through all distance and fear

a sad day in freetown

2010-03-14T06:55:00.002-04:00

after FIVE years with WMF in freetown, faye is shipping out tonight. i've known about this day for a long time now, but it really seems to have come too quickly. i'm excited for the adventures that await my friend, but i am heartbroken all the same. faye unexpectedly became a very pivotal friend in my life. her loyalty is unmatched, and i will miss her dearly.

the photo is of us on halloween (obviously), she is a flapper and i am carmen miranda (obviously). a lot of fun memories with this pretty lady.

so, as faye departs, i am faced with a new responsibility to communicate. my aunt jamie sent an e-mail to faye requesting that she urge me to start writing on my blog more often. without faye writing about it, how will my family ever know what is happening in my life?! and maybe faye has a few friends who would still like to know what is happening over here... i guess i owe it to you all to speak up every now and then.

so that is what i hope to do. i think i can spare an hour a week to make it happen.

be thinking of faye as she makes her transition. it will be a big one!

a song for... someone who needs somewhere... to long for.

2009-11-16T13:19:00.006-05:00

things are going pretty well around here. see faye's blog (link in column at right) for some exciting info about a property we are going to rent. it is so great! we're all pretty pumped about that.

i was just looking at some photos taken by my friend courtney (link also to the right), and her creativity is contagious. so i felt inspired to write something down. not really anything too significant or insightful. just something. so here i am.

i guess that one thing i am realizing lately is the degree to which freetown has become my home. it honestly makes me a little uncomfortable. i mean, i still long for my own culture, and don't feel totally at ease in this one. but this is my life now. and as much as i want to go back to that other world a lot of the time, i'm no longer sure that it will feel completely right either. i have planted a piece of my heart here and i know that when i leave, whenever that time comes, i will feel a profound sense of loss. my home will always be across the ocean, no matter where i am.

that sounds so depressing, but that isn't really how i mean it. i think i am one of the lucky ones... to have so many people and places that do feel like home. i mean, maybe different parts of me have different homes. and so wherever i am, a part of me is in the right place... goodness how i ramble. i'm sure there will be a lot of INFPs commenting on this post. everyone else will just have to shrug it off.

moral of the story: being homesick means you have someplace to miss, something to long for. and that means that you have lived and loved well. can't be sad about that.

say my name.

2009-09-08T18:38:00.004-04:00

my top ten favorite ways to hear my name pronounced in freetown:

10) "stee-fa-nee"
9) "stef-nee"
8) "stef-een"
7) "stef-inn"
6) "stef-ann"
5) "stef-ayne"
4) "stef-ling"
3) "steev-een"
2) "wayt gyal"
1) "faye"

have i mentioned that everyone thinks i'm faye? she hasn't lived in my house for almost 2 years, and people on my road still call me faye. tonight one of the girls who i buy fruit from (nearly every single day) called me faye while i was walking home. as usual, i didn't have the energy to explain that i'm not faye, but yes i know faye, no she's not my sister, no i'm not chinese, yes i will see faye tomorrow, yes i will greet her, etc... so anyway, i just said hi and kept walking. then i heard a boy voice say to the girl "that's not faye, that's steph." the girl disagreed. a loud debate ensued. back and forth. faye. steph. faye. steph. i'll clear it up tomorrow.

i told faye she needs to come visit so people will see her and think "oh. THAT ONE is faye." but i don't really think it will help. once i was planning to meet faye at her house and when i got out of my taxi, i could see her walking up her street just about 20 yards ahead of me. one man watched her walk by, and then when he saw me he looked back in faye's direction, and back to me, and then to faye... puzzled.

in other news, i got a desk today! somehow i think this will help me be more organized, but that is probably not true. it will at least keep me from doing work while sitting on my bed. that was getting old and wearing out my matress since it was being used as a bed and a desk... and i admit that i often sit on my bed for meals too. so now i have TWO pieces of furniture to use! livin' large.

2009 in photos - july

2009-08-30T15:07:00.006-04:00

in july i took a road-trip to savannah, GA to see my friends rachel and bobby get married! i rode down with melissa and jason and we had a grand time listening to 80's music and some favorite disney tunes, and talking/crying/hoping about relationships and life as grown-ups. melissa is a marriage and family therapist, jason is a clinical counselor, and i am thinking about being an LCSW someday, so we all thoroughly enjoyed the freedom to be honest and the freedom to analyze each other. :)

but seriously, the ride down to GA was only the beginning of one of the most fun weeks i've had in a long time. we all stayed together in one huge house, and while savannah is a really cool and interesting city, i mostly enjoyed the time spent at the house entertaining each other with corn-hole, flip-cup, and evenings on the dock watching the boys try to catch some sort of seafood. my camera stopped working right before the wedding, so i have no photos of the actual event, but this one is a good summary of the week... beautiful friends, many reasons to celebrate (the wedding being highlight!), freedom to be ourselves, and a bag full of food.

i love my friends. i have the best friends all over the place. if you are my friend and you are reading this, no matter where you are and how i know you: i love you and i thank you. :)

2009 in photos - june

2009-08-29T20:17:00.004-04:00

this unflattering photo (thanks for the warning, mom) was taken in saint pete beach, FL during the weekend of my cousin brad's wedding. 9 of us flew down together which was a bit like a national lampoons short film (thank you tyler and best-supporting actress, grandma dottie), but we did all manage to make it there and back so we can laugh about all of the drama now.

one of the highlights of the summer was getting to spend so much time with my brothers. it is kinda awkward to get to know each other as adults since i've not really lived at home in so long... sometimes frustrating, but mostly fun. tyler and i are suprisingly alike (except i have a better sense of style), and one of the things we enjoy doing is forcing the myers-briggs test onto others - infp's can't help ourselves. actually, i don't really do it so much anymore, but tyler has recently fixated so i join in to support him and help him hone his skills. :) we had a really fun time trying to figure out nate, who refuses to be figured out... he's not a big fan of being boxed-in and labeled (typical isfp). except in his unflinching love of all things larry david - which is especially funny since he's kinda like kramer. i think that i could write a sit-com based on members of my family. i'll save that for another blog. someone remind me if i forget...

2009 in photos - may

2009-08-29T19:56:00.004-04:00

did you know i make the rockin' world go round? at least that's what freddie mercury told me...

this picture was taken in montreux, switzerland which is on lake geneva. faye and i visited there one afternoon with some of our new friends from l'abri. i took a lot of amazing pictures that day with gorgeous mountain views behind bright spring flowers... but THIS is what we call random, so it made the blog.

apparently mr. mercury made montreux into his second home, and who can blame him!?! switzerland is easily the most picturesque place i have ever visited. i wouldn't say it is the most beautiful in the greater sense of the word -but it is impossible to take a picture that does not look like it belongs on a postcard. and montreux is like a wonderland - a wonderland that my wallet could only afford to spend one afternoon in. all the same, i would visit switzerland again in a heartbeat. highly recommended.

2009 in photos - april

2009-08-29T19:29:00.004-04:00

in april i visited the WMF field in romania. all of the WMF sierra leone staff were supposed to go, but there was a visa issue for our sierra leoneans, and so they couldn't be with us. those of us who were able to go tried to represent the gang as best we could. it was a big dissapointment for everyone that things didn't work out as planned, but we did enjoy our time in romania. i laughed a lot while i was there.

this person helped! this is my new friend john koon. a fellow ohioan (from bexley, as you may have guessed from this classy display), he works with WMF in galati and hopes to move to moldova soon. i'm about to use a lot of names that you don't know, but try to follow me... the story behind this picture is that rachel borrowed this highlighting cap from anna. when rachel returned it, anna ended up carrying it around in her purse for a few days until she discovered it while we were all at dinner. naturally, she put it on her head. and naturally, we all laughed. next, anna's husband paul decided to wear the cap, and we laughed even harder. then, it got passed on to john, who really stole the show. i laughed until i cried. of course, the cap was passed on down the line to me, where the game died. i just couldn't follow that act.

2009 in photos - march (but not really)

2009-08-29T19:12:00.003-04:00

apparently i didn't take any pictures in march... so here is a picture of my beautiful friend allison when she visited in december. we went to the beach by boat with some of my friends on christmas day, and we came back to the city as the sun was setting. very nice memory. having one of my best friends here for the holiday was the best gift ever! i will never forget it.

allison got married on august 1, and i couldn't be there, but i thought of her all day. funny enough, i was at dinner with some friends on her wedding day, and they asked about her and how she was doing. i looked at my the time on my phone and said "she's a married woman now. let the dream die." :) congrats allison. love you lots!

2009 in photos - february

2009-08-29T19:00:00.005-04:00

quite a while back, chris started inviting the lighthouse peeps to the beach every saturday morning to play ultimate frisbee. it used to be football (soccer to the americans) but i think they were ruining the balls every other week, so that got kinda expensive after a while... anyway, at first the kids weren't so sure about the whole frisbee thing. but once they got the hang of it, they were addicted. so now they go every saturday unless it is pouring rain.

i don't play sports with the boys because they think of me like a sister, but our mom isn't around to tell them not to hurt me... get the point? they are what we might call "competitive" and also what we might call "much stronger than this wimpy white girl." anyway, i never used to go, but in february i started to. i just watch and enjoy being by the water and hanging out with the kids who aren't playing. this picture was taken one saturday, and i will not name the kid, but i will tell you that he is one of my favorite kids on the planet earth. with that said, many of you will know who this is. isn't he a heart-breaker!?!

2009 in photos - january

2009-08-29T18:48:00.003-04:00

we had visitors from WMF romania in january, and they helped me celebrate my birthday! this photo was taken in a poda-poda on my last day as a 27-year-old. we were on our way to the best beach in the world (river number 2!!!) where we enjoyed pepper chicken a-la-florence and chocolate cake. :)

pictured left to right: poda-poda apprentice, cami's neck, chris, aunty sally, george, noah, david, faye's forehead, me. unpictured: erin, keyara, florence, lenuta, magda, fanel, and poda-poda driver.

staring blankly again...

2009-08-29T18:21:00.002-04:00

i felt the urge to write something today, but now i'm staring at the screen again. hmmmm.

i guess i'll just tell you what has been going on since i returned to freetown. this is what i just wrote in my board report that was due this week (it can only be a maximum of 2 pages, so this is a pretty brief synopsis);

I returned to Freetown in mid-July after 3 months away from the field. We left for camp 4 days later and I spent the week dealing with the most intense culture-shock I’ve ever experienced. The following week we did a work-project with a church in Kroo Bay, and it was so fun that I wish we did it every year. And after that I had exactly 2 weeks to get my ducks in a row for the Servant Team who arrived on August 16. They are a great group and are adjusting very well. They have been very giving and very entertaining already.

so that's what has been going on for the last 6 weeks. busy busy.

i wish i had something interesting to say... this post was boring for even me. sorry. more soon!

words and words and fish-balls

2009-08-23T15:58:00.003-04:00

i promise you i go to this blog at least every 2 weeks, open a window for a new post, stare at it for a few minutes, and tell myself i'll write another time. i don't know what it is, but i just find myself without words. always without words. i still love writing, but there has been some sort of block on my brain for the last year... don't worry, there is still plenty going on up there ;-) i'm just not finding the words to let it all out. and when i do find words, i'm not usually willing to share them. i don't know...

i actually think that this is good in some ways. i kinda feel like i used to write for validation as much as for any other reason. i wanted to be affirmed for what i was doing, wanted people to know i was smart, wanted people to hear all of the important things i had to say. i don't feel that way about my words anymore. i really don't. i think i have lost my pretense in my old age. i don't care so much what people think about what i'm doing. i don't think i'm all that smart. and i don't think i have anything to say that is more important than what anyone else could say about life, love, God... we're all just doing the best we can in the place where we find ourselves. i guess the "place i find myself" might seem a bit more interesting or exotic than the mid-west, but after 2 years in freetown, it mostly just feels like the city where i live. the things that used to seem so foreign that i HAD TO write about them are no longer so shocking... i'm sure if i wrote them down they would get a laugh, but honestly, i don't even notice the chickens in church, or the watchman peeing off of my veranda in the mornings. i guess my indifference is as funny as the thing itself, huh?

i'm quickly approaching my 2nd anniversary with this crazy city. i can't believe it! time seems to have flown by, but i know that i am a much different person than i was when i arrived. this makes me happy and sad in the same moment. while i have grown up and matured in so many ways that i probably can't even name them all, i know that i have sacrificed a great deal of my idealism to this place. freetown isn't kind to dreamers. i do believe that this place could use a few more hopeful people to believe in its potential, but being one of those hopeful ones often feels like a willful plank-walk. you believe because want to, but you know - save a miracle - it isn't going to get you anywhere good.

like i said, a lot has changed in the last 2 years. maybe that is why i have had so much trouble with words. you kinda have to know what you think about something before you can tell anyone what you think. one of my very most favoritest books is "till we have faces" by c.s. lewis. the climax of the book comes to mind now;

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

i do hope to find ways to say what is going on. and i hope that writing it all down will help me remember the things that do make this season of my life so interesting and valuable. there is no time like the present, right?! i want to hold it with 2 hands, look it square in the eye, and find the lessons and laughs that wait for me here. thanks for continuing to check in on me. i'll try to come around this page more often ...

one short story, just for a laugh: my third servant team arrived last sunday and we've spent this week roaming the city and having lots and lots of orientation meetings. yesterday we made lunch at my house and one of the guys was asking about something that he ate the night before with his host family. he said that they had a variety of fried things - fish, chicken, plantains, dough balls - with a spicy sauce over it and it was all really good. i told him that meal is aptly named fry-fry and is one of my favorite meals here. (you know what i health nut i am...) he was unsure of something he ate and described that it had a meat-like texture but tasted like seafood. i asked him if it was shaped like a ball. he said yes. i told him it was probably a fish-ball. he looked suprised and said "really?! but those were some pretty big balls for a fish!"

he was serious. i still can't get over it.

to sum up an entire year...

