EWB-PU Sierra Leone Project Blog

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I am writing to you from NYC. The reward that I won for arriving back in the states two days earlier is a two-day layover in JFK (Surprise! Virgin America won’t move my flight earlier unless I donate an additional $350). As appealing as it sounded to relive my overnight airport terminal experiences at Mohamed V, I chose to evacuate myself to my uncle’s house in the city for the time being where I’ve been catching up on some rest, showering, and now blogging. From the last that I heard, Meghan, Chris, and Eric were all on their way to making it back safely, albeit Meghan sans luggage. Indeed, it seems that as a last hurrah to dispel any doubts we had about its incompetence, Royal Air Maroc artfully decided to send Meghan’s bag somewhere out into the void between here and Africa. Well done!
We’re all hoping that Meghan’s bag will rematerialize sometime soon.

Back to where we left off…

Thursday was our last chance for some finishing touches. We began the day bright and early at the RAM office, where we confirmed our new itinerary for our return home on Friday morning. Upon arriving back at our hotel we sat down to a final chat with Dr. Barrie during which we discussed some spreadsheets that Eric had put together, which showed the costs of the solar power system for a few different electrical load scenarios. From our rough calculations, using solar panels will be cheaper than continuing to use the gasoline generator when costs are factored in over a 10 year life cycle. The PV system will probably cost anywhere between $20K to $50K and we hope to keep expenses to a minimum by both seeking out cheaper PV system materials using our NGO contacts while also helping the clinic reduce its energy demands through more efficient appliances. Afterwards, Bailor helped us complete our health assessment for the community. Alas, it was finally time for Dr. Barrie to go and we said our final goodbyes with some firm handshakes and awkward embraces (the hug doesn’t seem to have made it yet as a common farewell gesture in Sierra Leone).

Following a delicious lunch at a local hole-in-the-wall restaurant, we scheduled a meeting with Mohamed Khalil who is the head of Engineers Without Borders – Sierra Leone. In the interim, while our stomachs were still busy digesting and Mohamed was eeking his way to our hotel through Freetown’s congested streets, we decided to look for a map of the country and some souvenirs. By the end of our venture we had successfully obtained a few $3 maps. Meghan found a nice African cloth wrap. Eric bargained his way to a couple soccer jerseys for his sons. We also bought a Sierra Leone jersey for the EWB-Princeton fundraising banquet, which will hopefully be happening later this year. I think Ali was a bit disappointed, since he was really pushing for me to buy an Arsenal jersey. I don’t know how well that would have worked as an auction item: a jersey of an English soccer team displaying a United Arab Emirates company’s advertisement made in China and sold in Sierra Leone?? Now that I think of it, I guess that would make the American wearer quite cosmopolitan.

At around 4PM we met with Mohamed Khalil and had a nice chat about his chapter of EWB while also briefing him on our own project with NOW. EWB-SL has around 80 volunteers and is mainly financed by Mohamed and some others’ own business profits. Mohamed owns his own engineering firm in Freetown. We promised to be in more contact with the chapter in the future and keep him posted about our project.

With only a few hours remaining before it was time to depart for the ferry, we decided to go see the Lumley Beaches on the west side of Freetown, where all of the ex-pats have built their dream homes. The beaches were indeed quite nice and the area seemed like a whole different world from the bustling and crowded streets of central and eastern Freetown. There were a few small resorts that dotted the coastline and the main street was primarily used by expensive luxury vehicles. Within 10 minutes I had spotted more white people in that area than I had seen during the entire rest of our trip. At first I had pointed at them and shouted “White man! White man!” as is custom in Sierra Leone, but this got old pretty quickly. We ended our trip out with some satisfying burgers and fries at one of the resort restaurants.

By 6:30 it was time to go and we gradually made it to the ferry. Just as when we had first taken the boat after arriving in this country, our trip across the bay was supplemented with live entertainment and short music videos on the TV. We watched everything from an amputee hip hop artist who danced on one leg to clips of two waltzing midgets. The winner for most ridiculous music video, though, featured four men wearing spandex who danced amongst piles of garbage and alternated between falling to the ground and convulsing and playing with a live chicken: an instant recipe for success. Genius! For more details you can ask Chris, who now owns this masterpiece on VCD.

Following the ferry ride we were driven to the airport where we were “processed” through Lungi’s security and boarding procedures, an operation which included zero computers and a lot of handwritten sheets of paper. There were no x-ray machines or metal detectors so the security staff opened up and rifled through every passenger’s bags. Somehow we eventually made it through and boarded our flight to Casablanca and even our transfer from Casablanca to JFK.

