Mek den try-o, leh den talk-o...

Wow I don't even know where to start...I can't believe its been such a long time since an update, and I'm sorry to those of you that have been checking this and seeing nothing for a long time. So let me try my hand at a brief update of why my life has been too crazy to be updating:

So I spent first term (Sept-Dec) planning for the first ever Girls Conference in Sierra Leone which was fantastic. I took 8 girls from my town and another volunteer's town to the conference where we focused on self esteem, empowerment, women's health, etc. I took part in sessions focusing on communication, making decisions, and brought a woman from my town who spoke at the career panel. It was seriously one of my favorite things that I've done in my 2 years here, and I bonded so much with those 8 girls. Totally worth all the work it took for us to make it happen.

My mom came to visit me in December (and went to the conference). We hung out in my town and frantically ran around trying to get her to meet everyone. Seriously, everyone. In 4 days in my town. Because if your mom comes to visit you in Africa all the way from America (and they will know from looking at her face that she's your mom) and one of your friends doesn't meet her, that is grounds for that person to be mad at you forever. That is if they actually held grudges here, which they don't. Unless it has to do with money or politics...Anyway so she saw my town and met my people, she attended the Girls Conference, we went to the beach in Freetown, and then went off to Ghana. Yep off to vacation in Ghana, which is the only time I'm leaving Sierra Leone during my time here (well I'm also planning a stop in Senegal on the way out). I decided long ago that I would not be able to deal emotionally with going to the western world while I was here, so a trip to a neighboring country seemed like a much better plan. We did a tour focused on wildlife, and it wasn't an East African safari, but it was pretty awesome.

In January after being back in Sierra Leone for only about 2 weeks I had the pleasure of having 2 more visitors. 2 friends of mine from UCLA came out to visit me for a week. This trip was much easier, because no one in my town could tell them apart from the regular group of Peace Corps Volunteers that are always visiting (unless they tried to talk to them). So I didn't have the crazy social pressure of running them around everywhere. Which was fantastic. They came during the beginning of second term and so got to watch me teaching and see what average life is like. Lisa is a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal and speaks a dialect of Fula pretty well, and there are Fula people all over my town, so she basically walked around showing me up everywhere. Which was ridiculous...it was really confusing for people in my town that she couldn't speak Krio, which is the broken English that is the lingua franca here, but could speak a tribal language 20 times better than me (my Mende is still a source of frustration, literally that language kills me).

So after they took off I was officially into second term, which is the busiest of all terms. Which means I was out in my village doing my thing week after week. I literally didn't leave Blama from the beginning of February until now. And that is actually a record for me. 2 months continuously in my town without a Peace Corps get together or anything. That is partly because I was busy with school and my crazy running schedule (signed up for the first official 1/2 marathon taking place in June), and partly because I'm finally fully integrated. Like now when something happens that is extremely frustrating, there's someone in my town I want to talk to and complain to and help me to deal with it, rather than calling (which hasn't been an option recently with increasingly bad cell coverage) or going to visit another Volunteer. Its hard to explain how much of a transition that is. That my first instinct is to go to a friend in my town or do something in my town to help me deal with my frustration, and that I'm not relying on Americans anymore to pull me through is a huge change.

That definitely goes with the fact that I'm much more comfortable in my life here, and now I'm having such mixed emotions about the fact that time is counting down so quickly. There are so many things I miss about America, but so many things I'm also afraid to go back to. Like people being so judgmental and so harsh. Or everyone being so busy and stressed all the time. Or how easy it is to be lonely in America. Or remembering how to do things like drive and leave voicemails!

So besides the usual craziness of Term 2 we also had "Sport" which is this huge Track & Field event. It takes place between different houses at the school (think Harry Potter) and I took on the job of training St. Paul's (Yellow House), mostly because people were talking all kinds of s*** about how Yellow House always comes last and I wanted to help those kids out (see the title of this blog. Its translated to "Let them try, let them talk" and was like a theme song for our house). What can I say, years of rooting for the Padres has made me an underdog through and through. In the course of training them I came to really like a bunch of the girls in my house that I was training. Seriously they were awesome kids that I never would have had the chance to get to know without Sport. So we went out to compete and the girls did great! And the boys didn't. But we were still in 1st after the first day thanks to some fantastic work by our girls, and to the shock of literally everybody in my town. And then by the end of the 2nd day we were last. And that was it...another last place for Yellow House. Some people say its because our boys performed terribly. But most people say its because people supporting Green House and Red House bribed the judges, because green and red are colors that represent the 2 main political parties (SLPP and APC) and this is an election year. That is very plausible (because of how politics and corruption are here) and impossible to verify. Which means I felt terrible when everything was said and done, and really felt like we should have pulled 2nd or 3rd. So I did what every good Sierra Leonean does, I walked all over my town talking to the girls that I trained and then I did the only thing that you can do to deal with things here...forget. Seriously there is no way to find out what really happened, so you just have to get over it. Which I did, slowly but surely...

So after all the Sport madness (which was March, you see why I've been so busy?) I had to Proctor the Chemisty lab portion of the WASSCE (West African Senior School Certificate Exam) which is the big exam everyone takes in their last year that is comparable to AP. So basically I had to prepare for a titration and a qualitative lab for over 100 students, most of which never came to class because they have already given up on Chemistry. Which I don't blame them for. Let me try to explain a bit. It is required by the WAEC (West Africa Examination Council) to take exams in 8 subjects. That's like kids taking 8 AP exams, which is unreal. To go to college you need to get credit in 5 exams. Most students choose 5 or 6 subjects to focus on that they think they have a chance to pass, meaning out of those 100+ students only 4-5 decided they wanted to try to do Chemistry, because everyone knows how impossible the Chem exam is. Which was not an especially exciting thing for me, since that's what I'm here to teach. But even though only 4-5 of them care, I had to prepare the lab for all of them, while still trying to teach those 4 kids. Awesome right? And all the time trying to contend with the fact that WAEC gives us a "confidential" to use to prepare solutions that students aren't supposed to see. But corruption is such an ingrained part of life here that a bunch of students were asking me for it (I didn't give it to them) and most of them got it from somewhere (which you could tell because they didn't perform the lab but were writing all kinds of things that you can't know without doing it or seeing the confidential). So after that I was exhausted and frustrated, so again what did I do? Be mad about it for the rest of that day, then start the business of forgetting the next day...

So there are definitely things about Sierra Leone that I don't love. The fact that politics is such a big deal that people would bribe judges in a sporting event that has nothing to do with politics, but just happens to have the same colors. That people would take those bribes in a minute. That I'll never know what happened and have no recourse except to console my girls and forget about it. That money and corruption are so rampant in the school system, and that the school system is put together so poorly that all of that goes uncontrolled. That there is no punishment pretty much for any wrongdoing, ever. That the school system being that way is a direct result of foreign influence.

But through all of that I'm actually stressed about leaving. I can't explain it really but I'm a part of this system now. My frustrations are frustrations of people that live here too. Its just my life now. And I'm gonna miss it. I'm gonna miss walking around my town talking to friends, going to shows, discussing all of the frustrations of life, listening to music, eating rice multiple times a day every day, enjoying the slower pace and richness of life here...

So I'm in Freetown for our COS (Close of Service) conference. Its the last time all the (remaining 34) Peace Corps Volunteers in my group are meeting together, so possibly the last time I'll see some of these kids, especially the ones that live far from me (both in Sierra Leone and America). Its also when we start talking about how to transition back to life in America and start thinking about the fact that this crazy journey is ending. Basically just another step in the ups and downs of Peace Corps life. Its been ridiculous, and I'm so glad I did it...