Our apartment in Freetown and living without power

We were lucky to find a nice clean, modern two bedroom apartment in a nice neighborhood. It only has the very basic furniture but it is enough. So far the only piece we have added is a desk for Bob. You can see though that it looks like we camping out as the only decoration so far is some of my pictures on the wall. Somehow I just have not had the energy to do anymore decorating. Unfortunately there are not a lot of beautiful things, other than cloth, to buy like you find in other African countries. Or maybe I have just not found the right places to shop. But the best thing is still watching the sunsets from our balcony!



One thing we still miss living here is not having reliable power. It seems to be a pattern that we have lights from about 7pm to 7am three nights a week. On those nights we run our AC and we sleep really well. On the nights that we do not have power we run our generator until the fuel runs out and that lasts about two hours, if we don’t run too many things, like the A/C or hot water heater. It is time enough to get our computers and cell phones recharged and if we are lucky enough, time to watch a movie. I have found some rechargeable lights that work pretty well to help provide light. But mostly we live by candlelight and have romantic dinners every night.



The other day I returned to the apartment and found only half of the lights. The first time that happened I thought it was a problem with the fuses and called the landlord to fix the electrical problem. Later the staff carefully explained to me that, yes, the national power company sometimes is only on “half” or phased power. The problem with that is that the refrigerator now didn’t work. And I have had enough problems already with food spoiling. It took another day, and it was a suggestion from one of our amazing taxi drivers, to figure out that we needed to move the refrigerator to another power outlet. Fortunately we just needed to move it across the room to work. But actually the fridge is pretty useless when it is only on, maybe 12 hours out of 48 as I have learned the hard way. Now we only cook enough for 1 or two days but that also means I need to shop almost every day. And I can’t buy any refrigerated items that I can’t finish in a day or two. This has not been easy for me to learn and so I have thrown out a lot of good food due to spoiling… and in a country where many people do not have enough to eat. Now today we learned that it was really an electrical problem within the building. So much for blaming everything on the national power company!!

Scholarships needed for these children

If any of you would like to help, these four children need scholarships in order for them to continue going to Cardiff Preparatory School.  Each term costs about $60 and there are three terms.  So I am trying to raise some money to keep these children in school.  They really love going to school. Anything that you contribute would go directly to paying their school fees.  The headmistress is a lovely person and she really tries to keep her students in school if at all possible.

Sarah (4) lost her mother and is now being cared for by her elderly her grandmother

Sarah playing with Jestina.

   Jestina (4) lost her father and her mother has a      hard time supporting the family.

Top: Isata  Kamara (fifth grade) comes from a very poor family where here parents break stones for a very meager living.

Bottom: Minkiale Barrie (5) lost his father and his mother has a hard time paying school fees.

Christmas program at Cardiff Preparatory School

As I wrote earlier I took pictures at a private school nearby called Cardiff Preparatory School. Since it so nearby I sometimes just stop by to say hello to Florence Kamara, the head mistress. She is really loving, caring person and so energetic. And the kids are always great. They come up to shake my hand or to give me a hug. They call me “auntie Betty”.

Today was their Christmas program. Christmas is a big holiday in Sierra Leone. People started wishing me Happy Christmas back mid-November. There are lots of carnivals and parties being advertised.

The program was supposed to start at noon. And I kind of thought that it would start late but then I thought if the parents were invited it might actually start on time. So I arrived at about 12:20 to find everyone still setting up. It was obvious it wouldn’t start for a while but I didn’t feel like climbing back up the hill to our apartment. And it was fun watching the kids run around waiting for the program to get organized. The ice cream man arrived and he must have sold a hundred or so small ice cream cones to the kids. That made for good pictures as you will see. So even though the program started late everyone was enjoying them selves and no one really minded.

All the desks from the classrooms were brought out into the schoolyard. A bamboo structure was partially built to give the audience some shade but it didn’t get finished. Parents, mostly mothers, started to arrive and still the program seemed a long way from starting. I got a typed program so I could see that a lot of thought and preparation had been made. There was a very scratchy, loud sound system with a DJ that played local pop music while things were getting ready. Finally around 2:30 it got started.

The program consisted of singing some very familiar carols, at least the words were familiar, but the tunes were not. The keyboard that accompanied the singing was hooked up to the sound system. So what would have been some lovely singing to listen to, because the students obviously loved to sing, was masked by a lot of static. The Christmas story was acted out and narrated by older students, all of whom performed with great confidence shouting into the microphone. The baby Jesus was a two-year-old boy who let himself be wrapped up into a white sheet and held by a young girl, playing Mary. The angel walked around in a blue choir robe waving his arms. But the most unusual part of the skit was the narration of Herod telling his soldiers to kill all the children less than two years of age. To act this out several girls were sitting on the ground with some dolls and some boys as soldiers attacked the girls snatching the dolls and acting like they were killing them. I know that is part of the Christmas story but I have never seen it acted out in our Christmas programs. So that took me by surprise.