And that is where I will leave you. Meghan, Chris, and I will perhaps provide some additional closing thoughts along with more pictures.

-Neal

We’re confirmed on our Friday flight – back in the US by tomorrow afternoon.

So I guess it’s up to me to provide some details on the ride from Kono and some of the things here in Freetown. I’m writing from the restaurant at the Sierra International Hotel (next to the “V.I.P. Launge”), where we are watching the football match between Celtic and Arsenal with Ali. Ali is a HUGE fan of Arsenal, so he’s very happy that they are winning right now.

We left Kono yesterday afternoon. While Ali went to pick up something from the clinic for Dr. Barrie, Neal and I went for a walk – I was hoping to get some food, since all the very spicy and very oil-y food is not really my favorite, and I’m much happier with bread, hard boiled eggs, and ground granut (peanut butter!!!!! I could eat this for every meal, and have done so for a good number of them). Yesterday’s lesson was ask what type of egg you are buying before you try to break it open. So my last set of clean clothes is now covered in raw egg, making for a fun walk home. Fortunately I think no one noticed the egg all over me as we walked, the fact that we were CHINESE and WHITEMAN was more obvious. And Neal and I were sporting out super-cool new shades (each less than US$2!) – I have aviators, and Neal’s are some weird goggle-type white-rimmed I-don’t-know-what.

It’s hard to accurately describe the ride from Kono to Freetown, although I can say that I now have a much higher tolerance for sitting in a vehicle for many hours at a time, and being knocked around as if in an earthquake. I took a couple of seconds of video of driving in a variety of conditions, so if anyone is interested if/when we ever return… It’s about a 6 hour ride, maybe up to 7. The first 3 hours, from Koidu Town to Makeni, is what remains of a paved road from probably back in the days of the British, but it’s mostly dirt now, and potholes galore. Ali takes advantage of the full width of the road to avoid as many as possible, so there’s lots of swerving. I’m surprised the car still has a vaguely workable suspension. After Makeni, all the way to Freetown, it’s mostly paved, with only a few rough patches, but a million times better. Ali (who is an amazing driver btw, we would probably have died a million times by now, or had to pay a million local taxes – more on that later) was speeding along, racing the sun (it sets at 7pm, and night-time driving is not really ideal). We pretty much couldn’t see anything in the dark – some cars don’t use headlights, or just one tail light is sort of working; people are walking EVERYWHERE; motobikes don’t really seem to obey any traffic laws; and there are the wonderful police checkpoints / local tax collection areas.

The government has instituted “local tax” which you pay to the district in which you live. I’d gotten a heads-up about this from the blogs of NOW’s previous Princeton interns, Chris and Katie, who left SL a few days before we got here (hopefully we can all finally meet on campus!). Here’s what happens (I wish I had filmed this, but I didn’t want to risk having my camera confiscated): We have to stop at the local tax collection place, which may or may not be run by an official person. Some people just stop cars and demand local tax to try to get money. And even if they are the real officials, there’s no guarantee that money actually gets further than his own local pocket. Ali shows his card proving he’s paid. Then the people usually want us to pay. Ali explains we are just visiting, we are not locals. A very heated, loud, and lengthy shouting match ensues in Krio. The local tax is only 5,000 Le (less than $2), but it’s the principle of the thing – there’s no reason we should be giving in to the local corruption. And Ali refuses to let us pay (Dr. Barrie is one of the most zero-tolerance people when it comes to corruption, and Ali is very fed up with the corruption as well). I actually have a copy of the receipt from the SL Embassy for our visa, so I wave that around and insist that we’ve paid far more than the local tax to their government already. Eric was asking for an official document that said they needed to collect local taxes from visitors, and the man told us that was a ridiculous request. We’ve been held up at least 5 or 6 times since we’ve gotten here. At the final one on the way to Freetown, I’m pretty sure all they wanted to do was read our passports, since they tried to pronounce our names (I didn’t know “Meghan” was so difficult to say) and read through all our stamps.