2009-03-24T15:19:00.002-04:00

...would be impossible. but, i am making an honest and zealous attempt to jump back into the blog world. i realize that people kinda wonder if i'm still alive when i don't tell them that i'm still alive. so i'm going to try and let you in on my world on a regular basis again.

so, in honor of my return, i gave the blog a face-lift. one reason for my long absence was that i really truly don't know what to say most of the time. everything feels heavy and very difficult to communicate. i feel like freetown has changed me- so much sometimes that it feels a bit misleading to still be called 'stephanie', you know? so while i'm not about to go through the hastle of a legal name-change, i thought it would be appropriate to rearrange my little corner of the WWW.

the poem that you now see at the top of my page is a relatively new favorite. i have kristina and ben to thank for it. they were members of my first servant team (could it really have been a YEAR ago???) and they gave me a letter with this poem before they left freetown. it was like rilke (and kristina) had read my soul. and each time i read the words, it resounds deeply in me. so i thought, why not name my page after it?

i am the dove outside. i hope that my won-back heart can be satisfied: free through all it has given up. my soul fills my chest differently now - heavier by the weight of where i have been...

things i should and shouldn't tell you

2008-01-22T04:06:00.000-05:00

the boss of one of my friends here is a lebanese Christian who thinks that all american missionaries work for the CIA. that's right. i am the jason bourne of freetown. anyway, shortly after he made this accusation i signed in on facebook and most of the adverts on my page were in arabic and i had invitations to join some lebanese political groups. so i was like, "oh yeah? who's the spy now?!?" and sometimes i jokingly call my lebanese friends "terrorists." just in jest. it's light-hearted fun. well, 2 minutes ago when i checked my blog, the page was in arabic. yeah. saw the 2 boxes where you are supposed to put your sign-in name and your password. but i, of course, put them in the wrong places because, well, arabic goes left to right. so i tried again, and then once i signed in i saw english... anyway, it looks like my cover is blown and now they're just messing with my head.

okay so, here are some stories that i swore i would never tell my mom, but now that they are in the distant past, i think they're are slightly amusing. sorry mom.

a few months ago was supposed to go out to one of the refugee camps with florence and erin. the day kinda boxed up and we left a bit later than we planned to, and i hadn't had time to eat all morning. we had to take one kind of transport to get to another kind of transport and florence kept telling me i needed to eat something, but i'm stubborn and i kept saying i would just get a plate of rice once we got to the camp since we were already late. this was right when it was getting really hot after the rains ended, and the sun was in full force. we ended up sitting in traffic for over an hour without moving a mile, and by then it was too late to go to the camp since we wouldn't get back until late and the east end of the city isn't somewhere you really want to be late at night. so we got down from the bus and started walking back toward town. i needed to stop at a friend's shop to pick something up, so the girls came with me. as soon as we reached, i started to feel sick. i told erin i needed some water and i sat down. then my friend looks at me and says "oh no. what's wrong with you? you're yellow!" so i ask to go to the bathroom. he shows me to the back of the store. i enter the bathroom, the room starts to spin, i think i'm going to die, i leave the bathroom because i don't want to die alone, i fall down in the hallway, lay there for a minute while everyone runs to see what happened, i gain enough strength to run back to the bathroom and throw up, then i started to feel better. they force-fed me 2 candy bars and 2 liters of water before they let me go home. so... the moral of this story is, you are never too busy to eat when it is 95 degrees and insanely humid. i learned my lesson. please don't lecture me.

the next story is a bit more disturbing. i'll spare the frightening details, and beef up the more entertaining ones... i think this happened in october... me and faye and our friends nicole and samir were walking on the beach one friday after work. we got caught up talking to some other friends and it started to get dark before we got back to samir's jeep. well, being the very smart girls that we are, nicole and i started to lag behind faye and samir (who is tall and manly and the kind of guy you want to keep up with if you are at lumley beach when it is getting dark). nicole pulls out her camera because we wanted to laugh at a picture she took earlier of samir (tall and manly) imitating the way faye walks (bouncy and girly). so yeah, 2 girls, lumley beach at dusk, nice digital camera. before we knew it, a guy runs up behind us and tries to take the camera out of nicole's hand. she refuses to let go (she's a very petite little thing too) and ends up getting thrown on the ground by the guy (who honestly wasn't much bigger than she was). anyway, being bigger than both of them, i started shoving the guy as hard as i possibly can. this doesn't sound funny, but it was a little bit because i had my rainbow sandals in my hands and i have a feeling those might cause a sting if you were hit in the face with them, which he was. so there's nicole laying between us in the fetal position with her camera, this little (yet strong) man bent down trying to get the camera with one hand and blocking blows from me and my sandals with the other hand. it was really pretty scary, but he didn't get the camera (even after another guy showed up to help) and i'm pretty sure they had friends watching who will never let them forget that they couldn't get a camera away from those 2 american girls. faye and samir did run back to help us too. i'm actually pretty sure that those guys would have gotten the camera had it not been for faye and samir. i think nicole and i managed for those first 30 seconds on just instinct alone, but once we realized what happened, we were crazy. she was really upset (who wouldn't be?) and i was just mad. so yeah, another lesson learned. and don't worry, i'm too paranoid now to let anything similar happen again. i'm pretty sure i shouldn't have told you this story...

people have asked about a mailing address and a phone number. mail is a funny thing here, and i'm still waiting on a few letters that i know were mailed 4 months ago. but faye did receive some Christmas packages - she received them after Christmas, but she received them. so, it's a gamble, but here is my address:

PO Box 545
Freetown, Sierra Leone
WEST AFRICA

and i use the phone company that does the best job of receiving international calls, but they're not perfect. you might have to try a couple of times to get through. if you are calling from the US, my mobile number is:

011-232-76-23-44-88

oh! and my birthday was nice and i spent it at the beach. this is the first birthday i remember not needing a winter coat... but it was nice. and not as painful as i expected. :) i'm dramatic, i know.

love love love you all.

i'm on a roll

2008-01-11T06:04:00.000-05:00

that's right folks, only one week later and you're hearing from me again.

i don't know what's gotten into me! maybe it's the fact that we have electricity and i'm able to write from the comfort of my own kitchen table. maybe it's the fact that we have electricity and i'm able to sleep to the soothing whir and breeze from my very own FAN. maybe it's the fact that we have electricity and i'm able to start my day with a glass of COLD water from our fridge that makes things COLD. my friends, life is good.

i recieved quite a few responses to my last post which made me realize something... i live in africa. my life is interesting. funny things happen to me every single day and after only 4 months, they seem normal. i actually went back and read that post after reading the responses and i laughed at it myself. i do have some unique stories to share. so i'm honestly going to try to be better. i think that i've been waiting around for some big earth-shaking insight that the world must know, but really, we all just want to laugh at the white girl in africa. that's what all of my neighbors want, so why should i think you're any different? :)

so, for your reading pleasure, here are a couple of notes from my time tutoring in the afternoons... both of these stories involve snack time, so it would appear that they just come here and eat, but i promise that we learn every once in a while too.

a few weeks ago the 3 regulars were sitting at the table eating egg sandwiches, and they were making a MESS as usual. they don't eat at a table in their house, so even when one is available they don't use it. so little saidu is sitting with his legs up on the arm of the chair, his plate on his lap, food flying in every direction... he stood up, and there were crumbs ALL OVER his chair. and this is when i made my first real language error. i've made mistakes, sure. but i've never made an offensive mistake. so to make that kind of mistake in front of children... ouch. it's really not fair, because the polite way of referring to a person's back side in english, is to call it just that - their "back side." what i didn't know is this - that is pretty much the MOST offensive way to refer to it in Krio. does that seem fair to you? so i made some comment about food and his backside and saidu and mari start laughing. mari was in tears. saidu just staring at me laughing with his eyes WIDE like i had absolutely made his day. and then there's remie... "auntie steph, you done cuss." so serious and sober. while the others are crying. he told them that they should correct me first, then laugh. which i enjoyed. anyway, completely embarrassing. i apologized to remie, then saidu yells "i'm the one you cussed!" so they laughed again. moral of the story, be careful with krio. i've said it before and i'll say it again; it's just close enough to english to really get you into trouble.

last week the kids didn't have school but i told the boys to come at 3 when i finished my krio lesson. at 3:30 on friday i called noah to ask where they were so he sent them and they reached my house at 4. (i thought i had a fluid sense of time...) we only had an hour before i had to be somewhere else, so i decided i would just give them some ginger cookies and tea - no sandwich. well, then they told me that they hadn't eaten that day, which i didn't really believe, but i sent remie to buy some bananas anyway just in case they really were hungry. long story short, cami overhears them tell me that they hadn't eaten, she sees noah that afternoon and asks him if it's true. of course, it isn't. we decide that as punishment for lying, they won't get a snack at my house this week. so i saw saidu the next day and asked, "my friend, what happened yesterday?" he responds, in a very quiet voice with his eyes to the ground, "something very wrong." it has never been so easy to forgive someone. :)

and hillary, you won't believe this, but i haven't fallen down or tripped in a really long time! my reflexes and night vision are greatly improving. however, last week i was walking to the youth center and all of these people were saying to me "osh ya" and "take time white girl" and i started to realize that they must have thought i was someone else who HAD fallen on that corner... i never figured it out, but even when i stay upright, i get credit for falling. forced humility.

i turn 27 next week. gross. i'll try to have fun anyway, and i'll let you know what i do to dull the pain of reaching my LATE 20'S...

a couple of months later...

2008-01-02T11:55:00.000-05:00

well, well, well. here i am again. i don te.

it would appear that i have vanished from the face of the earth, but the truth is that i really haven't had a lot of spare time for that whole communication thing. or maybe a more true statement would be that i haven't had the time to process my life so i haven't really known what to say. the last 2 months have been quite eventful - in work, in play, in learning, in every other area... there has been plenty to write about, but no space in which to write. i know that's my own fault, so please forgive me. i will try to be better in 2008. :)

faye reprimanded me the other day about my 2 month absence from the blog-world. she brought it up right after we were invited to the beach this past sunday where one of our favorite uncles would be slaughtering and roasting a goat... faye's suggestion was that i video the killing of said goat, and then post it on this blog to "draw back the audience." good idea, but that would require that i witness the slaughter myself, and i really wasn't up for that. she was a cute goat. black and white, with kind eyes. they drove her to the beach that morning in the back of my friend's jeep. they said she was quiet and well-mannered on the drive. i said it was nice that they were able to spend some time getting to know her before they cut her throat... almost enough to make me a vegetarian, but no. don't worry dad, i'm still a country girl. and i still love me some red meat.

Christmas was eventful and busy and fun and kinda strange this year. i have spent the holiday away from home before, but i was traveling and distracted and excited about the change of scenery. but this year wasn't like that. i told a few people that i think part of the difficulty was that the excitement of living here was starting to wear off at the exact wrong time... i still want to be here, don't get me wrong. but after 4 months, it's not all new and different and exotic anymore. it's like, i live here. this is it. so hitting that phase during holiday time wasn't fun. because i really just wanted to be with my family in my culture where i knew and understood all of the traditions and got to eat all of my favorite food and hear bing crosby and wear sweaters. it's the little things, it really is...

it was good though. our Christmas parties for the kroo bay kids and the lighthouse program went really well. it was fun to celebrate with the kids, and i was told by numerous people (who could easily see how homesick i was) that they would be glad to stand in as family for me. so, i missed the moselys and mcGuires immensly, but was so so so humbled by the willingness of others to welcome me into their own lives and homes and families. wow.

new year's was an event worth writing home about. one of my friends here is a lebanese guy who used to make a living playing "one man shows" in beirut. basically he gets set up on two very complicated keyboards at once and sings and plays hours and hours worth of arabic music. so he was hired to do a show at a resturant on the water for new year's eve. most of you are probably aware that the lebanese know how to work. they have a reputation across the globe as good business people. what you may not know is that the lebanese also know how to have fun. i had no clue what they were capable of in this area! anyway, it was a cultural experience that i certainly enjoyed. food, music, food, dancing, food. happy new year.

and, of course, i spent a lot of time at the beach over the holidays. so that sure helped with that whole homesick thing... :) but now it's back to reality. busy busy.

OH! this information won't be super exciting for you since you didn't know the situation beforehand, but... we have electricity at our house now! that's right, we haven't had electricity since we moved in. we would occasionally borrow a generator so we could turn the lights on and charge things, but then we figured out that the house wasn't grounded (after cami's fan caught on fire and her computer battery was fried) so we haven't been able to plug anything in at our house for the last 2 months. anytime i've needed to charge anything i've had to haul it to a friend's house. but now the electricty situation is being sorted out, so we are all happy. i slept with a fan on ALL night last night. it was the best thing ever. i'm worried that i'm going to revert back to my old over-sleeping self now. this seems like an appropriate time to tell you that we also don't have running water. :) we buy water in 5 gallon rubber containers, and take bucket showers. hopefully that will get sorted out soon as well. i'll keep you posted.

