PhD graduation ceremony at UC Boulder. It was culture shock from the first minute I landed in the United States. I could not get over little things like being able to drink water from the tap and all the streets looking so clean and all the people appearing rich and well dressed. I could not get over all the shiny cars, the affluent society, the lack of diversity. It was wonderful to see my family (and my special significant other), and they helped shelter me from too much civilization. Good thing I was not driving a car at this time; in fact, I have not driven a car since I left Freetown. Wow.

I am now in Washington D.C. for German language training. Adapting to life as a student and life outside of Sierra Leone is a whole new topic, and worthy of a new blog, which hopefully will be forthcoming a lot sooner than the last one. More on that in the days to come.

For those of you who stuck with this long blog until the end, the trip in April to England at Easter was to meet the family of my very special new man, Lee. He has not specifically been mentioned in this blog before, but I want to say that we are very happy together and despite the calamity of distance and long separations, we are forming a strong bond. You will be reading about him in blogs to come, I'm pretty sure of that.

Hope everyone is well. Enjoy life, and no matter what, make the best of things. We only get one ride--make it a good one.

People Contact & The Ability to be Generous

I went home to the U.S. over the holidays for the first time since I arrived for my posting in May 2008. I had been to Thailand and England between then and now, but that was vacation and a totally different experience. It was quite amazing to be landing in New York on Dec. 16 and think to myself, "Wow, I'm in my home country." My first thoughts were of how organized everything looked--even from the air. The U.S. is patch-worked into these neat little boxes of industry and residential space and every square inch of land seems to be developed. In Africa, it's a hodge podge of development--if there is any development at all. Everything is disorganized and scattered and broken and dusty. The U.S. is gleaming and clean and sanitized. But that is not what this blog is about, really.

Over the holidays, I was surrounded by loving family and friends and I had a wonderful time. But I realized something. Apart from my family, I really didn't have much contact with any other people. I cannot tell you any funny stories about clerks in stores or random people on the street because I didn't have enough contact with them to remember them. It seems in the U.S. that people are pretty isolated from each other. Maybe it's because everyone has enough money to be self-supporting so people don't need each other. Maybe it's because Americans value their privacy and don't readily engage with people they don't know. Here in Africa it's totally different. I can tell you that even for a person like me who has only been here 18 months, I have lots and lots of people who know me and greet me every day. In the morning my housekeeper Mariama comes each day at 7:00. We discuss what will be prepared for dinner that evening and if I want to bring anything for lunch at the Embassy. Sometimes she even makes me breakfast (like crepes on the patio) before I go to work. I have human contact from a wonderfully warm person right at the start of my day. Today for instance, Mariama informed me that Adama--our good friend who had her first baby last Friday, was sad and hungry. Apparently the people she stays with have not been making meals and she does not have enough food to eat to make breast milk for the baby. I gave Mariama some money (about $8.00) and told her to take the day off and go to Adama's and cook for her. She later told me that she made food for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Quite a long way to stretch $8.00. I had the opportunity to be generous in a way that I never would have in the U.S. Adama called me later and thanked me over and over for my kindness.

On my drive to work, I know almost all the people who live on the roads I take. They all wave and give me a big good morning smile. Some of them even know my name. There is a group of ex-combatants (child soldiers from the recent civil war --who have grown into young men now) who live (probably more like hang out) on a stretch of road near a restaurant I frequent. Each time I drive by, they call out my name "Miss Becky" in excited tones and wave enthusiastically. I first met them through a Lebanese friend of mine who gives them a small bit of cash every now and again (about $2.50) and also gives them large bags of rice a couple of times a year. His father started the practice because the Muslim faith says you should help the poor. So now I help them too. I didn't really take much notice of their familiarity, but recently when I was driving by, I had a new Embassy employee in the car with me. When we drove past, they called out my name and waved wildly like they had just sighted a movie star and my new employee turned and said, "Does the whole town know you by name?" Not quite, but I'm working on it.

All this got me to thinking that it's going to be much different at my next post--Berlin. I'm going to be in the middle of a big city, I won't speak the language and I will be just another anonymous white person among a crowd of urban professionals. We will all look and act alike and no one will take much notice of each other. This is sort of the feeling I got when I was back in the U.S. I never thought of our culture as aloof before, but after being in warm, friendly, small-town Freetown, I can see the vast differences. I think I prefer it here. There is so much cultural diversity and people really go out of their way to be a part of your life--if you let them. I love it here and I'm really going to miss it.

