“Because e no easy eh, ooooooo….”

Ok so this is another Sierra Leonean song (“E Nor Easy”) that sorta represents how things have been lately (and another personal favorite of mine out here…can you tell I like the local music?). The Peace Corps warned us that around 6 months many volunteers experience a dip emotionally, and that definitely has been true for me and some of my good friends here in Sierra Leone. It has been a combination of a lot of things. A lot of us have dealt with some minor but annoying health issues that make it just a bit harder to go about daily life. For me that coincided with running a little low on patience and resulted in a rough period of time. Luckily the term ended not too long after that and I headed out to In Service Training and then to Freetown to celebrate Christmas with some good friends at the beach out here…ya pretty much just in the nick of time. I feel like now I will be going back to my village rejuvenated and hopefully ready to keep on trying to do the best I can do out here.

So let me give you an update with school. I ended up dropping my 3 person SSIII Physics class (the students weren’t coming and we’re offering more classes than they had to anyway) and split my SSII Chemistry class into a more advanced 35 person class and a 60 person class that I move slower with. That strategy has worked fantastically for the 60 person class, and those students are much more engaged and focused in class and learning slowly how to actually solve problems. The advanced class has been acting out a bit and I think I will be working more on group projects and challenging questions with them to try to engage them better. Also the SSI students just came towards the end of the term (they had to wait to get the results of their exit exam from Junior Secondary School) so SSI will be really starting next term. I will have SSI Chemistry (which will be above 100 students) and SSI Physics (likely around 40). It will be a project for me next term to try to gauge the abilities and classroom management situation with that class and try to come up with a strategy for how to manage them.

Also next term I hope to be working on some other projects with my school. I want to slowly incorporate more labs into class and encourage other teachers to do the same. I also want to do a teacher training to help teachers know how to use textbooks as references and to write their own lesson plans. Besides that I am trying to start a girls football (soccer) team and help with the school brass band as time allows. And (you thought I was already busy enough right?) my students are starting correspondence with a school in Illinois through the World Wise Schools program, and I am working with other Peace Corps Volunteers to plan a girls conference for some of our most promising female students. Yeah its gonna be busy…My main focus with all of these projects is to help the school better utilize the resources it already has. One problem that most of the Peace Corps Volunteers have seen is that being in a post-conflict country that is now peaceful means Sierra Leone has gotten a lot of aid and international attention in a very short time period. It seems like that has encouraged a culture of asking for aid (whether monetary or resources from outside) without a lot of thought about whether or not those materials are needed, how they can be used, and who will help to sustain them. What people focus on is how to get more materials, not how to use what is already available. What a country like Sierra Leone really needs (or seems to need right now) is building up the capabilities of the people themselves, with specific emphasis on using the resources that are available in the country or can be sustained without additional resources. All this needs to be done in a way that encourages thinking and discussion about the country holistically, in terms of what type of country Sierra Leone is aspiring to be. The impression we get from people here is that they fully believe that America is a perfect place and exactly what they should aspire to as a country. I personally believe there are many great things about this culture and this country that would be lost in that process, but not a lot of higher level discussion is going on about where the country is going and what that means for the history and future of Sierra Leone.

Ok so I think you can see a bit of where my head has been recently. One thing that has been really valuable about the Peace Corps experience is that I’ve had the time (and just such a drastic change in lifestyle and surroundings) that I can think about big picture things in a way that I never could have if I had never lived outside of the United States. I can see the things that are not perfect about America, but maybe more importantly I can recognize the things I really love about American culture and see my own place in America more clearly. In case you’re wondering I’m still not sure what I will be doing after the Peace Corps but the picture gets clearer as time goes on.

I want to make sure to say that it hasn’t all been frustrations here (and honestly even those frustrations have been tremendous learning experiences). I’ve had some great talks over poyo (palm wine) and Guinness with the local Reverend Father, watched football (English Premier League, go Arsenal!) games with my Mende teacher and some other friends, attended a local dance put on for teachers after the term ended, seen some beautiful scenery (especially a great bike ride recently to Kenema for the day), sang and danced with the neighborhood children a lot(who a former PCV correctly said are the best and worst part of service!), and had some fantastic times with other Peace Corps Volunteers. I mean spending all of Christmas Eve at an empty beach in tropical Africa followed by Christmas lunch and drinks with the US Ambassador and his family? Yeah, things could be worse… :)

Ke ta mia [that is that],
Amanda