8 weeks

2007-11-02T11:46:00.000-04:00

today is the 8 week anniversary of my arrival in freetown! faye said we need to celebrate and that she'll buy me a coke. i said that the last thing i need is another coke. i rarely drink regular pop in the states, but i cannot get enough of it here... oh i love coke. bottled. canned. on ice. lukewarm. love love love coke.

soooo, a lot has happened since late september. cami and faye both left for the states at the end of the month. faye's trip was planned, but cami's departure was a bit sudden. they are both back now, and things are getting back to normal, but that week and a half without either of them really wore me out. i said a lot of "i don't know the answer" and "i don't know how to do that" during those 11 days. ah, humility.

also, we moved. it was a very quick and chaotic move, but we actually moved, so no one is complaining. it happened at the end of ramadan, which made it even more interesting. i said to a friend during the process, "moving never goes as planned, and we live in africa, where NOTHING goes as planned to begin with... so i wonder what today is gonna be like..." we had a lot a lot a lot of help from some very generous friends who loaned us trucks and workers and boxes and all sorts of things. oh!! and the funniest part... we had a specific day that we needed to be out of the old house because someone was moving in. but we were still waiting on some little details to be finished at the new place. so on a wednesday, faye and i were talking to some friends about needing to be out by the next tuesday. it seemed like plenty of time... what we were forgetting was that the weekend marked the end of ramadan, which meant a 3-day weekend. however, we didn't know exactly which day was the last day of ramadan because they had to wait to see what the moon would do in saudi arabia. so the holiday would either be friday/saturday/sunday. or saturday/sunday/monday. but we wouldn't know until thursday night, and this was on a wednesday. so at 10 o'clock on wednesday we realized that we absolutely had to move on thursday if we were going to be certain that we were out by tuesday... i'm tired again just recounting this. anyway, it was crazy, but it's over and here is a picture of my new room:

the new place is great, and so convenient. i can walk anywhere work-related that i need to go. and we can catch transport to a lot of places right out of the front door. we have a pretty good breeze most of the time because we're on the third floor and i can see water from my bedroom window! it's really far away, but i'm from the midwest, so i don't care. i live by the sea!!! the biggest negative for me is that the place is so loud. so so so loud. all day it's loud. usually quiet by 11 at night. loud again starting with the call to prayer around 5:30. many of you know how difficult it is to wake me up. i love to sleep and i do it very well. but not here. i wake up early every day, and i run on not enough sleep until i'm so tired that i can't function, and then i get 10 hours of sleep a couple of days in a row and start the whole process over again. so that's kinda hard. but i'm adjusting.

things with the kids are going okay. we're getting used to each other. they push my limits sometimes, and i am insensitive sometimes, and in between those times we laugh and try to get to know each other. again, adjusting.

tutoring the little ones is going well. that's my favorite part of the day. monday i will start working with them at our house instead of at noah's and i think that will be much better. first of all, it's more convenient for me, so i'll have more time with them. secondly, the child who needs the most one-on-one attention goes to school right by our house, so he'll be able to get there before the others and get the attention he needs. also, there won't be other people going in and out of the house so the kids that have trouble focusing might actually be able to focus. i'm excited about the change. and the kids are REALLY excited. they just like to be at our house. it's maybe something like what i felt when i got to go to Grandma's. oh no, did i just equate myself to a grandma? i think you know what i mean...

i've been to the beach twice so far and i'm going again this weekend, so i'll try to take some pictures and post them. and then i can introduce you to some of my new friends. i've made some really fun friends who i enjoy a lot. they keep me sane. most of the time... i'm still me, so i can't be sane aalllll of the time. you know.

okay thanks for being so patient waiting for this boring update. i love you all and will try try try to post more often. happy fall! i can't believe it's november... it's getting hotter here and colder there. i'm all mixed up. anyway, ENJOY!

i'm alive i'm alive

2007-10-31T08:36:00.000-04:00

wow. i had no idea that i hadn't written in over a month... i really thought it had been a couple of weeks. that should tell you something.

so i'm working on a nice long informative blog, but i just wanted to let you all know that i'm okay. things have been a bit hectic (which i will fill you in on) but they are slowing down and i'm trying to figure out some sort of pace and rhythym and balance. it's a process for sure!!

thanks for continuing to check in on me and getting on my case when you haven't heard anything in a while. let's me know that you notice when i'm gone. :)

much love, and i promise more soon soon soon!

it was a day much like today

2007-09-28T11:12:00.000-04:00

This week has flown by! I’m actually on some sort of schedule now, so that makes things a bit more manageable.

I didn’t mention in my last post how fun my trip to the airport was on Friday… It is really difficult to know how long it will take you to get to and from the airport, and like I mentioned, the ferry schedule is completely unpredictable so you really just have to use the hurry-up-and-wait approach. If there is an opportunity to move in the right direction, you take it. You can’t count on having another opportunity. So, we arrived at the airport with 5 hours to spare… but that was nothing… chris and erin arrived without a hitch. With all of their bags, bright-eyed and ready to go. Since they felt good, we decided to take the ferry across the bay instead of paying the big bucks to take the hovercraft.

Let’s just say that the ferry thing didn’t work out. I was promised by the guys selling the bus tickets that the ferry would not leave the dock without our bus. Promised. Not a flippant, ‘yeah sure’ kind of promise, but a long drawn-out nagging-white-woman ‘you better swear to me with every fiber of your being’ kind of promise. Well, I learned my lesson. When a guy has the chance to sell 4 bus tickets at once, he’ll tell you whatever you want to hear. Honestly, I can’t say I blame him either. So, we didn’t make the ferry, and I was not happy about that, but it gets funnier. The ferry that didn’t wait on us got stuck in the mud about 30 yards from the dock. For 5 hours. So… once the tide rose, and the ferry finally moved, it had to cross over to freetown, then load up again and come back. So we boarded the ferry around 2:30 am and were dropped at the house at 5. I took a shower and fell asleep listening to the Islamic call to prayer. Not my favorite Freetown experience to date, but we all survived. And I have made the decision that I will never again attempt to welcome someone to freetown with the ferry. It’s worth the $35 extra per person to not have that happen again. Ugh.

Other than that little hang-up, things are going well. I started Krio lessons this week. And I started tutoring my favorite little people in kroo bay. I love them. They make me completely crazy and I love them. I think they will all grow up into really incredible big people. You know how you just get that sense about some kids? I get that sense with all of them. They have all had it rough in their short number of years. Really rough, in ways that I can’t even imagine. And they sure do have their issues and struggles and brokenness. But they are just so beautiful inside and out. Every one of them. I just love them. Love love love.

Patty griffin continues to provide the soundtrack to my life right now, and the song of this week was ‘goodbye’. Parts of it could not possibly be more fitting. 2 years ago this week, I was living in freetown and called home to hear that my grandpa (who had been dealing with cancer for the previous 9 months) wouldn’t likely make it through the night. Even now, remembering those days is so difficult. I have never felt so far from home. I wrote about it on this blog, so you can check that out in my archive if you feel so inclined. (September 2005) Anyway, I want to leave you with a few lines from the song, and just say that I still miss my grandpa to this day, but it is a blessing to have known someone like him, and even more of a blessing to have his blood in my veins. How could you not miss someone like him?!?! I am so grateful to come from the family I am from – a long line of really amazing people.

Occurred to me the other day that you’ve been gone now a couple years.
Well I guess it takes a while for someone to really disappear.
I remember where it was when the word came about you;
It was a day much like today, the sky was bright and white and blue.

And I wonder where you are, and if the pain ends when you die.
And I wonder if there was some better way to say goodbye.

Today my heart is big and sore. It’s trying to push right through my skin.
I won’t see you anymore. I guess that’s finally sinkin’ in…

my future home-sweet-home

2007-09-23T11:37:00.000-04:00

i may or may not have mentioned this before i left...

right now we live a few miles away from downtown, but we have a contract on an apartment in town that is not yet finished. it was supposed to be finished a couple of months ago, but who knows when we'll actually live there. maybe within a week... likely not.

anyway, faye wrote a funny blog about our recent excursion to check in on the progress of the place. you can read it here and look at the pictures and envy the amazing view we will have from our roof. eventually... maybe. i hope soon.

the quote of that day came from the man faye calls "C." he wasn't even in the same room as a most of the commotion at the time, but he shouted in exasperation, "senegalese!!! you talk too much!" for some reason that made me laugh until i choked. aaaah, west africa, i love you.

to serve the world proud

2007-09-20T13:44:00.000-04:00

earlier this week (maybe it was last week???) cami asked me who was my favorite person in the Bible. obviously, you cannot answer this question, "Jesus!" - that is just lazy. unlike most "favorites" in my life - always changing depending on circumstance and realizations - my favorite person in the Bible has remained the same for a number of years. mary. so cami and i talked for a good long while about the faith of mary, her instinct to ask questions, her willingness to ignore conventions, her joy in the face of impending hard times... then i played the patty griffin song for cami (it is so fun to introduce people to my friend patty) and we both cried and i'm so glad that she asked me that question... it's provided some focus over the last few days.

on monday i started sitting in on the book discussions and business meetings with the sierra leonean interns. they are a really neat group of people, and by the end of the year at least a few of them will be staff members. sorta. almost. we don't have a sierra leonean board yet, so actual staff positions might be a little way off... the point is, these are very great people and i'm excited about the things we will learn from and with each other. they are doing a lot of stuff, but the main responsibility is that they act as sort of small group leaders / case managers for the lighthouse program. i'm excited to see how my brief (but full) experience as a case manager might help streamline some of their goals, scheduling, policies, paperwork. it isn't really consistent with the sierra leonean way of doing things, and if you know me you know how rediculously culturally sensitive i can be, but i think some consistency of expectations on both sides would be really great for the young adults in the program as well as the staff. we shall see...

we took a break during that meeting and george (intern) was listening to the radio because they were expected to announce the election results. when they announced that the APC won you could hear a roar of excitement coming from all over our part of town. and it went on and on and on... for hours. faye went into town later and said that there were people marching and celebrating all over and then they actually swore in the new president, ernest bai koroma, that very evening. i didn't hear the ceremony myself, but apparently the ex-president and ex-vice-president (who was the opponent in this election) both gave speaches and spoke highly of ernest, saying that this was the president for ALL of sierra leone and that there was no reason to be divided any longer. it was all so HOPEFUL. i heard someone last night say that the sierra leoneans in her office seem gaurded. but almost every sierra leonean i know is PUMPED. freetown can be a really rough place. the poor are desperate. but they are the ones who elected this president. that is exciting if you ask me. there is a headline on the BBC website today that says "violence spreads in sierra leone" but i have seen or heard of nothing in freetown. it sounds like people are acting out against the losing SLPP party in areas of the country which are still controlled by rebels. pray that this will end, and that the peace and hope i see in the capital city will not fade any time soon. (read more on faye's blog about the election)

i was sick again this week, which is why i didn't get to go dance in the rain and celebrate the new government. i self-diagnosed strep throat, started some heavy doses of penicillin, and it cleared up quite quickly and only cost me $0.33 and an afternoon of sleep. i love the lack of pharmaceutical regulations sometimes...

tomorrow i am going on an adventure! i am going to the airport to get erin and chris harrell. erin was on my servant team in 2005, and she and her husband will be in freetown as WMF interns for the next 5 weeks, discerning if they might come back as staff in the near future. exciting times! it will be good to talk with erin about all that has changed in the last 2 years. and it will be so fun to see freetown for the first time through chris' eyes. i can't wait to see them both! so, 'what's the adventure?' you may ask... well, getting to and from the airport, of course! they are only running one ferry right now, so the schedule is unpredictable. if it is late, we may have to take a pom-pom boat which is a long, skinny, dug-out canoe. there are just a lot of ways to get across the bay, so it could go a lot of different ways... none of this is any problem. the thing that could get interesting is that i will have to talk price ALL DAY. all day. which is kind of like a sport because it wears me out, but is really fun when you actually get a fair price. it's a small kind of victory. my competitive spirit loves it. my friend alimamy is going with me because he is fun, speaks krio and english, and he can carry heavy things.

okay, that's enough for today. this was supposed to be my day off, but i did work-related stuff all morning (both of my parents are at fault for modeling this kind of behavior my whole life). so i'm letting myself spend as much time as i want on the internet tonight. because i'm worth it. and now i will go home where we will have power in 20 minutes. i will charge my ipod, eat another peanut butter and banana sandwich, and spend the evening with my dear friend patty griffin.

the pigeon in the airport

2007-09-13T12:34:00.000-04:00

i made it. hopefully you had already guessed that by now... what you may not have guessed is that i made it with all of my luggage and ON TIME. i met cami at the airport in london and she assumed most/all of my books so i could meet the weight limit, and it was smooth sailing from there. we rode the ferry from the airport to freetown, which isn't the most exciting way to go (when helicopters and hovercrafts are the other options) but it was the perfect way to re-enter this crazy city - approaching slowly, moving with the waves of water and people, wondering at the sunset and praying it doesn't rain just yet.

i've had a cold this week which is likely due to a huge deficit in my sleep account before leaving, and also due to the climate change. i spent an entire day in bed this week, but i'm feeling much better.

the reunions have been sweet, and i'm VERY MUCH looking forward to a routine. oh, how i long for a system of doing things. i'm so lost and confused by even the simple things right now... i have to ask questions just to dish a plate of rice properly. and speaking of questions, the krio is coming back very slowly... but it is coming back.

during my layover at JFK airport, i was chillin' out by a starbucks (my last for a while) and a pigeon walked quite-confidently past me toward the boarding line at gate 25. he seemed to know what he was doing, but he certainly looked out of place and must have been a bit intimidated. i laughed, and made eye contact with someone else who thought it was funny. and a lot of people noticed, but no one bothered him. i have thought about him everyday. at first i thought that he must be lost, but maybe not. he walked with such purpose, like he was exactly where he wanted to be. and who am i to say that a bird can't be interested in airports and airplanes? i mean, maybe they swallow up other birds, but this pigeon seemed certain that he was going to be just fine.

i realized today; i am that pigeon in the airport.

neatness

2007-09-02T07:02:00.000-04:00

so, we've come to the point where i can no longer sleep. and i'm still 5 days away from freetown... this could get interesting. i've already developed "finals voice" - the name i have for the raspy tone that i acquire as the result of an extended lack of sleep. as you may have guessed, this began in college as a result of my relentless procrastinating...

the point is that i have been awake since 3 AM, and i've managed to accomplish a few things, but not many because my mind keeps running ahead of me. i think this is working to my advantage in some ways. let me explain. you may or may not know this about me; i am a perfectionist. and a procrastinating one at that, so i'm sure you can imagine how fun that is... anyway, i've been wracking my brain for weeks now about how to pack those stupid bags that i mentioned in my last post, but this morning i was just thinking that it really doesn't matter. i mean, it matters. but i will inevitably make a few packing mistakes - no matter how much i plan and rethink, i will chose to take something i will never use, and i will forget to pack something that i know i will need. that sucks a little. but... on thursday morning, i will be on my way with my imperfectly packed bags, and on friday i'll be in freetown. ON FRIDAY I'LL BE IN FREETOWN!

so that's what i realized this morning. the goodbyes have been tough so far, and the remaining ones will be the toughest yet. but i'm so much more excited than i am sad. in the coming week the following things will happen; i will speak krio (poorly, but out of necessity), i will watch the sunset on the atlantic, i will eat fula bread, i will ride/sweat in a poda-poda (see photo) and i will listen to the apprentice on said poda-poda yell "abadeenabadeenabadeenabadeen" without ever coming up for air, i will be called "wayt gyal" repeatedly (which will cease to be amusing very quickly, but i still look forward to the first one), and i will see saidu, remie, joseph, noah, david, haja, kwame, kadi, and so many other friends who i have missed over the last 2 years. that last one sends me straight out of giddy and into tears. i really am so excited.

i will try not to have a lot of goals or expectations for my first week - that just seems like another set-up for failure, like the 55 pound suitcases. however, i think it would be a really good omen to see the 'neatness' poda-poda in my first week. some of you know what i mean, the others will hopefully see a photo someday soon. so that's my number one goal. number 2 will be to catch up on some sleep.

the final countdown...