And then we were free to go! When we almost got to Freetown, we took a short detour to visit Ali’s girlfriend and their 3-month-old daughter, Zena, who is absolutely adorable. Once we hit Freetown, it was pretty slow traveling – so much traffic! Probably because it’s now Ramadan, so people are out and about walking to the mosques that dot the city. I have seriously never seen so many people in my life in such a small place! New Jersey is the most densely populated state, but doesn’t hold a candle to the Western District of Sierra Leone. Ali safely delivered us to the hotel, and after our traditional game of Hearts (we have become addicted to the game, it’s a good time-killer, too, with all the waiting we’ve had to do), it was nice to sleep in some real AC. Although we were woken up at 6am by a phone call (the phone says “Wyndham Dublin Hotel”…?) to make sure the taps were closed, because the tank was being refilled.

Since the game is still going (now Arsenal is up 2-0), I’ll continue some blogging about today. Wait, Arsenal just scored again! Ali is ecstatic!

Ok, so for today… What better way to start the day than at the Royal Air Maroc Office?! Thanks Dad for calling RAM last night, but unfortunately by the time we got there, only 2 seats were remaining out of Freetown, and none out of Casablanca to JFK. And while we were debating, those two seats went as well. So we were put on the waiting list for Friday’s flight. We’ll be going to the office first thing tomorrow morning to see where we stand, and then check again before they close at 4:30, because if we do have the flight, we’ll have to take the ferry across tonight (and the last one leaves sometime in the early evening, I believe) and spend the night in Lungi (which makes Mohammed V look like a 5-star resort). Some confusing e-mails from Dad, but it looks like we might actually have been confirmed for the earlier flight? Afraid to get my hopes up, we’ll check tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, we really like it here! But there’s no point in sitting around doing nothing when we’ve finished all our work, and paying for hotel rooms, and two of us have little sisters to move into college this weekend.

We also met with Mr. Kamara from the Government Technical Institute again, and we got a grand tour of the school. They have a pet crocodile in the middle of campus in a concrete cage? Also saw the GTI-equivalents of Frist, Nassau Hall, the E-Quad. Met just about every administrator. They’re integrating courses in solar thermal and PV technology into their curriculum, with a degree in renewable energy within a few years, and we’re really excited about establishing a partnership with the students in the program in the future. Mr. Kamara also took us to meet people in an NGO they work with as well – EFA, Environmental Foundation of/for Africa (I think that’s the name). The guy we met had just gotten here a few weeks ago and wasn’t entirely sure of the answers to our questions, but gave us some contact info of other people. He also has malaria (?) because he doesn’t believe in taking pills (?). Malaria research expert Neal informs us that’s basically a good way to die, by neither taking prophylaxis nor seeking treatment once you get malaria – it’s not really a disease you can just “tough out.” Don’t worry, we’re all on prophylaxis (a side-effect of Malarone is really vivid dreams, apparently), and most of us haven’t been bitten by anything (sorry Neal, bugs like him).

Our final stop of the day was RDC Solar, which is, as far as anyone knows, the only supplier of photovoltaics, batteries, charge controllers, and the like in all of Sierra Leone. The storefront has been running completely off solar since it opened in 2003, which was impressive, but their prices seemed wayyyy high. And just about everything was imported from the US. It would probably be much cheaper for us to ship the things we need ourselves. And Mr. Kamara promised to help us out with those logistics down the road, which would be quite a ways off right now. But it’s great to make so many contacts in-country, and we’ve gotten a ton of information.

Arsenal wins! Now time to do some calculating based on all our data, so we’ll be ready when we meet with Dr. Barrie tomorrow morning. Until then… (we’ll also try to figure out how to display the pictures we’ve uploaded)

-Meghan

So we had a few days of technical difficulties with the Zain system but now we’re up and running again from the luxurious Sierra International Hotel in Freetown (and this place is luxurious, each room has AC and usually running water, although at the moment the tank is empty so there’s none for tonight.) Since we’ve got a few days catching up to do, so lets get right to it.

When we last left our intrepid heroes it was Saturday and all of us were napping except Meg, who was heroically manning the internet (someone’s got to do it). That night we had dinner at the nicest restaurant in town – the Kono Hotel – with a group of five people who worked for various NGO and development type organizations; two of whom, Peter and Sarah, were recently married and had asked the guests at their wedding to contribute towards the cost of a solar powered vaccine fridge for the clinic in lieu of weddings gifts. They were in town to see the clinic and meet Dr. Barrie; they also got to go on a tour of a local diamond mine as Peter has a job with UNDP that’s related to the mining industry. I was jealous; apparently its quite a sight.

Dinner at the Kono hotel was very nice, although expensive. Everyone was very good company, and the food was quite good. We had a veritable feast of pizza and grilled fish and chicken skewers, which is a far cry from our usual fare.