Ramadan 9.23.08

One of the perks of this job is to attend events that I would otherwise never get a chance to do. Today our Political Affairs department arranged for us to visit a Mosque and attend a prayer service. We also distributed bags of food items for the people to utilize when they break their fast at the end of Ramadan; which will be in about 5 days. People who strictly follow the traditions of their faith are fasting and praying. Before taking this job, I really didn't have much experience with the Muslim faith. Ramadan means that for 30 days, the people fast from sun up to sun down. That means they don't eat or drink anything during those hours...for 30 days! They also give up alcohol, smoking, and sex (if they are not married). It's quite strict and since over 60% of Sierra Leone is Muslim, most of the people are in a state of prayer and fasting.

About 10 of us from the Embassy attended the service. It was voluntary, and I went because I have an interest in relating to other cultures and religions. I had visited a Mosque in Turkey, so I knew I had to cover my arms and legs. The organizer of the event wasn't sure if the women had to cover our heads as well, so we did not prepare for that. At the last minute she found out that the women needed to cover their entire head and hair, so we rounded up some pretty scarves from people at the Embassy, in an attempt to comply with the strict Muslim rules for modesty. We arrived at the Mosque and apparently our attempts to cover up were inadequate, so some Muslim women handed us beautiful black scarves that totally covered our hair, head and shoulders. We removed our shoes at the entrance. We were told there was a possibility that our shoes would be stolen while we were inside (they were not). The service began with prayers in Arabic, which of course we could not understand. We sat on the ground inside a cement building that was open on the side with windows; no coverings. The walls were hand painted with murals and designs; very elementary. There were prayer mats on the ground; basically thin woven mats that apparently stay in the Mosque all the time. We sort of crouched on our knees most of the time; occasionally getting up to stand and chant and then kneel back down again to pray and kiss the ground. This went on for 10 or 15 minutes. Now I understand why all non-Catholics complain about the standing-sitting-kneeling routine that I take for granted when I attend mass. It's one thing to do something out of tradition, but when you don't understand what's going on, it seems a bit strange to get up and down and up and down. The Mosque was not air conditioned and it began to get pretty hot. There were probably 300 people inside and it was quite crowded. I could feel the sweat trickle down my back under the two head scarves and the black sweater I wish I had not worn. After prayers, there was a speech by the Imam and then a speech by our Charge' de Affairs (my boss). Then we proceeded to hand out the bags of food stuffs we had prepared. The women were very orderly. They stayed seated, reverently, and waited patiently while we went around and handed them each a bag. We ran out of bags and we felt terrible! More people showed up than we expected. The women did not seem too upset; this is Africa and things in short supply are normal. Luck plays a big part in who survives here. The men, on the other hand, were a different story. I should mention that the men and women are segregated inside the Mosque. They enter by different entrances and they are separated inside by a low cement wall that has carvings carved into to it; so you can sort of see through the wall to see what's going on but you are segregated. The Imam prays to the men; the women are allowed to participate but the feeling is one of second-class citizen; at least that's my impression. I also noticed that the women have about 1/3 the physical space inside that the men have. Back to the food distribution - remember I mentioned that the women sat quietly on the floor while we handed out the food bags. The men stood up in lines and they were orderly at first. Later, as the food source dwindled, the men became aggressive. They began to push and shove each other for the bags. At one point, fights almost broke out and I could notice the level of danger rising. I felt uncomfortable - even behind the low cement wall. I was pretty astounded at the level of selfishness and greed that occurred inside the Mosque - a religious place where equality and harmony should reign. Again, this is Africa. I don't know if it was because food is scarce, or the men were overly pushy, but I remember clearly wanting to leave the scene as quickly as possible. We are trained in FS to remove ourselves from escalating situations of danger and this was quickly becoming one. We scurried out the back door to gather our shoes. We removed our lovely black scarves and handed them to one of the women who appeared to be an organizer at the prayer service. We headed back to the car to wait for the men, who exited from another part of the Mosque. Everyone was safe. On our way home in the car, the local radio station called our Political Officer (who was riding in the car with us) and asked for an interview. She answered the questions and another Embassy employee translated it into Krio, the local language. The interview was live, so in a way, we were all on the radio! All in all, the day was a rewarding experience and highlights one of the reasons I chose this job. The world is a big place; there is much diversity in people and religion and it serves me well to learn more about other people and places in hopes of uniting us by our commonalities and not dividing us by our ignorance.