2007-08-31T09:42:00.000-04:00

oh here we go. now, when i ask myself how much time i have to get all my ducks in a row, the frightening reply is "less than a week." LESS THAN A WEEK. Lord, please help me.

the packing process began nearly 2 weeks ago, which is incredibly out of character for me, but has proven to be a good idea. i can take two 70 pound bags to london, but those same bags can only weigh 55 pounds when they leave london for freetown. why? i'm not really sure, but it would cost about $15 for each addition 2 pounds, so i'm not so worried about the 'why' as i am the actual weight of the bags. oh! and my carry-on can weigh no more than 17 pounds... yes, they will put it on a scale. i have plenty of space for everything, but not enough pounds to spare. turns out that contact solution, shampoo, and books (DUH, STEPH) weigh a lot more than you would guess. or i should say, more than I would guess. so i spend hours each day moving things back and forth from one bag to the next, hoping they will weigh less in my suitcase than they do in my backpack... i know, it doesn't sound like it makes sense, but there is a method to my madness.

so we now have piles all over my room. there are 'necessary' items, 'comfort' items, and items that fall into both categories (this really only means that i find them so comforting that they become necessary, i.e. my press-pot and DVDs). so the lines that form these categories are very blurry. but every single ounce matters in this quest. it's making me crazy. CRAZY.

i started my malaria medicine yesterday. i forgot how much i hate that stuff. i'm on lariam which is known to give people nightmares, hallucinations, and anxiety. this morning i realized (2 years after the incident) that my only brush with REALLY intense anxiety was the day i took my second dose of larium. which just happened to be the day i left for freetown for 4 months. that was a fun day. i am actually kinda relieved to think that the medication contributed to the chaos of that day because i've kinda beat myself up about that for 2 years now. so, we're just hoping and praying that nothing similar occurs this time. i was fine for the rest of the 4 months that i took the medicine. also i never did experience the joy of real hallucinations last time, but i came close. i regularly saw little flashes of light in my peripheral vision. first time it happened i thought, "ooh fireflies!" and then freaked out when they really weren't there. but then i got used to it. a UN pharmacist told me it was the lariam and it was causing random neurons to fire or something like that. but i will endure this if it lessens the chance of malaria attacking my brain and killing me. dad said something along the lines of 'so you can let malaria mess with your brain, or you can take medicine to do it for you?' yes, dad. that is exactly right. i only have a one month supply of the stuff and will likely switch to another drug once i'm in freetown. it is a drug that a well-educated local doctor recommends for long-term use. i don't think it would be smart to take the nightmare-hallucination-anxiety causing medicine for 3 years...

okay, i must return to the mess that is my room and continue shoving things into a suitcase that already weighs too much. 55 pounds per bag... and my suitcase alone weighs 10. it's a setup for failure.

seeing yellow

2007-08-29T20:32:00.000-04:00

today I’m grateful for a generous neighbor who doesn’t block their wireless connection, for a generous cousin/sister who gifted me her laptop, and for a summer teeming with memories, created and revisited. i’m living the ‘baking chocolate’ kind of life – no sugar or milk to soften the taste – just the potent stuff, and a lot of it.

the goodbyes-at-hand began last weekend in kentucky – the home of my adulthood. my most formative post-High School experiences and friendships are connected to the Bluegrass in varying degrees of separation. i spent the weekend with friends, old and relatively new, who celebrated the upcoming adventure and sent me off with purpose. i am excited to go on their behalf, but as i drove north on 75 and crossed The Bridge, the sadness was very real – bitter in my mouth and hot around my ears. the end of an era, i am certain.

tyler left for college yesterday. we will see him again in only 3 days, but Labor Day weekend will surely hold agendas, and we have much more fun without those. for a couple of weeks in may all 3 McGuire kids were at home and jobless. of course, the parents were proud. while I was repeatedly frustrated by a lack of substitute teaching calls, i was secretly pleased by the opportunity to sit around the house with the boys – rambling on about faith, music, and how 'deep down you know' you really are Larry David. it seems that the little brothers grew up in the years I was away, so recent months gave me the joy of being reintroduced. next week I will begin this cycle again. we will keep up on the Big Things of life, Blood is a thick bond. but I will miss these days filled with the little things – the daily trifles and confessions and questions – that have made us into friends.

now i sit by the window in the yellow kitchen mom always wanted. my morning, in its entirety, has been spent in this chair, in this room. it is home; the color, the light, the table worn-in (perhaps out) by meals, laughter, apologies, family. a few weeks ago i found a letter that i sent from Freetown in 2005. i easily recall what prompted it. i woke up early on a saturday; i think it was october. i had yet to open my eyes and was momentarily convinced that i was at my parents’ house. i wished for mom’s french toast in the yellow kitchen, and College Game Day with dad. then i opened my eyes and began what was to be a melancholic, aching sort of day.

it is a tormenting privilege, knowing places and people to long for.

too tight!

2007-08-15T18:35:00.000-04:00

last night i briefly told some friends about a trip that we took during my servant team. it was near the half-way point of our time in freetown, and we were traveling to tiwai island which is this really incredible locally-run wildlife sanctuary that is near themiddleofnowhere, sierra leone. i mentioned it in a post from june. anyway, tiwai itself was really amazing, but getting there was the real adventure. i know that this is just how they roll in most of the world, but i still laugh out loud that so many people can be crammed into a moving vehicle at one time... i'm guessing that the bus had seating for close to 30... and i'm guessing that there were at least 60 on board. most in our group were sitting on wooden boxes in the isle, sitting upright without anything to lean back on except a stranger's sharp knees, big backpacks on our laps, unpaved roads... best ab work-out ever! it was certainly miserable at times, but i will never ever forget when hillary and i decided to start counting the people in the front seat. i think that the driver had the only actual seat, but there was a fold-down bench too. okay, 9 (NINE!) people were in the front. and they were all having fun! someone was sitting on the dash like it was a bar stool. and of course, there were people standing on the steps, that makes sense. but there was actually a man sitting on the driver's left! i think we first counted 6 people, then we kept seeing more... there may have been some we didn't even see. but the next time i go to tiwai, i'm totally sitting/standing with those guys. it was like i had to sit for 8 hours in the most uncomfortable position imaginable, while i was watching a party in the front of the bus. torture.

so today i was thinking about one of my favorite days with the kids in kroo bay. leslie-the-genius decided that we could spend one of our tutoring days helping the kids make kites. it was really perfect because it obviously required some math and physics skills, but - seeing that leslie and i had no clue how to make a kite - it also gave the kids a chance to teach and learn from each other. it was a beautiful thing to watch, and it was great to see the kids interact with their neighbors and see everyone laugh and play and try to knock the other kites out of the sky. i tried to take pictures, but the kites were seriously so far up that my camera couldn't see them.

in closing, 3 things. first, how white do i look in that picture?!?! second, results of the election are still being calculated - no news. and third, the blog title is dedicated to the landreths who pioneered the WMF effort of piling into freetown public transport. and to brent who retells the story so well.

election day

2007-08-10T14:14:00.000-04:00

for better info on this subject, check faye's blog. she's much more informed than i am, but i wanted to at least mention that tomorrow is election day in sierra leone. this will be the second election since the war ended, and the first without a UN peacekeeping force. this is a huge milestone for some of our friends on the other side of the atlantic! pray that it goes smoothly and honestly, and that the new president will respect and honor the people of sierra leone. this doesn't seem like much to ask, but obviously the world would operate differently if things were that simple. just remember west africa if you are the praying type.

i'm gonna steal something else from faye's blog (she's on a roll, folks). click here to see a BBC photo essay about Kroo Bay. these photos are pretty graphic in terms of sanitation issues and living conditions. some even caught me off guard, and i spent a lot of time in this neighborhood. the Bay is really a big 'why' when people ask what is drawing me back to freetown. some really precious and important people in my life live there, and i don't want the world to forget about them. so look at the photos, and be offended that anyone would have to live this way. and maybe, if you can, think of something creative we can do about it.

the lions and palm trees are the sierra leone coat of arms. "unity. freedom. justice" yes, please.

booked and confirmed

2007-08-01T16:53:00.000-04:00

september 6 is the big day! after stops in new york and london, i will eventually hit the ground in freetown on the evening of september 7. i can't believe it's official... finally.

i spent all day working on the columbus-london part of my itinerary, and i am not exagerating when i say AAALLLLLLLL day. turns out that it is substantially less expensive to buy a round-trip ticket than it is to buy a one-way. now, i can't quite make sense of this in financial terms, but that's the way it is. which is pretty close to the explanation i recieved from a NOT helpful delta employee. "because that's the way the fares are set up." okay. thanks? and then she told me that i would owe them $200 if i bought a round trip and then cancelled the return portion. i found this fascinating because i will make it possible for them to sell the same seat to 2 people... later i called back and was able to talk to a helpful delta employee who explained that they will charge me $200 if i go to a ticketing counter and try to "cancel" the return once i am in london. however, if i just fail to show up for the return flight, which is referred to as "forfeiting", then i'm fine. take note of the language. delta charges $200 if you use the wrong word. but even if i do owe them $200 to NOT use the return flight, it will still be cheaper than buying a one-way ticket to london. aahhh, capitalism. it really does work FOR the people, doesn't it?

but after all that, i have a ticket. and i'm thrilled.

wetin yu de wan fo lan?

2007-07-30T14:41:00.000-04:00

for those of you who have recently enjoyed a krio lesson or two from me, click here for some more fun with words.

calling card

2007-07-30T13:18:00.000-04:00

the apoto in this photo is hillary, and she is one of the funniest people i know. we were on the same servant team in 2005, and i am honestly having a hard time imagining life in sierra leone without her. we had a good long talk last night in which i laughed hard enough that my brother came from the basement to the front porch to find out what was wrong with me. we were just finalizing some plans for our upcoming entertainment venture, The Bachelorette; West Africa. i'll spare you the details for now.

i got a call from my buddy kwame today. i can't believe that he'll be 12 (or maybe even 13?) when i see him again. so sad. i feel like i've missed so much! anyway, i was quite excited to hear his voice and then the connection cut out. of course. so i spent the following 2 hours buying a calling card online (which is much more complicated than it should be) and then trying to get through to noah's phone. i never did get through but managed to get in touch with faye who said she would tell the boys that i had been trying to call. i'll try again tomorrow.

the last few weeks have been full and fun. i took a road trip with my mom, grandma, aunt, cousin, and cousin's daughter to alabama to visit my grandma's sister and her kids and grandkids. it was a riot. my brother and i have taken to referring to said adventure as "mosley girls gone wild."

a few hours after arriving home from alabama, i hopped a plane to nebraska for the WMF retreat/conference. it was incredible. it felt a bit like going home. i think i always forget how amazing these people are, and i really feel like i'm a fraud or something that i get to be a part of them and call them my friends. like maybe someday they will find out that i've fooled them all and they'll kick me out. but they are such beautiful and gracious and thoughtful people... i have much to learn from every single one of them. it was a really fun and special time. i laughed, cried, prayed, felt, and sat in awe of God more than i have in a long time. i was also violently ill for a couple of days, but my wonderful roomie, jara, took good care of me and i recovered quickly. you don't want the details on those days. trust me.

after the retreat i spent a couple of days in omaha with the smyths, grays, leslie, and others. love them all. hate that they're so far away. spent a day at home, then drove to eastern ohio to see some old-school friends at hollow rock camp. i hadn't been there in a couple of years, and i kinda had some holiness movement culture shock, but i was surrounded by good people who understand and help me work through the funk when it is too much to laugh about. but mostly we just laugh about it.

now i'm back in circleville. working on the details. rabies vaccines. writing a will (!?!?!?!?!). watching the price of plane tickets rise. hoping to leave the first week in september. i'll let you know when the ticket has been purchased. love to all.

all-stars

2007-07-03T19:32:00.000-04:00

2 nights ago i woke up at 3:45 AM after a creepy dream. the house was really quiet, which i hate, and i couldn't seem to stabilize the creepy feeling. i finally got out of bed to turn on the TV just for some white noise so i could fall asleep again. the TV was on PBS (because i am a raging dork and i must watch 'as time goes by' every night before i go to sleep) and they were playing the documentary "Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars". it is about a group of sierra leonean refugees (obviously) who meet at a camp in guinea and form a band. it is truly a story of hope and peace, as these people find a way to rise above their context and surroundings to LOVE each other and CREATE something. beautiful!

