It's a strange exercise to remember my life a year ago today. If I grind my mental gears hard enough though, I can tear my mind out of its current environs and wrench it back to my emerald Eugene- back to this place called America. A year ago today I would have just finished a summer of barbecues. Of house sitting. Of pulling on tar-crusted shorts every morning to spend a day working on rooftops with just a hat proclaiming 'Chase Family Roofing' between myself and the sun. A retreat back to Armitage Road at quittin' time was always eagerly executed at the healthy pace of five miles over the speed limit- Susan's dinner well warranting the law-bending haste. A green picnic table under green walnut leaves was a surreal way to end the days, the company as good as the food.
But now, 365 days later, the sun that filtered through those leaves is 8,000 miles away- the entire expanse of the atlantic and breadth of America separating me from my home, family, and community. My new brand of sun, forged in an equitorial furnace, is the kind of sun that makes dinosaurs feel like going extinct. This sun glints off the oceans and beaches like it's expecting one of those little creatures scientists draw at the beginning of the homonid evolution progression to come struggling out of the salty brine onto the shore. This sun is stinkin hot. The forests of palm trees, like oversized dandelions in silhouette, fluidly jostle the shores of the atlantic, relentlessley carpeting everywhere one might care to look inland. The visible humidity harbored by the vegetation does little to discourage the primordial atmosphere lent by the rich sun and leaves me constantly wondering which direction King Kong will charge me from. Romanticized sunsets represent the last vestiges of the sun's ride across the sky, their oranges and purples here in the evenings preside over the swell of the jungle's nightime soundtrack, the crickets and frogs engaging in their timeless struggle to out-volume the other.
You see, I'm in Sierra Leone now, a coastal country on the diving side of Africa's western bulge. I'm sitting at a desk in what was only a dream I loved to talk about a year ago. That dream boiled over into reality for me four months ago when I washed up on the white beaches of Freetown, carried by President John F. Kennedy's 1961 initiative, the Peace Corps. Now I wake up and go to bed every day in a jungle.
With its three goals of providing trained and qualified teachers and facilitators to petitioning and willing countries, promoting understanding of Americans abroad, and promoting the understanding of 'abroad' by Americans, I joined the Peace Corps on its landmark 50th birthday. I will be in Sierra Leone until August of 2013 serving in the capacity of a science teacher, myself constituting fifty percent of the science faculty. After an initial two months of orientation to the Sierra Leonean educational system and a cursoory training in the local, unwritten language of Temne, I've been deployed on the banks of the Great Scarcies River to attempt to integrate into this eden its residents have named Mambolo.
The subsistence of my community is held in the technicolor green tidal flats brimming with rice planted by a thousand muddy hands. The result of this strenuous planting done in the rainy season comes to fruition in the genesis of the dry season, wallets and stomachs swelling as the work of the harvest commences. The ripening of most fruits coincides with the harvest celebrations, and the agricultural cycle prepares to repeat- the orchestra of the village being conducted by this bi-seasonal rhythm.
My reception here in Mambolo, characteristic of all things Africa, was overwhelmingly warm. The Peace Corps withdrew volunteers from the country in 1992 at the beginning of Sierra Leone's eleven year civil war. I'm one of forty-eight volunteers in the second group of educators to return, last year being the first deemed safe enough to revive the program. Peace Corps' legacy in this country is sterling, many of the current government officials here boast of their education provided by Peace Corps volunteers. Schools here already understaffed were thirsty to receive science teachers especially, as I found out their laborotires were merely collecting dust during the war time interim.
At the time of writing this, I've been living on my own in Mambolo for over a month. I believe I've spent my time well. Topically, I've gained things like a painted house, dugout canoe, fat white puppy, hand-made machete, and a few carved and polished pieces of furniture. I've also spent time doing some more nebulous, very cliched things. Like gaining perspective. Building relationships. Learning patience. Exhaustively studying the concept of loneliness. Essentially, all the things you can imagine a geographically displaced soul might do given it has enough challenges and enough time to read thick books.
I don't pretend to be a seasoned trans-atlantic traveler after these last few fastest, longest four months of my life. In fact, laughing at myself is at least an every day occurence as my remaining naiveties are exposed by legions of unexpected situations. Chickens foraging in the teacher's staff room. Eyeless fish heads lurking in every soup. Babies spitting milk on me they just extracted from the glaringly uncovered mammary glands next to me in the boat/car/church/hospital. Radio stations plauged by the legendary 80's. Not every day though, but still too often, I'm finding myself in situations that... fracture me. Sometimes I hear stories and have situations poured on me that leave me more somber than chagrined. Female genital mutiliation. Rope marks on a boy where he was tied ankle to wrist while his father beat him. Skeletons with the faintest heartbeats, held in the arms of confused mothers. Teachers accepting girls bodies as extra credit. The yellowed eyes of every febrile man, woman, and vacantly staring child with malaria. Women with a limp, gingerely held arm, or swollwen eye that was earned in the middle of the previous night. I am absolutely infatuated with this community and its citizenry, but I'm living here with my eyes open- conscious of the fact that every rose garden is full of thorns.