All in all it was a very lively program, with all the students really participating with singing, acting and narrating. And they loved using the microphone, which was passed around to each performer.

The cutest part of the program, of course like all children’s programs, was when the nursery students sang and danced. Even two year old “Jesus” was up there holding the microphone and dancing.

And for the audience to show their appreciation for various performances there was a box placed on a small table in front of the “stage” where people could come up and throw in money. Mothers were especially appreciative when their children performed well. This is a way for the school to raise extra funds.

All in all this event seemed to really tell me a lot about Sierra Leonean culture and to note the differences to the way we do things. In this school many of the students are Muslim yet they were acting out a Christian story and for the most part Christians and Muslims are very tolerant of each other here. Also, though what I saw seemed to be total chaos, in terms of getting the program started, it was well planned out judging by the printed program and later the program itself. And everyone really enjoyed themselves in ways I don’t think you really see in our Christmas programs. The programs here are definitely livelier for both the students and the audience. And the acting out of the King Herod story, though very violent in my way of looking at it, is part of the story and it isn’t ignored.

So four hours later I was back home in our quiet apartment ready to watch another beautiful sunset. It’s hard to get the Christmas spirit without some cold weather. But we are heading to London soon and I am sure then we will wish we were back here!!!!

Getting a mosquito net

Getting a mosquito net and frame for our bed turned into a major project taking about 10 days to get in place. And though it seemed really tedious and frustrating if I tried to do this in the USA it would also not have been that easy and would been a lot more expensive. It’s like you can do most anything you want here but you just have to be a little more creative.

Even though we live on top of a hill and we get some good breezes we still have been having a lot of mosquitoes. It got really tiresome to always burn coils and after awhile the fumes were starting to get to us. Our neighbor has a really good design for a canopy frame around his bed and a mosquito net to fit over it. So we decided to copy his design. So off we went to a nearby carpenter to have the frame made. The carpenter did not understand what we wanted, even with the drawing that I had made. He said he understood but he really didn't. Finally I made a model of the frame from rolled up paper, which helped him visualize it, and he started getting together the poles to make the frame. It took several trips to finally get what we wanted. And the last time I went back I found that he had actually made almost enough pieces to fit frames for 3-4 beds all in different stages of completion.

Communication is really difficult especially since we don’t know Krio. Fortunately the carpenter was nearby so I could get there with a local taxi and even walk if I had to. This last trip I could see that he finally had something that we could work with and so I just stayed there until it was finished. Then the pieces of the frame were too big to load into a taxi so I hired two young boys to walk them to our place, about a mile. On the way with the boys a policeman started hollering at us from the security gate of the Presidential Lodge (like our White House) because I had walked on the road leading to the gate. It seems that this is the Procession Road that only the President’s motorcade can drive on but there wasn’t any sign to inform me of this. I had to go up to the guard's gate to see what was the matter. He was really angry with me and I was pretty uncomfortable as he harangued me for several minutes, suggesting that he could arrest me. I kept saying I was sorry and I didn’t know that I couldn’t walk on that road. So I was kind of shaky as I left to finish the walk home. I also didn’t want to get the two boys into trouble because they had followed me. Anyway we got back to the apartment without further incident and we were able to get the pieces of the frame inside. Fortunately we were able to fit the frame back together around the bed.

Now we had to get a mosquito net to fit the around the frame. Farah, our taxi driver (or our personal assistant as I like to call him as he does so much more than just drive us around), took us to a place to have a mosquito net made. Unfortunately though the tailor was cheap he got the dimensions wrong and made it too small. Also his shop was in the market area where we had to park a long way away and walk to it. At that time that was very tiring for me. Fortunately I had Farah go back and pick it up by himself so I didn’t have to go again. So now we were ready to put it over the frame and though it fit the frame the net was not long enough. The idea is to make the net so long it that it bunches up on the floor and prevents from mosquitoes from coming in under the bed into the enclosure. So we had to go back to the shop downtown and go through this whole thing again but, at least this time, he only had to add some additional cloth to the bottom to make it long enough. And each time I had to pay a bit more for the guy to buy more material and also pay Farah for his time to take me there and pick it up when finished. So what was only going to cost about $8 ended up costing several times more in money and time. But now that it is finished it is so nice! Well, but it wouldn’t win any interior decorating awards! When we crawl into bed it’s like entering a safe cocoon of white gauze. Fortunately we live on top of a hill where we get some good breezes because, though a net is safe and cozy, it can also be oppressively hot. And that’s why a lot of people here don’t use them and risk having malaria frequently.

Now I think I will have a canopy cover and matching bedspread made from some the beautiful tye and dye fabric that they make here. Explaining the canopy top to a tailor might take some time but it would look really nice. Maybe that would win me some interior design awards as well!!!!!