i missed the first half hour, but stayed awake to watch the part where UNHCR flies the band members back to freetown from guinea to record an album. it was crazy to hear what they each had to say upon re-entry to their hometown. i have only seen the post-conflict version of freetown, so it was enlightening to watch the initial reactions from people who only knew the place before it blew up. grace, the female member of the band, expressed my favorite quote- "o, freetown" -said in the way that only a sierra leonean can say it, but i think anyone who heard her tone would have understood the mixed bag of emotions that those words contained. among many other things i heard a longing to be home, twinged with doubt that such a place any longer exhists. that angst must be one of the most difficult parts of life as a refugee.

i'm so SO excited about the upcoming move, but in all honesty, i'm feeling a little discouraged lately. sometimes in the midst of all the details - large and small - it feels like i may never get there. i'm sure it's good for me. i've never experienced such a lack of control over my own circumstances - or at least i've never been aware or concerned when i have... but i'm wound pretty tightly these days. :) just remember me. i'll try to loosen up in the meanwhile.

act justly, love mercy

2007-06-06T15:57:00.000-04:00

the trial of Charles Taylor was scheduled to begin on Monday, but the defendant didn't show up! Taylor was the president of Liberia during the war in Sierra Leone, and he was a major source of funding for rebel groups in Sierra Leone. they had some complicated agreement involving diamonds and weapons. i don't fully understand, but Taylor is on trial for crimes against humanity at the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. this is a very significant trial for Sierra Leone and for all of post-conflict Africa. Here is a great article from the Washington Post that says it a lot better than i can.

bats, bikes, & bo

2007-06-05T15:02:00.000-04:00

this is a view from the balcony of the padgetts'/eichorns' old apartment in downtown freetown. the building at the far left is the old US embassy - when i was there they were in the process of building a bigger one outside of town - i don't know why. the big tree beyond the embassy is The Cotton Tree, a historic landmark at the center of town, which is said to have been growing there since the 1700s. it is huge and beautiful, but is home to an offensive number of bats... they are huge and gross. in this picture you can barely see in the sky little black flecks of evil in the form of bats. i hate them. yeah, they eat malaria-carrying mosquitos, but i have 3 words for you; vampires, rabies, guano. ummm, anxiety. i think i need to talk about something fun now. let me find another picture...

i love this picture. our team took a trip to a nature sanctuary called Tiwai Island, and the 12 hour journey required that we travel through Sierra Leone's second city, Bo. there were many things that made Bo a nice break from big crazy freetown, but my 2 favorite things were 24-hour electricity and 'honda taxis.' as i climbed on with my big back-pack and a tote full of food and cooking supplies i said out loud, "my mom would be so ticked about this." but then i forgot all about the dangers involved in this mode of public transportation because it was so fun and FUNNY. i was the last in a line of 6 bikes, each carrying an american girl with too much luggage. you should have seen the looks we got. hilarious. erin is the very excited one looking at the camera. hillary and sarah are in front of her, and i'm sure they were laughing just as hard as we were.

boxing

2007-05-23T10:50:00.000-04:00

so we're having a garage sale this weekend. it should be a pretty big one, but i have a lot more to accomplish before we're even close to making it happen.

i've been digging through boxes for the last couple of days. i have managed to refrain from accumulating much in the 4 years since college, but this process is still trying. i am literally evaluating the necessity of every single thing that i own. is it going to africa? is it worth storing for X number years? if it doesn't meet one of these 2 criteria, i will no longer own it within a week.

it has been an emotional process as i come across mementos and memories, but it really is so freeing. i don't even like 'stuff'. it ties you down, and i certainly am not one to be tied down. at this point in my life i absolutely dread the thought of owning my own home, and i'm thrilled, thrilled, by the idea of not owning a car. (mine is for sale. anyone want it?)

i've come to believe that the purpose of things should be to simply enable us to carry out the indispensible movements and relationships of life. in an attempt to conserve our own time and individuality, we work so hard and acquire so much that we eventually lose the whole point... and we end up wasting some important things as a result; natural resources are one thing, but community and simplicity are even more detrimental sacrifices that we make.

so, we're having a garage sale, and i'll be glad to be rid of this stuff. but i remember that 'law of conservation of mass/matter' thing i learned in high school. matter can change form, but cannot be created or destroyed. and i'm strangely sad about that little bear figurine with the graduation cap and gown. it used to be something else, maybe even something useful, but someone decided to make it into 'stuff'. and while it won't be my stuff anymore, it will be someone else's. what a waste.

blepharoplasty

2007-05-16T21:26:00.000-04:00

please excuse the constant changes to the face of this blog. i keep revisioning and revising, but the nagging perfectionist that lives in my head won't let me leave things alone. i promise i will stop soon. maybe not.

GOOD NEWS!

2007-05-16T10:21:00.000-04:00

this is a typical saturday afternoon. 300 kids packed into the little church in kroo bay. the 'good news club' is always stressful and entirely exhausting, but SO MUCH FUN! my friend noah runs the club and my friends from the lighthouse program help lead singing and do a lot of the teaching. after the lesson they pass out boiled eggs and biscuits and then take care of minor first aid needs - or try and find help for people with more serious health issues. there are a lot of things i appreciate about freetown, but this little church is where it's at. when you come visit me you'll understand.

choitram market

2007-05-16T09:52:00.000-04:00

this photo was taken at an indian-owned grocery near the 'kroo bay' part of town. you will hear me talk a lot about kroo bay because it is where some of my favorite people live, including these 3 rascals. they make up half of the 6 kids who i tutored in the afternoons. this grocery is one of only a few places where you can find soft-serve ice cream, and it is a bit of a luxury, so we only splurged on the very roughest of days.

aberdeen sunset

2007-05-16T09:20:00.000-04:00

this is the view from the front veranda of the home i lived in. it is in an area of freetown called 'aberdeen.' the sunsets during the rain-season are incredible! the water you see is a warf that fills up during high tide. at low tide you can walk across it on dry sand, and it becomes a soccer field for the village on its bank. beyond the tree-line is the atlantic. you may notice that there are no lights on despite it being dusk. freetown operates power on a grid system, and our part of town didn't make it into the rotation very often. but who can complain with a view like this?

a de go bak!

2007-05-02T18:26:00.000-04:00

just wanted to post a quick update. two weeks ago I was in omaha for an interview with word made flesh, and it is now official; I’M GOING BACK TO SIERRA LEONE! i signed a 3-year contract as servant team coordinator, which means that a big part of my job will be to lead teams like the one i participated on in 2005. the goal is to leave for freetown in august, but this will largely depend on how quickly i can raise financial support. i do know that it will cost at least $2000 just to get there, and i will have to raise that money plus 3 months salary before i can purchase my tickets, so that will all need to happen pretty quickly. feel free to ask about details in that area. i’ll post more when i know more.

now that blogger is more user-friendly and i’m all excited about returning to freetown, i figured it was about time to post some old pictures and attempt to give everyone some idea of what i’m getting into. i've been trying all evening to post some photos, but i'm having issues. maybe blogger isn't so user-friendly... i'll try to be more creative with my posts as i have time. thanks for checking in!

spring again

2007-03-24T10:37:00.000-04:00

well, it's been quite a while since i wrote anything on here. a lot has changed. i'm still in lexington, but i moved in with my friends rachel and melissa, and i work as a case manager at a foster care agency. things are pretty good. it's spring, and i don't think i have to tell you again how much i love spring.

a very big life-change is on the horizon, but it is not official. i'm hoping to move back to sierra leone in the near future. i will interview with WMF in a few weeks, and then we'll know more about the when and how. i'm EXTREMELY excited about this possibility, but just this week i started to feel sad too. i know, it's a little premature, but i do like to be emotionally prepared. :) i'm not really into the other kinds of preparation, so i figure it's a good thing to just go with it when it comes naturally.

if anyone still checks this thing, i will keep you posted on the aforementioned happenings. much love.

spring in the LEX

2006-04-21T23:08:00.000-04:00

i love spring. even when it rains... except when i have to walk a couple of blocks to or from my car. anyway, spring has sprung in KY, and that means dogwood trees and horses. and lots of frappuccinos (huh?) at the BUCKS. i should probably know how to spell that but who cares... not me.

i started a conversational spanish class at the literacy center last week. i suck. but that's pretty much why i'm in the class. it's been a long time since i had any spanish classes, but the hardest thing is that my brain defaults to Krio when it tries to think spanish. the two are not similar at all, which you probably guessed. so i sit there and stutter and get red-faced for an hour and a half every thursday night - but i guess it's helping me a little. it is at least exposing me to some mild humiliation on a regular basis. that is good for all of us occassionally. combine that situation with my favorite question - "would you like room for cream in your cafe estima?" - every 20 seconds and i'm more humble now than i have ever been in my life!

al stuery was in town this week, so that was fun. we did some apartment hunting, but i'll continue to look around for the next few weeks. she's coming in mid-june, so we have a little bit of time to figure it out.

i'm starting to look for job part 2. have found a couple of things that seem interesting, but i need to work on a resume. i keep putting it off, but my goal is to get it done this weekend. if you call this weekend, you need to ask me about it. if i'm not finished, hang up on me. my future is in your hands.

the winter of grief

2006-04-01T23:09:00.000-05:00

i made an emergency trip back home last weekend. on thursday i received a voicemail message from my mom - my heart started racing before she finished a word... i knew it was bad news, i just didn't know who it was regarding. i called her back and learned that it was my uncle john - mom's youngest brother. i'll spare you the details, but he died unexpectedly in his sleep at the age of 43.

john was burried exactly six months from the day that my grandfather died. it rained most of the day, and that somehow seemed right. i will never forget the image of my mom and aunt standing on either side of my grandmother - each of them with a rose in hand, a shared umbrella keeping their heads, but not their eyes, dry. they walked through the mud from john's gravesite over to grandpa's where the dirt hadn't yet had time to settle. it was a disturbing but honest picture of the last year in my family's history. so much pain. so much loss. so many things to mourn and attempt to accept, if not understand.

but this sort of thing doesn't get easier with experience, and this situation was so much more abrupt and harsh in its nature. with grandpa's death we were given time to prepare ourselves and say what we needed/wanted to say. we were given an opportunity to celebrate a life well-lived. but we didn't really get that chance with john. too abrupt. too harsh. i still can't wrap my mind around the fact that he's really gone. i'm harrassed by the memory of my last interaction with him - he attempted to give me some uninvited relationship advice around Christmas and i was a total smart-ass and blew him off and i felt bad at the time but didn't make it right. and that was it. now he's gone. i didn't get to say that i love him and appreciate his perspective. but more honestly, maybe i didn't choose to realize that i love him and need his perspective. a lesson learned, but the regret is still with me. having a random well-intentioned soul (who i've never had a real conversation with) tell me that uncle john is dancing in heaven (while i'm staring at his body in the casket) doesn't exactly make me all cool with my caustic attitude a few months before. i still feel that i hurt him and i still feel that i deserve to be avenged in one way or another... that's a weird personality issue of mine... we'll save that for another time...

but the funeral was filled with a million trite little phrases and sayings and word-pictures about heaven that we Christians use to make us feel better. it's like pain medication. it will ease the discomfort, but it does nothing to actually confront the source. why can't we sit still and think about the bad stuff for a second? the truth is that this world is really ugly sometimes. yes, there are many beautiful things, like life itself for one, but there is so much suffering and pain. and we really can't pretend like it's not there. i think one of the most harmful aspects of the holiness movement is it's tendency (not accross the board, but please hear me out) to step right past good friday and into easter. sorry, but that's not how it works. i think that we really miss out on a huge aspect of the character of God when we are afraid to look at the suffering. i mean, the cross is the symbol of our religion, yet we have such little regard for what that means. this has all been said a million times and million times more elloquently than i can say it, but it is very real to me right now. if we cannot find God IN our disappointments and sadness and suffering - not just on the other side of those things - then we cannot know God completely.

i have mentioned before, maybe not on this blog, but on several occasions, that the last 9 months or so have been filled with little and big lessons about grief. i won't say that i have "a calling" because i still don't really know what that means despite 25 years in the evangelical world, but i think that i am in the process of learning the importance and value of our lament and tears. i think that i am strangely wired to handle the weight of this load, and somehow feel that in the same way that we should seek to use our hands where God's are already at work, we should also allow ourselves to mourn over the things that break God's heart - the things that were never intended for a single one of us on this earth.

so i mourn the loss of my uncle, my mom's little brother, my grandmother's baby boy. i cry because this isn't the way God intended things to go when adam was given life. and i grieve because i know that God does too. only when i am able to see God's reflection in my tears, hanging from the tree on that friday afternoon... only then can i truly celebrate the risen Christ who defeated death on our behalf. there will be joy in the morning, but there is sorrow tonight. the darkness may make God more difficult to see, but God is no less present.

___________
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

-from The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

inspiration

2006-03-22T23:48:00.000-05:00

as i mentioned before, i started my training at starbucks this week. it has been surprisingly fun thanks to my 'learning coach', stephen, who is both exceedingly patient and witty. yesterday we were talking about our corporate giant sugar-daddy of an employer and he aptly noted that ours isn't your typical coffee-house. "i don't envision any inspired poetry being written in this setting."

unless it would be some bitter, 'i hate the man' slam poetry, i think he's right.

made a cappucino today, which is quite an accomplishment in case you didn't know. i mean, it's not something that should end up in the papers or anything, but it is worth mentioning in my little blog that no one reads. for me, an undetermined length of time from this point on will be filled with the making of cappucinos, so i felt that the first one was note-worthy. the rest will likely never be mentioned.

it is kinda hard to think about what i was doing 3 months ago as compared to what i am doing now... i had plenty to fill you in on then, and now i'm writing about hot beverages. but the consistency is that i feel like both settings and situations have provided me with an opportunity to build good relationships with interesting people who i might never have met otherwise. i hope i can maintain the learning posture that i was forced into in freetown. there are still people to learn from and questions to ask. the Jesus who i found around every corner in freetown is the same one i will find on the corner of west main and broadway.

madness!!!

