We've all been sick and really tired coming back from the village, so we decided to go to the beach for a night to get away. We plan to sleep out on the beach at Banana Island which is large and sandy. There are some straw huts that we can run under if it starts raining.
We got to Banana Island by cab. All eight of us are crammed into one cab. I usually end up in the front seat because of my size: the cabbies seem to always say, "You should get in front. You're big. You have long legs." Lucky for me, that's the only seat in the car that has a seatbelt. (But I think Sierra Leone has other pressing needs that need to be addressed before seatbelts.)
All the cabs are very very old, in fact I'm pretty sure part of the muffler of our cab came off during our ride to the beach. Part of that may be because the roads are just abysmal.
When we leave Banana Island, we will take another cab to Bonthe Island, where we will spend a few days. Bonthe Island is called "The Land That Time Forgot." It's a very old fishing village with rusty lamp posts and an old slave fortress.
While we are away from the village, we are working on our "Business Plan Competition," which is the process where different groups brainstorm about projects for the village (I talked about this in my last post). We can give up to 500 US dollars for each project that is selected. Again, the project has to be sustainable. The grant money is not a loan, but it needs to be 'payed back' in that it should generate funds to be used for the community. Each of us is giving $1000 of our stipend to fund the different projects. Part of this money will also be used for a small generator for the hospital. Those who use the generator other than the nurse will pay to replenish the fuel used; in fact the nurse said that if she uses the generator for a personal use, she will repay that amount of fuel. (Can you imagine in a US hospital or office having to repay the amount of electricity you use to keep the lights on at night when you're doing something of a personal nature?)
We had dinner with Ahmed Shetu, a friend of David's who works for CRS, and we talked to him about the work that we're trying to do. Regarding a potential agricultural project, Ahmed told us that it is great if you get people from a Farmer Field School to do demonstrations of more effective farming. The Farmer Field School sets up a sample plot and teaches techniques by doing a demonstration on that plot; they only ask for lunch that day as payment. For example, it is best to separate crops rather than throw all the seeds together. Still, Ahmed reminded us that it is one thing to demonstrate these methods and another to see if they are actually implemented long-term; one of the things I've come to understand (and NGOs and other service organizations struggle with this as well) is how little control I or anyone has over the long-term effects of any project.
Another potential initiative is to set up a seed bank in the village. Whoever borrows one bushel must give back a bushel and a half after harvesting, so that the seed bank will not only be sustained but thrive. A prerequisite for using the seed bank is to go for training with the Farmer Field School.
Sadly, it seems to be universal -- but in our village, there are five disabled members, and they feel very excluded and marginalized. This group of four blind people and one paraplegic is not an official group (like the women's group or youth group), but since they weren't being included in other groups (as Sparrow pointed out to us), we decided to talk to them separately. They said they are ignored and treated as if they are not part of the community.
One of the blind men, Abdulai, is especially brilliant and is fluent in English. I was able to have a good conversation with him. I asked him if he would be willing to speak up at the next meeting in front of the village and share how the disabled people feel excluded and how they want and need to be part of the community. Abdulai did this, and I believe the community responded, especially the chiefs, because the chiefs made an announcement asking for provisions to be made for the disabled members to be brought to meetings from now on. (Again, while this is wonderful, one never knows how things will play out long term.)
Overall, the fifteen days in the village were hard, but I look forward to returning and working with the community to pick the final projects and kick-start them. For now, I'm looking forward to basking in the Sierra Leonian sun and doing some reading. I've just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I loved! Now I am starting a Zecharia Sitchin alien-conspiracy-theory book I picked up for a quarter during my last summer in New Orleans. One of the places Sitchin talks about is Baalback, a place in Lebanon that I visited in March, with stones arguably too large to have been moved by ancient humans. (Moe's sister was at Baalback too and can't explain the stone thing, but she still thinks Sitchin is full of goat-poop.)
PS -- Each of us has gotten pretty serious intestinal issues at different times but luckily we are all okay. We were just trying to give those sick goats a run for their money!
PSS -- a long overdue map of Sierra Leone is at the top of this post -- you can see Freetown on the left, Bo in the middle, the Killhaun district where the village is on the right. Bonthe and Banana Island are on the bottom left coast.
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