Cardiff Preparatory School Visit

Cardiff Preparatory School
As I started to get back into the world of photography I decided to start with a local school, the Cardiff Preparatory School that we drive or walk by every day. The children’s school uniform is hot pink shirts with black slacks or skirts. And most of the school’s buildings are painted pink. The head mistress said I could take pictures but since it is a private school she also hoped I could help with some assistance for the school. The school consists of a nursery and six years of elementary school. Though the nursery is very crowded and confining for the little ones with more than 40 students aged 3-6 the other classes are relatively small in size. They go to school from 8 to about 2:30 with the nursery ones leaving at 12:30. This is in comparison to most government schools which have class sizes of 40 or more and either go in the morning or afternoon for about 4 hours a day. And since for very little money you can send a child to school I said I would try to help. So I am hoping I can interest some of you in helping to sponsor some of these children…but more about that later. I had a great time taking pictures and fortunately all my back pains seemed insignificant. The light was really lovely and the children seemed to be eager learners. Several days later I took my computer back to the school to show what I had taken. The students had a great time seeing themselves in the pictures as you can see.

Obama fascination continues

Meanwhile the Obama fascination goes on. Lots of people are buying Obama T-shirts, you see lots of car stickers, and you can buy Obama posters like the one shown. I bought one for Bob and he loves it. It is very amusing because of all the mistakes on it, i.e. McCain is spelled Mac Caine and Harvard is spelled Harvald. People still yell Obama to us as we walk through out neighborhood. Today I found a shop selling Obama t-shirts. The women are from Sierra Leone but they live in the USA. They had a good idea to buy all sorts of Obama items to sell in Sierra Leone and they are doing a very good business here.

Former Sierra Leone Child Soldier tells his story

Former boy soldier in Sierra Leone tells of ravages of war
Samara Kalk Derby
December 9, 2008
After escaping the war zone that was his country, former child soldier Ishmael Beah, now a best-selling author, had forgotten many simple things.
"I had forgotten how to sleep. I had forgotten how to trust people. I had forgotten how to be happy. I had forgotten how to sit in one place more than a few seconds. I was very restless," the Sierra Leone native told a near-capacity crowd of more than 1,000 people Monday night in the Wisconsin Union Theater during his Distinguished Lecture Series talk.
Adding to the problem, he said, was that he was withdrawing from the drugs that he was forced to use -- marijuana, amphetamines and a mix of cocaine and gunpowder, according to published accounts.
Sierra Leone's civil war lasted between 1991 and 2000. Beah lost all four members of his immediate family, his mother and father and both his older and younger brothers. He was conscripted into the war at age 13.
Beah, now 28, fought for almost three years before being rescued by UNICEF. Originally from the countryside, in 1998 he fled the capital, Freetown, and made his way to New York City, where he lived with Laura Simms, a Brooklyn-born white Jewish-American who became his foster mother.
In New York, Beah did two years of high school at the United Nations International School. He went to Oberlin College and graduated in 2004 with a degree in politics.
In 2007, he wrote "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier," which Time magazine described as a "breathtaking and unself-pitying account of how a gentle spirit survives a childhood from which all innocence has suddenly been sucked out. It's a truly riveting memoir."
Scott Straus, an African international relations and human rights professor at UW-Madison, who introduced Beah Monday night, called "A Long Way Gone" an "absolutely fascinating and important book about his experiences in a civil war that destroyed Sierra Leone."
Straus said that in a decade that saw many civil wars around the world, the war in Sierra Leone and its neighbor, Liberia, was one of the worst.
It's "a war that defies our imagination as we sit here in this room in Madison," Straus said, adding that "ordinary people can come to do horrible things to each other."
When he first learned about the war in 1991, Beah said he couldn't believe what he was hearing from people in the eastern part of his country: How their families had been killed, their houses burned, and their children dragged into the fighting.
"We couldn't believe it because we grew up in a society that had such a respect for human life. And we couldn't believe that this was possible until the war actually reached us," he said.
He began to see women carrying their dead children on their backs, he said. He began seeing people who had been struck by stray bullets on various parts of the body. The river where he used to swim had dead bodies floating in it and was filled with blood.
Before the war, the innocence of children was celebrated, Beah said. But after the war started, children became deeply feared. Children were sometimes forced to kill their own family members as a way of indoctrinating them to the violence, he said.
"Once the war reached us, we went straight from being children to being adults. We had to determine which way to run and how to save our own lives."
Beah said he learned to go hungry from days without eating.
He and some friends went to a military base, thinking it would be the safest place to go. But instead it was where they were forced to become soldiers. They were trained in less than a week and learned how to shoot AK-47s, he said.
Besides the coercion and the drugs that were forced upon him, there was also the rhetoric of revenge, Beah said. He was told that the rebels were responsible for what had happened to him and that by going after them and killing them it would prevent what happened to him from happening to other children.
"At that point I believed this tremendously," he said.
In the beginning it was difficult to function as a soldier, Beah said. But as time went on it became normalized. He and his fellow child soldiers lost the ability to experience human emotions, he said.
"It was either kill or be killed, even by your own commanders," he said.
One of the things he wanted to do with the book was write about how he felt while he was in the war, not how he felt about it afterward.
"Because I wanted people to come to this landscape to see, hear, smell and be a part of the experience," he said.
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