2006-03-19T22:33:00.000-05:00

what is it about a $5 pay-in that suddenly makes me crazy about NCAA basketball? i'm so competitive sometimes... it's a little embarassing. but my bracket is shot and ohio state is out already, so it's not as fun as it was a couple of days ago.

i went to visit mi familia this weekend. it was really fun. thursday night tyler and i met nate and the skidmore trio in columbus for some rotten fun. for those of you who don't know the skidmores, you are totally missing out. they are all rotten and hilarious. i laughed a lot. friday i watched the ohio state game with my grandma. she really gets into it and knows the stats and personal stories of all her fave players. she never ceases to amaze. my mom and i watched pride and prejudice - LOVED IT. i need to get a pay check so i can buy it! my dad and i watched some basketball but we refrained from any debating this weekend - except for me defending myself against his disapproval of my decision to put duke in the final four in my bracket. last night i went to visit dara and brad in westerville which was great. i hadn't seen dara since june i think, so it was fun to just sit around at her house and tell stories. she thinks i'm really funny for some reason so she just lets me talk and laughs at everything! it's quite affirming. today i listened to my dad give an excellent sermon, i got saved, ate some good food and then drove back to kentucky. other random happenings of the weekend were visits with my other grandparents and girl scout cookie binges.

tomorrow i will finally start my training at starbucks. it's been a loooong road, but i have an actual job now! i've never wanted to work so much in my life.

i hope everyone is doing good. peace out.

stuff

2006-03-11T00:15:00.000-05:00

things in kentucky are fair... not great, not awful. the job situation remains frustrating, but i have been able to do some kind of income-earning activity at least a few days each week. legal things, of course! i realize that sounded a little shady. still waiting for something reliable and profitable to start happening. today i substitute taught for a kindergarten assistant in the AM, and then a kindergarten special ed teacher in the afternoon, and then i substitute waitressed at a local resturant during the UK SEC tourny game. i'm not sure which environment was louder or more exhausting. i just know that i am really tired, yet i'm still awake because of wireless internet...

i guess i've been back in the US for almost 3 months now. that's kinda weird because i still don't quite feel at home yet. didn't expect that. i've heard that this happens, but it's so strange when you're going through it. and i'm still not caught up on all of the pop-cultural pleasures that come with US citizenship. i feel like every time someone asks if i've seen some movie or heard of some band, i have no clue what they're talking about... i'm so not cool anymore! i probably never really was... :)

let's see... i'm currently reading 'the bookseller of kabul' which i really like, but am not gripped by. so it's taking me forever, but not because i don't like it. i'm just not into it enough to make it a priority. but i do like it! don't get me wrong. 'the kite runner' is probably next on my list. it's been recommended by just about everyone so i guess i should get on board.

i realize that these random updates are totally boring... sorry about that. i am still feeling a little disoriented and caught up in a transition. and it's really getting old! i feel like i just need to stay in one place and hybernate for a while and then i'm sure i'll be at it again. pulling out the soapbox and ranting about my chosen injustice of the week and hopefully planning my next escape across an ocean or maybe south of the equator... i haven't done that yet!

okay, who knows when i'll post something again, but thanks for checking in on me.

i miss kentucky and i miss my family...

2006-02-01T12:59:00.000-05:00

for anyone interested, that is a line from a ryan adams song, and the following line is "all the sweetest winds, they blow across the south."

okay so i guess i should update since a lot has changed since December 18... over new year's i made a visit to lexington, KY to visit my friend Jenny and her husband Stevie. at some point during that weekend we decided that i should move in with them, and amazingly everyone in my life thought that was a pretty good idea. so here i am, living in Nicholasville, Kentucky (NickVegas) and happy about the decision. i got here on january 16, the day before my 25th birthday (which i wasn't too excited about). i was sick with strep-throat for a week, but have since made a pretty descent transistion. i am really sick of transitioning. i've done a lot of that in the last 8 months. i know that that's what life is, but it takes a lot out of you after a while... but i really have missed kentucky since i left nearly 3 years ago, and i'm happy to be back.

you might be wondering, so here's your answer; NO. i do not currently have a job. however, that should be taken care of very soon. i completed all of my paperwork to start substitute teaching and i have an interview at starbucks soon.

because i haven't had a job, i've had a lot of time to think. i don't know that this is considered an actual activity to many people, but it is for me. so i don't feel like i've wasted a lot of time by not having an actual job because i really have been working hard up there. i've been reading some, but that usually just sparks more thoughts and the book gets set aside while i stare out the window. sometimes i write. most of the time i don't. a lot of times i end up crying. more and more often i want to talk about it. i'm afraid that i'm becoming one of those "when i was in freetown" people, but i can't help it... i finally want to talk about it and i haven't felt that way much. so maybe you'll hear more about it on this little blog. speaking of which, i thought it was time for a face-lift. maybe i'll eventually put some pictures up here. no promises. :)

i finally got my library card (which is a much more complicated process than one would expect), so i will be able to e-mail and hit the old blog more often now. sorry that i've been out of it for a while.

much love to you all.

FYI

2005-12-18T01:16:00.000-05:00

i made it home-sweet-home as planned on monday night. i've been sleeping and eating and visiting family for the last few days, and i finally started making some phone calls and trying to catch up with friends today. i've already subbed a couple of times at the YMCA and have earned a whole $42! big money.

leaving freetown was hard, but it seems like that was so long ago... in reality it has been just over a week. i think about the kids all the time and i miss the girls from my team a lot. but it feels good to be home for the most part. the reverse culture shock hasn't killed me yet, and i've become a expert tongue-biter in moments when it comes close to getting the best of me. i'd appreciate your prayers and patience in this area. i'm having trouble articulating anything more than "it was hard and good" when people ask about freetown. that's actually the best 1-sentence answer i can give, and sometimes i wonder if that's all i should say anyway. but like i said, thanks for being patient.

on thursday morning ( i think it was thursday...) i got a fun surprise in the form of a phone call from one of my friends in freetown! let's just say that i have a hard enough time with Krio, but a shakey connection and a phone delay make it even more interesting. regardless, it was one of the most loving gestures that i have ever received (the kid decided to spend his money on the phone call instead of lunch).

those kids never cease to amaze me. and so the lessons continue...

isaiah 62

2005-12-18T01:10:00.000-05:00

For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem's sake I will not remain quiet, till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch.

The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will bestow.

You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD's hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the LORD will take delight in you, and your land will be married.

As a young man marries a maiden, so will your sons marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.

I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest,

and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.

The LORD has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: "Never again will I give your grain as food for your enemies, and never again will foreigners drink the new wine for which you have toiled;

but those who harvest it will eat it and praise the LORD, and those who gather the grapes will drink it in the courts of my sanctuary."

Pass through, pass through the gates! Prepare the way for the people. Build up, build up the highway! Remove the stones. Raise a banner for the nations.

The LORD has made proclamation to the ends of the earth: "Say to the Daughter of Zion, 'See, your Savior comes! See, his reward is with him, and his recompense accompanies him.' "

They will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the LORD; and you will be called Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted.

farewell to freetown

2005-12-07T07:41:00.000-05:00

only 2 days to go. i can't even believe it. i started packing last night which involved packing a lot of things that hadn't been touched since they were unpacked in august... that was funny and annoying. but it somehow made me realize that i have been here a long time. i've actually lived here. i didn't just visit. i've (kinda) learned a new language and (kinda) adapted to a new culture. i've made a lot of new friends, and have even met a few people who i would swear were family.

in one breath i am excited to go back to my original home and terrified to leave this place that i have learned to love. i say 'learned' because i can't say that it came naturally. on one hand, i look forward to things like hugging my family and sitting at the table in my mom's kitchen. but being in that time and place will of course require that i am excluded from this time and place - where i can hug fatmata or sheku and sit around the table at the aberdeen house. but that all makes me think of heaven and look forward to the day when my longings don't have to contradict each other.

sooooo... this time on friday we will begin the long process of getting to the airport and then getting in the air. this is rumored to take up to 10 hours to do. we'll see. we'll arrive in london saturday morning, hang out there for a couple of days (thanks to a ticketing glitch) and i'll be back in ohio on monday night. so i'll be seeing or talking to many of you very soon!

in case you haven't heard, i'll be spending the next 6 or 7 months in circleville. stop laughing. is anyone keeping track of how many times i've said i wouldn't live there again? the plan is to get a cheap apartment, subsitute teach and get some other job, and save money and pay some loans. and of course, hang with the family. i've missed them a lot. i feel like a lot has happened since i left and i am starving for some good time with them.

so, you won't be reading anything else from me from west africa. and as they say in krio, "da na di soriest pat" ('that is the sorriest part' - sorry erin, i totally bin tif yu layn)! i will most likely continue to process and reflect and ramble on this sight when i get home, so you can look forward to that. :)

a lek una bad, en a go gladi for si una bak.

(i love you all, and i will be happy to see you all again.)

thanksgivingish

2005-11-25T09:26:00.000-05:00

i hope you all had a happy thanksgiving! i had a very happy and very interesting one myself.

an american woman who works for mercy ships called faye a week or so ago and asked if we wanted to come to their house for thanksgiving dinner... heck yeah! then we found out that it was a carry-in and we had to actually cook thanksgiving-like foods to bring with us. now, i'm usually all about the carry-in/potluck/schmorgasboard meal, but you can't make greenbean caserole on a kerosene stove. and of course, we were asked to bring the greenbean caserole. but that was okay, we've gotten good at improvising, so we tried. and we used the mercy ships oven. as you might imagine, we couldn't find french-fried onions, so we went with the corn chips option. it didn't work out too well. don't try it if you're ever trying to cook thanksgiving dinner in africa.

the moral of the story (or rather, the point of this post) is that i recognize that i have much to be thankful for. the common Krio (sierra leonean language) response to the question "how are you?" is "i tell God 'thank you.'" maybe it isn't even thought about when it is said, and i admit that it doesn't always register with me when i hear it, but it is a striking phrase in the context of this place and these people who have suffered and continue to suffer so much. it is easy for me to tell God 'thank you' when my belly is full and i know my mom loves me. but how thankful would i be if i hadn't eaten for 2 days and my mom gave me bruises on a regular basis? if my husband was dead? if my home was under water?

thanksgiving is worship. it is something that i must choose. i hope that i have learned enough from the people of freetown that i can choose to be thankful in spite of circumstance. i have seen that thankfulness isn't about the things that i have, it is about acknowledging that i serve a good God. a God who gives not so that we will thank him, but simply because He is good. all the time. everywhere.

i choose to be thankful today.

traffic jam

2005-11-22T11:38:00.000-05:00

being stuck in traffic is rarely all that fun, so i'm not going to pretend like i've gained a ton of patience during my diesel-fume-ridden stay in africa, but today i was grateful for the pace at which our taxi was moving. in case you're wondering, that pace was slow enough that it only took a minute or so for a 7ish-year-old boy on foot to overtake us. not that he even knew we were there... he was completely in his own 7-year-old boy world. and don't think for a second that it was a different world than your own kid - or neighbor, or nephew, or any other 7 year old - lives in. i think that my mom would probably say he was be-bopping, and that's as good a description as any. strides as long as he was tall, chest pointed to the sky, head high, arms swinging like mad, emmersed in serious dialog with someone only he could see... i laughed out loud.

the beauty of it is that, in spite of the layers of difference that our eyes see, we're not really all that different, are we?

i thank God for 7-year-olds, and for the reminder that we all look the same through His eyes.

why should your heart not dance?

2005-11-06T13:05:00.000-05:00

okay i told you all last time how much i loved reading "till we have faces"... i have to do a little reflecting for you. can't help myself... let me quote the relevant part first:

"we had come into the sunlight now, too bright to look into, and warm (i threw back my cloak). heavy dew made the grass jewel-bright. the mountain, far greater yet also far further off than i expected, seen with the sun hanging a hand-breadth above its topmost crags, did not look like a solid thing. between us and it was a vast tumble of valley and hill, woods and cliffs, and more little lakes than i could count. to left and right, and behind us, the whole coloured world with all its hills was heaped up and up to the sky, with, far away, a gleam of what we call the sea... there was a lark singing; but for that, huge and ancient stillness.

and my struggle was this. you may well believe that i had set out sad enough; i came on a sad errand. now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice -- no words -- but if you made it into words it would be, "why should your heart not dance?" it's the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered, "why not?" i had to tell myself over like a lesson the infinite reasons i had not to dance. my heart to dance? mine whose love was taken from me, I, the ugly princess who must never look for other love, the drudge of the King, the jailer of Redival, perhaps to be murdered or turned out as a beggar when my father died... and yet, it was a lesson i could hardly keep in my mind. the sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if i could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other to the world's end. the freshness and wetness all about me made me feel that i had misjudged the world; it seemed kind, and laughing, as if its heart also danced. even my ugliness i could not quite believe in. who can feel ugly when the heart meets delight? it is as if, somewhere inside, within the hideous face and bony limbs, one is soft, fresh, lissom and desirable."

okay, the first thing that strikes me is how ugly, sad, and worthelss she feels. it tears at my heart that she would feel that about herself, but i hate to admit that i've actually felt those same things a lot since i've been here... sometimes freetown (or any other challenging life situation) makes me close in on myself. i let my focus and my thoughts turn inward which is always a dangerous (but occasionally neccessary) idea. the result of the inward focus is that i am overwhelmed with questions about a lot of things. i question the reality of hope, victory, love; and the possibility of freedom, justice, peace. but most of all, i question my own worth, lovability (if that's a word), adequacy. it's hard to admit that i feel these things, but i believe that this may be a sorrow that we all share... no matter our age, race, sex, nationality, at some time or another don't we all question whether or not we are loved?

total downer, i know, but self-pity isn't the point of the story... the point is that something outside of us is the source of an immense joy - a joy that the story-teller literally has to struggle against, telling herself that she is ugly, worthless, hopeless. but the beauty outside of her overpowers the sad mask that she wears. and when she delights in the things around her, she somehow senses that she is loved - but more than that - that she is desirable!

this has been a powerful message for me lately. i can't even tell you the ways that this story has worked its way into my days. it is a striking illustration of what i sense is felt by many people in Freetown - people who live their lives on pavement, waiting to be recognized, to be touched... but i feel like their sorrow is the same as mine - i just have the luxury to mask it. i can attest that God is showing me His love through many of my friends here, and i feel like that's helping me removc the mask. as i get to know these amazing people, hear their stories, understand their dreams, i can clearly see a God who is present and active and that itself is a source of joy in my life. as you can see, i have a lot of thoughts, and they aren't completely linear, so i'm going to spare you some of them!

anyway, i hope that God is showing you, as he is showing me, that you are lovely and desired in spite of yourself!

the heat, my goodness the heat...

