First year
As I promised something more concrete this time, here is a summary of my first year in Peace Corps Sierra Leone.
Work
• First and second terms (September-April) I taught 27 periods of English language per week to students from JSS1 to SSSII (That is, from first year junior secondary school to second year senior secondary school. Those are rough equivalents of our middle and high schools.)
• Third term (May-July) I taught 21 periods of English per week to these same students.
• Sporadically tutored five students outside of normal school hours–two gifted, two remedial, one special needs.
Senior Secondary Students
• Taught a total of 20 life skills classes, most of them focused on sexual/reproductive health but also a handful on setting goals, making good decisions, and resisting peer pressure.
Condom Education
• Taught 5 study skills classes. (How to use a dictionary, How to take a standardized test, etc.)
• Am continuously teaching two local NGO workers the basics of computer and technological literacy. (How to work their digital cameras, use flash drives, move files from one location to another, etc.)
• Am functioning in three languages on a daily basis.
• Completed a world map in our ‘library.’ (Photo below–it is fantastic.)
Mustapha K., most dedicated map-maker
Applying some of the finer touches to the map in progress.
• Co-facilitated two ‘How to Use a Condom’ demonstrations; solo facilitated two more.
• Assisted local clinic workers with a cholera sensitization/outreach program last year during the outbreak
• Completed three PC training sessions.
• Wrote the grant proposal for the national girls’ leadership conference that a handful of us are organizing. Conference to be held in December and more to come about it.
• Applied and was accepted to assist with training the new group of Volunteers who arrived late June. I will be with them during their PST (pre-service training) from tomorrow, July 22nd, until August 2nd.
Blue House Sports Team
Personal
• Adjusted to life without electricity or pipe-borne water. Learned to wash myself and my clothes in a stream during the peak of the dry season.
Home
• Have come to appreciate every bite of food I eat.
• Identified and articulated the major life pattern that has been manifest since at least my early 20s: writing, solitude, restriction. (And I must credit Paul Theroux for initially turning my thoughts in this direction.)
• Had the surprising realization that non-fiction, not fiction, is my preferred medium.
• Read a few good books, including The Gulag Archipelago, A Thousand Acres, Olive Kitteridge, and Rowing to Latitude. I attribute much of my realization about non-fiction to this last.
• Had a few of my edges softened.
• Have been knocked completely off my feet one time by illness and more or less perenially affected by any number of the following, usually more than one at a time: dysentery, boils, heat rash, mystery rash, uncountable mosquito and black fly bites, significant bites by things I was never able to identify. In March I had shingles for the second, and I hope the last, time in my life.
• Have observed a number of bodily changes, most to do with muscle tone and skin. (The former is favorable; the latter not so much.)
• Adjusted to mefloquine (malaria prophylaxis) and its effects on my sleep. Sadly, it seems to be losing its potency with time. For the first six months or so, going to bed sometimes felt like entering an alternate universe, one that was incredibly bright, lucid, and visceral.
• I understood early on that the Peace Corps, particularly Peace Corps Sierra Leone, works well for me. And not because I would rather live without electricity and running water and have to walk ten minutes one way through mud to reach town everyday of the rainy season. I do not, in fact, prefer any of these things. The factor that cinches all this together for me is the ability to be consumed by it. The totality of the circumstances makes this possible. Things that are more ‘normal’ do not have this same unusual capacity of being both singular and limitless.
• In the absence of much of what I had before, the only two things (not people) I miss are 1) winter and 2) art.
Best friend, Gaewa, and her daughters, Nassi and Amie
Plans for the upcoming and final year include:
• A focus on GLADI, our girls’ conference, and making it the best it can be.
• Branching out more into the community for networking and, I hope, much needed capacity building with local counterparts.
• See the beach at least once.
• Finally, attempt to put some of the more cogent pieces of this puzzle together into a meaningful plan for the next step.
xoxo, Meredith
Meredith Meadows 