A brief digression into the food here: The Kono Hotel excepted, there isn’t a lot of variety in the diet around Koidu. The two restaurants at which we ate almost all our meals were called Mother’s Restaurant and Sunshine (which since its the rainy season led to more than a few “Sunshine on a cloudy day” jokes). Both are tiny little hole in the wall places, and both serve the same two dishes – groundnut (Krio for peanut) soup and krin-krin.

Groundnut soup is interesting because it doesn’t really taste anything like peanuts and isn’t really soup, but more like chunks of very spicy meat or fish doused in palm oil and spooned over a plate of rice. Why this particular dish is called groundnut soup is something of a mystery to me, but I suppose the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hand shall not disturb it. Krin-krin is a similar dish – stewed casava leaves with meat or fish (sometimes both) served over rice, which makes it a dark green instead of the reddish color of groundnut soup – and both are generally pretty tasty. Sometimes the rice is fried rice instead of boiled, but that’s about the extent of the dining options. I’ve found, too, that the definition of what constitutes meat here has been stretched a bit – it doesn’t necessarily mean something chewable, cutable, or even edible but just something that, at some point in time, made up any part of a goat or cow. This means occasionally you get some nonstandard parts, as we’ve taken to calling them, floating around your plate, but none of us have starved yet. We also buy a lot of food from the vendors on the street, who sell loaves of fresh bread, fruit, and eggs for a few pennies all over town. The food here is very cheap – a meal is generally about $1 per person, a loaf of bread $0.15, a guava maybe $.06.

And now, back to the action.

The next day (Sunday) we went with the development worker group from the previous night to go see the clinic’s palm farm. The local chiefs of the area donated 100 acres of land to NOW (National Organization for Wellbody; Dr. Barrie’s NGO) so that the clinic can grow palm nuts as a revenue source to help with the cost of operating the clinic. The palm nuts are made into palm oil, a mainstay of cooking here, and one tree can produce up to five gallons of oil, which sells for about Le 80,000. At 60 trees per acre, this farm will be a significant source of income when it gets up and running. As I understand it, the farm is supposed to be mostly worked by amputees or their dependents, who live in the nearby amputee camp and are paid a salary to work on the farm. Amputation of hands as a form of torture was common during the civil war, and the clinic was started to provide free health care to both amputees and their families.

To visit the farm, we had to load up into two Land Rovers because the road out there was too rough even for our champ of an SUV. We got bounced around a good bit getting to the farm, especially when crossing the river via several cut logs laid side by side. This is a form of bridge that works a little better when you’re hiking that cruising around in a 2-ton vehicle, and I fully expected us to get stuck or drop into the river. But we made it without incident to the farm, although on the way back everyone had to get out and walk across so the car was light enough to make it up onto the log – there was no ramp or anything. The farm itself was small – only 12 acres have currently been cleared – and freshly planted with upland rice and palms that are currently about knee high. The trees don’t mature to the point where they can produce fruit for three years, and the rest of the land won’t even be cleared until next year so it will be some time before production gets into full swing. But what is there now seems organized and well-tended to my untrained eye, and I hope that within five or six years the farm will be running at full steam.

After visiting the farm we went to visit the nearby amputee camp, which was an eye-opening experience. The camp houses twelve amputees and their families, although at the time we came only two were there; an old man who lost one hand and an old woman who lost both – she is very fond of Dr. Barrie, running up and giving him a big hug when we arrived. She calls him her husband as a term of endearment; Dr. Barrie saved her life some years ago when he found her by the road in need of urgent medical care, and she is understandably attached to him. She is very friendly and talkative (although she was very hard to understand), and fond of getting her picture taken, always holding both arms up in the air.

We talked to the many people who gathered around us for a while (children, younger adults, and such), but at length took our leave although not before promising to come back the next day and fix their pump, which had been broken for about three years. Made confident by our success in fixing the clinic’s pump, we were confident that we could restore this one to working order. Alas, this was not to be. The next day we returned in the morning and spent a good few hours taking apart and reassembling the pump, but despite our best efforts we couldn’t make it produce more than a trickle of water. At length we decided that the rubber seals needed to be replaced, but there was nowhere in Koidu to get spare parts for the pump, and we didn’t have time to search for them. Unfortunately, at least in this instance, we’ve joined the long list of white people who’ve come to the area, taken pictures, made promises, and then not followed through on them.