2005-10-26T10:45:00.000-04:00

hello over there. just wanted to get a quick word out to all you circlevillians and tell you that i hope you all had fun and ate some good food for me. i can't believe that the Pumpkin Show really happened without me... i'm just glad that i didn't miss the big 100th show. that would have been awful. my friend sarah has been really great about listening to me explain the pumpkin show over the last week and she's from a small town, so she understands to an extent. when i got home on wednesday she had made a bunch of pumpkins out of construction paper and a sign that said "circleville - it's nearer than you think." and she somehow found canned pumpkin here and my roomies made a really yummy pumpkiny treat. i don't know how they did it, but i was THRILLED! i thought it was really sweet of them.

faye (that's our team leader) had malaria last week. and then we found out that cami (the other woman we live with) has malaria too. she was sick for almost 3 weeks but wasn't showing the normal symptoms, so they didn't know what it was... but now we know it was malaria, but the hospital couldn't figure out what else... so she hopped a plane back to the US on monday to see if someone can tell her what's wrong and make her better. seems like everyone else is sick too... the servant team has had to assume some extra responsibility because of all the crazy illness, but i've actually been impressed with us. we've only been here 2 months and don't speak a whole lot of Krio, but between the 5 of us, we've done good.

for some reason (which i'm told is Ramadan) the power company has been SUPER generous this last week. for the first 2 months that i was here, we probably had electricity 10 times... but it's been on everyday this week. not all day, but for most of it. this is great for obvious reasons, but my favorite part is that we've had fans during the day which makes it bearable to sit in one place and read for hours on end! so i've been reading a lot lately. i'm lovin' C.S. Lewis right now, so i've read the first 4 chronicles of narnia (according to the list i'm using) and i finished "till we have faces" a couple of nights ago. i haven't completely processed through the whole thing yet, but i'm gonna go ahead and recommend it to everyone. i loved it! it was beautifully written and i really can't stop thinking about it. i want to write about it, but i don't want to ruin it for anyone, so read it and then we can talk. i might try to read it again before i go home.

the last week has been a tough one for me on several levels, but there has been no shortage of lessons to come out of it all. i know that God is using this time to refine my own character as well as my perception of His character. i keep finding that i don't know much about either! but i guess that puts me in a good position to learn, right? i'm realizing that i believe a lot of lies about myself - some are self-serving, others are really self-defeating... on one hand, i've learned that i'm not all that tough, patient, compassionate, bold, and many other things that i wish i was... but on the other hand, i've realized that i can be super hard on myself in some areas... to the extent that i hold myself back from doing things that i can/should do just because i assume myself to be incapable. it's craziness really. but i can think of no better time or place to begin to work through all of this stuff, so i guess that's good. hard and not all that fun sometimes, but good.

out of time for now, more later i hope...

sorry, it's been a while...

2005-10-14T09:22:00.000-04:00

the last couple of weeks have been loaded. as many of you have heard, my grandpa did leave us on Wednesday the 28th, right around the time that i posted that blog about him. my mom says that the funeral was beautiful and a true celebration. it has been harder on me than i expected. i anticipated the sorrow of loosing someone close to me, but i never imagined what it would be like to go through it without my family. and for some self-focused reason i initially considered that i would be losing my grandpa while failing to consider that my mom would be losing her daddy and my grandma would be losing her husband of 50+ years... those realizations have made it hard to feel so far away right now, but i'm trusting that i'm in freetown for a REAL good reason. another lesson in BEING where i find myself... but i admit that have been counting the days and longing to be somewhere else.

it's not all bad though! i read that paragraph and realized that i sound like a total downer... whoa. i'm still learning and laughing and making friends and getting my butt kicked here in freetown. this whole longing to go home thing has had several lessons in it. first of all, i've been convicted of the fact that i am an educated American with constant access to an "escape plan." if i really really wanted to, i could be out of here within a couple of days. and even if i don't want to leave freetown, i can still find a resturant with sattelite TV or an internet cafe with air-conditioning and at least let my mind escape for an hour or so... it's hard to accept that i am one of the "white people."

today is the exact half-way point of my stay in freetown. 8 weeks down, and 8 to go. because i'm feeling kinda stuck and not all that positive right now, i've been trying to think of all the things that i like about freetown. all of the things that tickle my throat or make me smile. here's a short list...

i love the smell of diesel in the morning. (i realize this sounds weird, but i'm serious)
i love it that you can see the water from almost any point in freetown.
i love when kids grab my hand and call me "auntie."
i love when bus drivers slam on their brakes to let little kids and old ladies cross the street.
i love how the view of the water from our veranda never looks the same twice.
i love fula bread and laughing cow cheese. everyday. every single day.
i love seeing kids wash their school uniforms in the afternoon.
i love the bright colors and head scarves that all of the women wear.
i love the poda-poda that says "neatness" across the front.
i love cayan pepper.
i love that people sing and dance so freely here.
i love feeling like i've made a new friend in spite of the language barrier.
i love granat cake - peanut brittle has got nothing on this stuff!

and the list could go on, but i'll stop for now. hope you're enjoying the changing seasons over there. it's still hot during the days and rainy during the nights, but i like it that way. got to spend the day at the beach thursday so i'm not complaining!

later - steph

finishing that thought

2005-09-28T10:05:00.000-04:00

"...He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces."
-Isaiah 25:8

sorry that i ended things a little abruptly yesterday... i was checking e-mail while i was writing, and i got a message from my dad that my grandpa (who has been struggling against cancer for the past 8 months) likely wouldn't make it through the day. i scrambled to finish my thought and then hurried back to the house.

i was a mess for a while. cami let me use her phone to call my grandparents' house. my aunt paula answered the phone, and when i told her it was me she squeeled "how are you?!?!" and seconds later my mom was on the phone. i was confused because it seemed like i was the only one crying. my mom asked how i was, and i managed to blurt "i'm sad" before beginning to sob. my mom told me that everyone there was praying for me (what?!?!!?) and that grandpa was so proud of me and would want me to be where i am. that, of course, didn't help me stop crying. then she put grandma on the phone. i have never been so amazed by that woman. she was so calm and confident. she started telling me some of the things grandpa had been saying in the last couple of days. he's been unresponsive for the most part, but every once in a while he has something to say. usually it makes everyone laugh, which he enjoys. i was cracking up when grandma was telling me some of it.

my favorite thing she told me is that the other day he looked at her and asked very matter-of-factly "do you know the way?" my grandma got sassy and said "well, where are you going?" he said "well, heaven! do you know the way?!" my grandma let him know that she had a road map and she would be able to find him.

then she let me talk to him. what do you say when you know you're speaking to someone for the last time? i told him i loved him and i was proud of him and grateful for the life he lived. and then out of nowhere i told him, "have fun!" i have no clue where it came from, but i actually think it was the right thing to say.

there was this strange air of celebration coming through the phone line. i've heard about this before, but i was always a little skeptical. we call death natural because it is a part of life, but it is the ugliest part. and though it happens in families all over the world every second of every day, it is always painful because it was never God's intention for us. but i could sense in the voices of my family that there was joy in this somehow. like i said, i was the only one who was crying! in my grandpa's last moments, they could already see that great promised redemption taking place. i finally saw that he was on his way to the very place we all long to be. he's going home!

i still haven't gotten the final word. i don't know if he's with us or with Jesus, but i want to close with a poem today.

please pray for my family, especially my grandma. love you all. - steph

Holy Sonnet X

Death be not proud, thou some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which by thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

-John Donne

celebrating life...

2005-09-27T14:08:00.001-04:00

sunday was a good day. went to a relatively short church service (under 3 hours) where an 8 year old fell asleep on my lap and left a sweaty face print on my skirt... that was funny. it dried before i had to stand up, but it totally looked like i peed. erin and i walked the boy and some of his little neighbor friends most of the way home, and then we caught transportation without even waiting for a minute! that very rarely happens.

when we got home we started helping all of the WMF staff and my other team members get ready for a birthday party for 2 of the girls we know. it was a 16th birthday party for a set of twins, so that in itself made it interesting! i can't help but think of what the party might have been like if they were somewhere else... someone else.

the girls' parents were killed during the war, so the only relatives they have are their older sister and an older cousin, both of which are in their early 20's. i have heard details of their story through other people, but i don't feel completely comfortable sharing things that weren't shared with me, so i'll tell you a little of what they have told me directly.

when they were very young, maybe 6 years old, their village was raided and the rebels slit their mother's throat. they watched her die. at some point during the years between being orphaned and arriving in freetown, one sister was tied to a stake for some sick reason or another by a group of young soldiers. she showed me the scars, but didn't say much else about the event. her sister laughingly told me about watching the rebels force a man's hands into hot oil to "wash his hands of politics" after saying he would never vote for their leader. their cousin told me about how she found the two girls and took them with her she rushed toward freetown, trying to outrun the fighting. now they live in a crowded refugee camp outside the city. such full and heavy loads despite their young age...

but you should hear them sing and watch them dance. one twin is clearly more withdrawn than the other, but they are both absolutely beautiful.

so this celebration of life was unlike any other that i have taken part in... it was so meaningful and such an honor. after some dancing, food, singing, more dancing, one of my team members led a devotion and then the girls (the twins and their cousin) were asked to stand in the center of our circle. we were asked to take a moment with each one and tell them what we think is special about them and what we love about them... in essence, what about their life did we find worthy of celebration... i wish i could really explain the scene that evening, but i don't know how. i sat there watching the descending sun shine on those 3 amazing faces. i watched the staff talk to them, watched their faces change, their eyes drop. as we each took our turn to express our love, tears turned to weeping, and we eventually grew silent. as we sat, the cousin began to sing a song about heaven. i don't remember the words exactly, but i know i heard in it the promise that i need to remember today...

that our sorrows of the night would be replaced by joy in the morning.

punching some numbers...

2005-09-18T15:49:00.000-04:00

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?
- G.K. Chesterton

This week i met a woman with one eye. The other had been gouged out during a rebel attack during the war. Does she know she's still beautiful? I also met a 10-year-old boy who was a deaf-mute. Does he laugh? I met a grown man with no hands. Another victim of the rebels. How does he feel when his small child feeds him?

i am grateful that i can relate to chesterton. i love that poem, but it took on new meaning for me this week.

something else i've been thinking about...

the price of gas went up this week. it was 10,000 leones for a gallon, but now it's 11,250 (a substantial increase). the exchange rate is currently 2920 leones to the dollar. so... a gallon of gas here is $3.85 which doesn't sound much different to what many of you are paying right now i'm sure. HOWEVER, if you compare that to the cost of living in freetown, based only on how much the average person spends on food (because i didn't have time to check out all the other cost stuff...) figuring that the average sierra leonean can eat well on 2000 Le per day, and the average american can eat well on $6.00 per day (both of these estimates are more than adequate) .... that would be the equivalent of an american spending (drum-roll please) $33.25 on ONE GALLON of gas. rediculous.

it gets worse. everyone except the UN and the NGOs and the Lebanese business people have to take public transportation. the transport system consists of taxis (you know what those are) and poda-podas, which are essentially mini-vans with the seats yanked out, and benches welded to the floor. at full capacity a poda-poda holds 20 adults, but they can usually shove a few kids in there too. no joke. so i'm sure you can imagine that those beasts get awesome gas-mileage to begin with... :) well, because of the raised prices in petroleum, they had to raise the price of public transportation. it used to be 600 Le one way. now it's 700. makes sense to me that they would raise prices considering the poda-poda drivers didn't make much profit to begin with. so it's good for them and their families, but what about all of the people who have to take transportation to work and can barely feed their families to begin with? it's so crazy.

i don't have any solutions to this problem... i've just been obsessed with it for the last couple of days. i woke up thinking about it yesterday (the day after the price went up), and it mostly just makes me sad. but other than being sad, i am mad. i don't want to bust on america all the time, but there's something really wrong with the fact that we're paying $2.69 per gallon (9/18, circleville OH), and people who could survive on half of that are paying a lot more. i know that this is not up to the average, gas-buying american. i'm not holding any of you responsible because i'm one of you and i don't like to pay much for gas either... but i have friends in freetown too. friends who work hard and long and can't keep their heads above water. the issue isn't even gas, the issue is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. i don't see any justice in that equation. i somehow doubt that God sees justice in it either, and that's a lot scarier than putting up with one of my soap-box sessions!!!

this was really a fun and busy week, but it was hard too. i'm tired still and tomorrow is monday! pray for me! love and miss you guys. later...

some comic relief...

