Leaving Comments

It turns out that some of you may have been having trouble leaving comments on the blog. I have changed the settings so it should be easier now.
Cheers!

Some Pics!

I have managed to upload some photos! Yay!

                   


 The beach in Freetown (a long distance from where we are now)                                     










Our home in Kailahun



  

Our brand new hens living it up in "chicken palace". The one standing up is Penny. The other has yet to be named. No eggs so far but hope is not lost.

What am I doing here?

One of the questions that Matt and I least enjoyed answering before we left for Sierra Leone was, “What will you be doing there?” It was difficult to effectively respond to this question when we didn’t really know the answer.  We knew that we would be working for a local NGO and that I would be working on “budget monitoring” and Matt would be working on “women in governance” but what that meant exactly was rather unclear. We tended to fumble a half-hearted response and remind ourselves each time that “we should really come up with a better answer to that question!”Finally, after two weeks of “doing what I am doing” I can now (sort of) come clean about what I am up to.

The work I am doing is with a network of civil society organizations that monitors government activity in order to push for greater accountability in public service and development. My assignment is to support an investigation into health budgeting and expenditure as it relates to three main issues – 1) maternal health, 2) child health and 3) Malaria/TB/HIV/AIDS and other infectious disease.

Since 2004, many government responsibilities in Sierra Leone have been devolved to the district and municipal councils. Our report will be focusing on three districts and two municipalities which are the areas of operation for the network. Unfortunately, none of these districts is the one where I live.

Right now, my work consists mainly of gathering information and producing a literature review that will help guide the investigation. One of the biggest challenges to holding leaders accountable in SL is that it is often so unclear who is actually responsible for what. If we don’t know what someone is responsible for, then how can they be held accountable? In many cases, these issues have never been defined but even in instances where they are defined, it can be very difficult to get hold of the documentation that clarifies the matter.

That said, the situation of health services in Sierra Leone is so dire that there is a real sense of urgency in pushing leaders to do a better job. Sierra Leone is consistently at the bottom of the UN’s Human Development Index. A Sierra Leonean’s life expectancy is less than 50 and rates of maternal and child mortality are among the highest in the world. In Kailahun, where we are staying, the only hospital has no running water, restricted electricity and has limited, if any, regular supply of safe medications. Yet the district council recently purchased 12 satellite televisions for the hospital in order to “help patients feel better”. It is not hard to see that something is going wrong.

Another challenge to this work is that the network that I am working with, while passionate and serious about getting the job done, is lacking in resources and capacity. The work requires balancing the need to produce results while mentoring staff to be able to conduct this work on their own. Obviously this is even more difficult when I am not even in the same town as any of the staff and internet is completely unreliable if available at all. I definitely do not want to “do it for them” but time and resources to really make this a learning exercise are simply not available. I find myself in a rather uncomfortable situation of doing the work without passing on the skills. Hopefully this will improve in July when I am scheduled to meet with the team and begin travel to the districts.

  Updates on that are sure to come…..

A Culinary Challenge for You……

Now in Kailahun, we are starting to get settled into rural life and the joys and challenges of simple living. Since Kailahun is remote, by even Sierra Leonean standards, food supplies are limited and the vast majority of what people eat is grown within a short distance and sold at the local market. This is at least the case when it comes to fruits and veg. The limited supplies have presented me with a welcome* cooking challenge.

Since we have had some time to meditate on life (i.e. do nothing and do it slowly) and talk to the two other Canadians who have been here for 2 months, I have brainstormed a few ideas of things I could cook up. But then I thought- why do this alone? You could help me!

A challenge for you dear reader – I am looking for recipes/ideas of what I can cook and eat using what is locally available (listed below). If you would like to help me, please remember that recipes should be vegetarian and keep in mind that we have neither refrigeration nor oven (two gas burners are what do the trick). I am looking for “quick” fixes that would ideally keep well at room temperature for at least 2 meals. Dessert recipes also welcome!

Here are the ingredients, please leave your thoughts/ideas in the comments section:

Pineapple

Pawpaw (papaya)

Bananas

Lime

Oranges

Avocado (though less soft and creamy than the variety I am used to)

Plantain

White sweet potato (starchier than the orange variety and even potatoes)

Eggplant and a similar vegetable called “garden egg”

Okra

Onions

Garlic

Ginger (though sometimes difficult to find)

Fresh chilies

Tomatoes (not reliably available – a few small ones if lucky enough to find them)

Some dried beans though limited in variety

Rice

Groundnuts (peanuts)

Eggs

Dried Thyme

Bay Leaves

Tomato Paste

Pasta (sometimes in tiny little bags with 10 mini shells)

Bread (it’s pretty good)

Baking powder

Palm Oil

Salt and pepper

Thanks!

* Welcome or not the alternative is to eat at one of three “canteens” in town where the one meal on offer usually consists of dried fish, mystery meat and oodles of palm oil - actually relatively tasty but my vegetarian soul and western palate just won’t have it. 

We are HERE

I thought that my first post in SL would be all about first impressions and a general description of our whereabouts but first impressions are difficult to capture when you arrive in a haze of exhaustion following 20 hours of travel.

We arrived in Freetown airport on Sunday evening.  I am no urban planning expert but I do suspect that perhaps something went wrong when those in charge of establishing the airport set it across the bay from the capital city. To reach Freetown from the country’s only passenger airport can be done by water taxi, ferry or helicopter. Theoretically it can be done by road too but you would have to have your own vehicle and it would likely take you about 8 hours. The boat rides reportedly take anywhere from 1 to 4 hours and only travel during the day. We arrived at dusk and opted for the easily arranged and rather glamorous 7 minute helicopter ride. After two hours waiting in the airport - and despite the fact that it was “broken” when we arrived, the helicopter eventually whisked us off to Freetown where a car was waiting to take us to the hotel in the rain.

A funny thing happened in the airport that seemed perfectly normal at the time but now seems more extraordinary. While waiting for our transport, we started to speak to the woman who was sitting next to us. She was arriving from the UK but is a Canadian who grew up in Ottawa. It turned out that she and Matt went to the same high school and were only a year apart. If I hadn’t been so tired, I probably would have realized what a coincidence this was but instead I just shrugged - “small world”.

I fear that this post is a getting a little tedious – too much to cover and not knowing where to begin have conspired to help me produce a rather disjointed start but I promise more (hopefully) interesting and thematic posts ahead.

We are HERE – I think that was the point I have been trying to make. We are HERE!

Some things we now "know"

As soon as we found out we were going to Sierra Leone, Matt and I went into overdrive trying to learn everything we could about this country and what our time there might be like. We sought books, peaked at blogs, asked around and spoke to friends. Unfortunately most publications and stories about Sierra Leone refer mainly, if not exclusively to the conflict. While we do not wish to neglect the impact and the horrific legacy of violence and upheaval, we are trying to be more balanced and recognize that Sierra Leone is more than just the conflict. In that vein, here are some of the bits and bobs that we have learned:

• Sierra Leone is one of only a few countries with a population of rare pygmy hippos
• Leather rots like nobody's business in rainy season climates
• There are no ATM's  in Sierra Leone
• The beaches in SL are some of the most beautiful in the world and with few tourists, we could have them to ourselves
• Freetown was established as a colony for freed slaves living in the British Empire, many of whom were Black Loyalists from Nova Scotia
• More than one third of Sierra Leonians cannot read or write
• In the 1840s there was a higher proportion of children attending primary school in Freetown than in Britain