After the camp on Sunday we drove to the clinic, and right as we arrived there our car ran out of gas, so we had to roll the last hundred feet down the hill into our parking spot. In retrospect, what’s astonishing is not that we ran out of gas but that that was the only incident to date where we’ve run out of gas. The car that Ali is driving us around in is a beat up (by US standards not by Africa standards) old Opel SUV that has a grand total of zero functioning gauges on its dashboard. The speedometer, tachometer, gas gauge, engine temperature gauge – not one of these is working. In a country with no police cars (I was roundly laughed at tonight for asking if the police could chase down a car that refused to stop at a check point) and no speed limits, the speedometer is really not doing much more than providing some interesting trivia anyways, and none of the other gauges are particularly vital, except maybe the fuel gauge. Even in this case, Ali knows just how much fuel he needs to get from place to place (for example its exactly 12 gallons from Freetown to Kono), and generally has a good feel for how much gas is in the tank. Only one time running out of fuel (at our destination, too) is pretty impressive.

From the clinic it was about an hour walk back to our hotel; it was great to get out of the car and stroll through the community for a bit, and thanks to the children of Koidu I’m now sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am, in fact, a white man. They took it upon themselves to forestall, at the top of their lungs, any impending identity crisis that might have been brewing by yelling “WHITEMAN WHITEMAN WHITEMAN” constantly at us as we passed.

The next day, Monday, was our last in Koidu. The morning and early afternoon was taken up with our unsuccessful attempt at pump repair, followed by lunch at a new restaurant that looked fancier than Mother’s or Sunshine, but only charged more for the same krin-krin that we’d been eating elsewhere. This restaurant did, however, have a fantastic ashtray advertising something called Rawling’s Mixing Waters, which is a mixer from the height of British colonialism and is good not only for “assuaging the tropical impulses” if you’re a British Army Officer forced to ride a camel all day but also makes a great bribe if you happen to be passing through customs and don’t feel like paying all those annoying taxes. If I ever find this stuff I’m going to buy it by the case – you never know when you’ll have tropical impulses to assuage.

That afternoon we took a few more samples at the clinic, and watched “Pride of Lions” that night at Uncle Ben’s, which is a very good documentary about Sierra Leone and some of the NGOs working there – I’d recommend it although its hard to find. We decided that night to return to Freetown today, since we’d done just about everything we’d planned to do in Kono, and we’ve also decided to try and fly back to the States on Friday morning instead of Monday. This will mean more dealings with our friendly neighborhood airline, Royal Air Maroc, and we figure it’d be best to leave as much time as possible for things to go wrong, as they seem wont to do.

In any case, this post is long enough so I’ll leave it to one of my talented fellow-bloggers to tell you about our trip from Kono to Freetown and the subsequent goings-on in the big city.

-Chris

Surprise… Zain (our internet and service provider) is having issues in Kono, and “the system is down.” We’ve managed to get 2 hrs of internet from the Tigo guy across the street after Neal did a lot of bargaining. No internet cafes here. So we’re kind of out of contact, although we’re told that we should be back up tonight. Who knows…

Some of Meghan’s pictures – click for larger image and caption

We’re rotating the blog-updating job, so it’s my turn… It’s mid-afternoon here, today wasn’t too eventful yet, but we’ll be having dinner tonight with some interesting people, so for now, maybe I can just fill in some details and give you a better sense of what it’s like here in SL. Apologies in advance for the lack of organization below. And an unfortunate lack of Chris’ humor (but at least I included a title…), maybe you’ll get some funny observations tomorrow.

Weather/Power/Infrastructure – We knew that we would be traveling during the rainy season, and Freetown kind of lived up to my expectations of constant rain. Kono has the nicer weather, with showers interspersed with intense sunshine. Mornings tend to be overcast and cooler, maybe some showers in the afternoon, and heavier rain at night. I’d say it’s in the 70s here, and in the shade its certainly comfortable…probably a lot more bearable than NJ weather right now. Last night on the walk to dinner I think I saw more stars than I’ve ever seen in my life, and possibly the Milky Way (or it was a cloud…this is still up for debate). Part of this great stargazing ability is thanks to the almost complete lack of infrastructure here. Someone we were traveling with called Freetown the “dark city”, and arriving at night, my first impression was just an incredible inky darkness – for the most part, the only lights were car or motorbike headlights, candles in the street stalls that line the roads, and the occasional lit window (accompanied by the ever-present hum of a generator). No city-maintained street lights. And yet TONS of people walking everywhere, going about their business as if it were daylight (same in the rain – weather is no obstacle here). The grid is completely unreliable – the current generating stations cannot nearly handle the demand, and subject the city to rolling brownouts. Those who have the means often have a generator; Dr. Barrie’s home has electricity 24/7, and you walk through the ground floor with the generator on the way up to his flat – it’s pretty loud and hot. The government has been building a hydroelectric plant at Bumbuna, apparently for the past 30 years, so realistically that is not a solution to the lack of electricity. Kono is so far away from everything – and certainly no electrical grid. Koidu Town is pretty expansive, and a lot of the buildings along the main road have generators. I’ve even seen remnants of telephone poles and lines, but I have a feeling these are from before the war, and the exponential growth of cellphone use among all people have rendered them pretty much obsolete and not worth reconstructing. Other kinds of infrastructure are severly lacking – no sanitation system (ditches along the roadside for sewers make walking at night rather perilous), no water distribution system, bridges in questionable condition, roads so uneven and pothole-ridden that I’m surprised any car still has a semi-functioning suspension system.