2005-09-11T17:07:00.000-04:00

okay so i need to set the stage for this story... we live about 300-400 yards off of the main road where we catch transportation and go to the market and all that essential stuff. there is a really bumpy, unpaved, far from flat, usually water-logged road that runs from the market down a hill to a river, and we live on that road. this is the rainy season, and so there are a few spots on the road where you have to step from stone to stone because of the water... i'll be honest and tell you that i stumble or trip at least once a day on this road. well in last thursday's attempt at this major feat i nearly broke my neck. i stepped on a rock and did a sort of double-slipping trip move... felt like i was falling for 15 seconds or so - even imagined myself on the ground while it was happening... but somehow ended up on my feet, clutching the hand of some random man who was walking by. i let out one of my trade-mark cackles and turned around to see hillary and sarah doubled over laughing and a group of sierra leonean men standing up and applauding me and yelling in amazement... i raised my arms in victory, turned around, and kept walking.

haven't felt very good this week. i'm battling a cold. i feel a lot better than i did, but i'm still taking some marathon naps and dealing with a headache. nothing life-threatening of course, but it makes some of the long days a little difficult.

things are good. my schedule will be changing this week because the kids are going back to school tomorrow. i guess that they don't usually go back on time because the teachers usually have to strike so that they get paid... crazy. but they got paid on time this year, so school will start on schedule!!! the kids are really excited. so that's good.

weird, i just remembered it was september 11... don't know how i feel about that... so i guess you're spared of any lectures today :)

well, i'm running out of internet time. tomorrow should be an exciting day, but i'll have to tell you why later. hope you're all doing good. i love hearing what's going on with everyone, but unfortunately i can't always write back in a timely fashion. but please write. i love it!!!

peace out. - steph

this is sierra leone...

2005-09-04T14:54:00.000-04:00

it's so weird to hear about all of the hurricane stuff from so far away... we intentionally ate at a restaurant with satelite cable so we could watch CNN today, but of course, there was a soccer game on so we were out of luck. i've heard that they're calling in the worst natural disaster in US history, and i just read a few articles detailing the situation... i even read that they're bringing some troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan to help deal with the aftermath. i pray that you are all doing well, and that you're finding ways to respond to our neighbors and their suffering.

one article that i read had an interesting quote from a survivor. i can't imagine how she must feel right now, but reading it from a place like Freetown, i was caught off gaurd... the woman said, "They have us living here like animals... We have only had two meals, we have no medicine and now there are thousands of people defecating in the streets. This is wrong. This is the United States of America."

of course, NO ONE should be living like that. NO ONE should have to live in such life-threatening conditions, with the looming threat of starvation, disease, murder, rape, or any number of horrible possibilities. the woman is exactly right. THIS IS WRONG. but it is wrong everywhere - not just in the United States of America. it is wrong on every continent, in every country, every city, every village. nationality has nothing to do with justice. we are all created in the image of God. we should all be treated as such. my heart breaks as i read the details about new orleans. and i admit that i catch myself thinking, "how is this happening in the US?!?!?" but my question should be "how is this happening to anyone?!?!" no matter who or where or why...

just some highlights from this past week...

we started language lessons on monday. that was "fun"... i think i'm picking it up alright, but there are a lot of vowel sounds and they are confusing to me. we are also learing how to write Krio, which is mainly a spoken language, so that just confuses me ever more... i guess for now i can speak a little "Kringlish" as they call it.

on thursday 3 of us apotos (white people) accompanied one of the kids from the lighthouse to visit his family outside the city. it was only about an hour from the center of freetown and the drive was beautiful. the boy (i'll call him A) is from a poor family, and he left home for the streets of freetown because his parents didn't have enough money to support everyone. i know this is really difficult for most of us to understand, but that's the way it happens in a lot of the world... anyway, he hadn't been home for about 6 months, so it was really special to be there. "A" is about 20 years old and is being apprenticed in the tailoring business. he made himself a new outfit just for the occasion of visiting his family, and carried a new water container as a gift for his mother. i asked if his mother new he was coming which was a stupid question because there's no way she would have... but that just made it all the more exciting in my opinion! as we walked up the road to his family's home, his younger sisters ran out to meet us. both of his parents were solemn, but clearly happy to see their son... i almost cried! as we sat under a tree, "A" introduced me to his father as "the woman who is teaching him to read." what the?!?!?! i've never been so humbled in my life. his father was SO grateful, and i tried to communicate that it was a pleasure to read with his son, but i'm sure it didn't translate... anyway, before we left that afternoon, his father asked if i would help "A" write a letter home. again, i almost cried, but promised we would work on the letter.

last night 4 of the little boys from the Kroo Bay area stayed at our house. they are cared for by a Sierra Leonean man named Noah who is about my age, so the staff that we live with decided he could probably use a break. let's just say that boys are boys, so it felt a little bit like my whole summer at the Y, and it was really fun. we ate and danced and did kung-fu moves through the air. then watched part of "return of the king" and went to bed. needless to say, when i woke up this morning, they were already running laps in the living room, all excited to go outside and throw things... i think i was having little-kid withdrawal, so it was actually quite refreshing for me.

today i visited an anglican church which was a nice break because it was all in English. it was also a communion sunday, so i was really glad that we were there. then went home, layed in my own sweat, and laughed with my roommates about dumb stuff. i love laughing at dumb stuff.

it's been a good week. thanks for reading.

peace and love - steph

p.s. if you would like to e-mail me, please use stephmcguire81@yahoo.com

have i mentioned the view?

2005-08-25T18:47:00.000-04:00

okay, so right now i'm sitting in this little internet cafe just down the road from our house. this is a really surreal environment. downright bizarre actually. directly arcoss the road, literally 20 yards to the right of where i sit, is an amputee camp for people who lost limbs during the war. and directly to my left is the back door which is standing wide open, breeze blowing, the beautiful atlantic in plain view. a young girl just walked past with a basket of bananas on her head, and a sweet old man just called "hello madame" and tried to sell me something from a white box in his hand. i don't know what it was, but i passed. someone is blarring TLC's "unpretty" from their computer. a few minutes ago it was that "get down on it" song. and then there are 3 of us "white guuurls" sittin' in a row typing away... i wish i knew how to hook my camera to this computer. it's a sight worth seeing.

i feel like i have a lot to say, but i'm not really sure if i can communicate it yet. i usually need to let things stew for a while, but i'll try to get this all out...

we finally found our guides and went on the walking tour on tuesday. before we left, the 4 boys who served as our guides asked what we wanted to see on this tour. i replied that i wanted to see whatever they thought would help us understand freetown... well, they definitely showed us that. we paired off so that each team member was getting the tour explanation from one boy. first we walked through "big market" which is a definite tourist stop (or would be if there were toursits in freetown :)). all kinds of wood carvings and fabrics and beautiful stuff...

then they walked us to "king jimmy market" which is pretty much the opposite of touristy. there were people everywhere selling every kind of vegetable and fruit and fish. we walked out on this long pier and one of the boys explained that this is where the ships stopped to release the freed slaves that first settled freetown. it was one of those weird moments where time and space sorta collapse in on you.

from there we walked through a few other markets close to the water and over to the government warf. across the street from the warf is a government building that was bombed or burned (???) during the war. the structure still stands, but it is all soot-covered and there are no windows and it isn't used anymore. the boys explained that after the war, an NGO used the building to house street-children. it eventually came out that at least 2 of the 4 boys walking with us had lived there for a while. the boy who i walked with most of the afternoon showed me or told me about a lot of the places where he had lived after the war. small buildings made of scrap metal, large barn-like buildings that housed hundreds of displaced people, burnt buildings, the soccer stadium...

we eventually came to an important intersection on the east side of freetown. my guide explained that this was a very tense place when the conflict reached the city. he told us that fighters collapsed in from every direction and met in that intersection. he explained that he had lived very close by and told stories of people he knew who had been killed in the area... then he pointed up one street and told us that was where the rebels captured him and took him with them. we started to walk up the road to his old neighborhood. as we walked, we talked about his family and friends. then he pointed ahead and said "that junction is where they caught me." another weird time and space thing... years ago, but at that very place, a young boy's life changed in the matter of a few seconds.

i won't go any deeper into his personal story from there because i'm not certain of the details. i don't speak any Krio, and his english is accompanied by a strong accent. what i do know is that he was a young boy at the time, and while he was gone, his mother was told that he had been killed. upon escaping from the rebels and returning home, he was not allowed to live with his family because they were afraid that the rebels would come looking for him. his friends would not associate with him because they were afraid. but he wasn't alone. he was surrounded by the hundreds and hundreds of boys just like him. boys who were taken from home, given drugs and weapons, and forced to fight. i do not know for certain that this boy was a combatant. i do know that somewhere in sierra leone, if not right under my nose, there are thousands of young men and women who were stripped of their childhoods and left to recover on their own. no that their families didn't care. not that their friends and churches were indifferent. but no one knew what to do. everyone feared that at any moment they could lose another child or their own life.

please please please keep this country in your prayers along with the individuals that make it so alive and beautiful. it is hard not to think about that instant when this young man's life was changed. i can't help but wish that he hadn't been outside -- that something or someone would have kept him from venturing out that day. but it happened. and now i have to trust God's redemptive promise for my friend. it is an honor to hear his story. i hope you feel the same way.

I bless the rains down in Africa...

2005-08-23T14:30:00.000-04:00

and let me tell you why i bless those rains: because it isn't raining today, and i'm sweating like mad! this is actually one of the cooler parts of the year in sierra leone, so i'm not complaining. enough about the weather... I'M IN FREETOWN!

got here close to "on schedule" friday night. all three of my flights were considerably delayed on the way here, but i'm here so i guess it doesn't matter. the house we're living in is clean and safe and has running water in the mornings and electricity in the evenings, so it's allllll good. i'm on a team of 5 girls and we're all living in one bedroom so that might end up being interesting. but so far, so good. we've already had a lot of laughs. we're a relatively diverse group (for a bunch of white, middle-class protestants) in terms of our stages in life and reasons for coming here. our team coordinator's name is faye and she is AWESOME. i really like her and i'm excited to learn from her.

saturday afternoon we went to kroo bay which is a very poor section of the city. i wrote a reflection in one of my prayer letters about my time in kroo bay last november. i'll post it here if it's still on the WMF website... (FYI: i think it might start raining soon!!!) anyway, i love that little church and that mob of kids. sunday we went to church and then to a cookery shop for lunch. i'll try to explain the cookery shop to you when i'm more familiar with exactly what it is... i can't remember sunday night... seems so long ago... yesterday we went to the lighthouse center. this is WMF's main focus in freetown. they work closely and intentionally with about 17 kids who were orphaned or displaced or what-not due to the "conflict". anyway, the kids who attend school are out of school for the next 6 weeks, so we will be helping the WMF staff with a sort of summer-school program. i'll be spending most of my time there doing one-on-one reading (in English) with the kids. i like it, but it is so exhausting for some of them. they get so frustrated and impatient with themselves. i think they're doing great - all things considered. i'll be doing that on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays. thursdays are our official day off. today we're doing a walking-tour of the city, but there was a mis-communication about where we were meeting our guides (three 17 year old boys) so that's how i ended up at a computer.

we start our Krio language lessons on monday, so i'm excited about that. i think we'll meet with our tutor twice a week. and by the way, i actually like the food! i really really didn't like it last time, but i'm not having that problem this time... thank goodness.

well, that's the update so far. i promise this will get more interesting in the future, but i figured some people would want the logistics... and we've really just been settling in and figuring out the routine so far. i've had some time to think through why i am here and what i want to accomplish in these 4 months, and i'll share more about that in the near future.

thanks for reading. miss you all. and it still isn't raining...

13 hours and counting...

2005-08-18T04:19:00.000-04:00

okay, so i started this blog thing 5 months ago, never told anyone about it, and obviously never wrote in it... but now you're reading it, so i must have finally told someone about it...

i will leave columbus today at 4:45 pm to begin the 24+ hour journey to freetown, sierra leone. don't worry, it's not 24 hours in the air -- just 24+ from the time i leave columbus to the time i arrive in freetown. but i'm REALLY good at sleeping in airplanes and airports, and anywhere else for that matter, so it's no big deal that i'm still awake and writing in an online journal at 3:26 am...

the point is that i figure this little blogger deal will be the easiest way for me to stay in touch with everyone while i'm gone. easy for me and easy for you -- assuming that i can remember my password (which i had trouble doing tonight) and that you can remember the web address. so, i'm losing sleep now, but i'll be glad i did this later.

for those of you who i haven't talked to in a while: the summer has absolutely flown by, which i didn't expect at all. i've been living with my parents in a town where i know roughly 3 people my age and working only 30 hours a week at the YMCA. sounds like it wouldn't be worth documenting, but it has actually been A LOT of fun. i have a very great family, and even though we can drive each other crazy sometimes, i'd choose to hang out with them over almost anyone... and while there were times when i wanted to quit my job without notice (like the day when i got puked on AND yelled at by a rabid mother), the kids at the Y were quite amusing if nothing else. there are a few who i will genuinely miss and will probablly tell stories about for years to come. but i'll spare you the stories for now.

i have to get to bed so i can wake up in 3 hours and go to wal-mart, then finish my thank-you cards to all the AWESOME people who are helping me go to freetown. speaking of which, many people have asked what i will be doing while i'm there... the gist of it is that i'll be part of a team committed to learning more about Jesus and serving Him by serving the poor. i'd be happy to give you a more detailed explanation once i get there and know more of what my days will look like. i hope that will suffice for now because i really need some sleep.

signing off...

let's get it started

2005-03-26T18:03:00.000-05:00

well, after surfing the blogs of several friends and being impressed with their vulnerability and willingness to upload their thoughts into cyberspace, i finally decided to give this thing a try.