NGOs Everywhere – Along the road to Kono was sign after sign announcing a project funded by some NGO. If you can name it, it’s here: UN, UNICEF, UNDP, UNHCR, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, Oxfam, Rotary, World Vision, plus a variety of religious organizations, plus random foreign governments (Germany, China, Japan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Ireland, Iceland). Schools, water pumps, buildings for a variety of community purposes, regional offices…you get the impression that if not for foreign aid, half of the buildings wouldn’t be here. Yet for all the aid pouring in here, Sierra Leone still ranks LAST on the UN Human Development Index. I can’t think of any clearer proof that pouring money on a problem does not solve it. According to Sam, there is a lack of jobs, especially for college-aged men. There are very few medium- to large-sized businesses owned and operated by Sierra Leoneans (many many small business and roadside stands, but I wonder about the profitability of such ventures). The best jobs are either in foreign-owned companies, or more commonly, in NGOs. So the brightest people are being drawn to jobs that unfortunately don’t add any value to the economy, and don’t seem to be really advancing the development of the country. Like Neal said earlier, a lot of these projects don’t necessarily have sustainability as a priority. I’ve never been to a war zone before, so I have no idea how much redevelopment to expect. It officially ended seven years ago, and the UN Peacekeeping forces have been out for the past 3, but there are still reminders that this town was once at the heart of a brutal military operation. Plenty of buildings, some pretty prominent in town, have yet to be rebuilt, and in the poorer sections, it looks like people are living in the shells of former homes, lacking roofs or complete walls.

On being at the Kono Government Hospital yesterday – I was totally not expecting to be in any way involved in Dr. Barrie’s presentation, much less give out certificates to mothers who completed the program and pledged to breastfeed from day 0 to 6 months and pose for photos! Interestingly, the speakers presented breastfeeding as not only important for the health of the child, but painted it as a civic duty to help the development of Sierra Leone and the betterment of the world at large. Pretty hefty responsibility. Some of the mothers were only a few inches taller than my elbows! The kids were adorable, though! And listening to over an hour of Krio has certainly helped my understanding. I don’t have that much trouble figuring out what people are saying (it’s close enough to English), but my Krio speaking skills are pretty much nonexistent, and my accent is just too hard to understand.

This morning, Chris and I went for a run, while it was still cool. I’ve left my watch on US time, so running at 3:30 am seems kind of weird. It’s pretty hilly here, and I’m not exactly in prime running shape, so maybe it was a little more than I bargained for. Still, it was nice to get out and see some of Koidu on foot. Like I said before, there are a lot of NGOs operating here, so the sight of foreigners isn’t too uncommon, but I guess the sight of two tall foreigners voluntarily running is. Plenty of people driving motorbikes would turn around to stare as they drove away, for what seemed like far longer than I would be comfortable taking my eyes off the road that’s littered with potholes. A couple of people told me I looked tired (thanks), and just about every kid followed us with shouts of “WHITEMANWHITEMAN!”, which is pretty much all we hear whenever we drive anywhere. They don’t seem to discriminate among gender, although since I’m never on my own (look, Mom!), I guess they’re at least 50% right. Sometimes any foreign ethnicity works – I also heard someone yell “CHINESE!” at us. Some of the kids are really shy and just stare, but if you wave, they break into huge smiles and keep waving long after you’re out of sight. The kids are definitely the best, they just want to wave and say hi. Too bad everyone else is napping now and I can’t just wander around on my own – hopefully tomorrow we’ll get a chance to walk around and talk to people and get more of a feel for the local communities, and talk with the kids.

-Meghan