Just like words couldn't have convinced me what this experience would impart to and imprint on me, likewise it would be impossible to express how much I regret every mile between myself and everyone I know living life under Oregon's umbrella of Douglas Firs. Fires, floods, earthquakes, or half naked brigades of children demanding I play soccer couldn't drive me out of Sierra Leone before my two years are served. But when it's time to head home, I'll be at the airport check-in at least two hours early.
But now, 365 days later, the sun that filtered through those leaves is 8,000 miles away- the entire expanse of the atlantic and breadth of America separating me from my home, family, and community. My new brand of sun, forged in an equitorial furnace, is the kind of sun that makes dinosaurs feel like going extinct. This sun glints off the oceans and beaches like it's expecting one of those little creatures scientists draw at the beginning of the homonid evolution progression to come struggling out of the salty brine onto the shore. This sun is stinkin hot. The forests of palm trees, like oversized dandelions in silhouette, fluidly jostle the shores of the atlantic, relentlessley carpeting everywhere one might care to look inland. The visible humidity harbored by the vegetation does little to discourage the primordial atmosphere lent by the rich sun and leaves me constantly wondering which direction King Kong will charge me from. Romanticized sunsets represent the last vestiges of the sun's ride across the sky, their oranges and purples here in the evenings preside over the swell of the jungle's nightime soundtrack, the crickets and frogs engaging in their timeless struggle to out-volume the other.
You see, I'm in Sierra Leone now, a coastal country on the diving side of Africa's western bulge. I'm sitting at a desk in what was only a dream I loved to talk about a year ago. That dream boiled over into reality for me four months ago when I washed up on the white beaches of Freetown, carried by President John F. Kennedy's 1961 initiative, the Peace Corps. Now I wake up and go to bed every day in a jungle.
With its three goals of providing trained and qualified teachers and facilitators to petitioning and willing countries, promoting understanding of Americans abroad, and promoting the understanding of 'abroad' by Americans, I joined the Peace Corps on its landmark 50th birthday. I will be in Sierra Leone until August of 2013 serving in the capacity of a science teacher, myself constituting fifty percent of the science faculty. After an initial two months of orientation to the Sierra Leonean educational system and a cursoory training in the local, unwritten language of Temne, I've been deployed on the banks of the Great Scarcies River to attempt to integrate into this eden its residents have named Mambolo.
The subsistence of my community is held in the technicolor green tidal flats brimming with rice planted by a thousand muddy hands. The result of this strenuous planting done in the rainy season comes to fruition in the genesis of the dry season, wallets and stomachs swelling as the work of the harvest commences. The ripening of most fruits coincides with the harvest celebrations, and the agricultural cycle prepares to repeat- the orchestra of the village being conducted by this bi-seasonal rhythm.
My reception here in Mambolo, characteristic of all things Africa, was overwhelmingly warm. The Peace Corps withdrew volunteers from the country in 1992 at the beginning of Sierra Leone's eleven year civil war. I'm one of forty-eight volunteers in the second group of educators to return, last year being the first deemed safe enough to revive the program. Peace Corps' legacy in this country is sterling, many of the current government officials here boast of their education provided by Peace Corps volunteers. Schools here already understaffed were thirsty to receive science teachers especially, as I found out their laborotires were merely collecting dust during the war time interim.
At the time of writing this, I've been living on my own in Mambolo for over a month. I believe I've spent my time well. Topically, I've gained things like a painted house, dugout canoe, fat white puppy, hand-made machete, and a few carved and polished pieces of furniture. I've also spent time doing some more nebulous, very cliched things. Like gaining perspective. Building relationships. Learning patience. Exhaustively studying the concept of loneliness. Essentially, all the things you can imagine a geographically displaced soul might do given it has enough challenges and enough time to read thick books.
I don't pretend to be a seasoned trans-atlantic traveler after these last few fastest, longest four months of my life. In fact, laughing at myself is at least an every day occurence as my remaining naiveties are exposed by legions of unexpected situations. Chickens foraging in the teacher's staff room. Eyeless fish heads lurking in every soup. Babies spitting milk on me they just extracted from the glaringly uncovered mammary glands next to me in the boat/car/church/hospital. Radio stations plauged by the legendary 80's. Not every day though, but still too often, I'm finding myself in situations that... fracture me. Sometimes I hear stories and have situations poured on me that leave me more somber than chagrined. Female genital mutiliation. Rope marks on a boy where he was tied ankle to wrist while his father beat him. Skeletons with the faintest heartbeats, held in the arms of confused mothers. Teachers accepting girls bodies as extra credit. The yellowed eyes of every febrile man, woman, and vacantly staring child with malaria. Women with a limp, gingerely held arm, or swollwen eye that was earned in the middle of the previous night. I am absolutely infatuated with this community and its citizenry, but I'm living here with my eyes open- conscious of the fact that every rose garden is full of thorns.
Just like words couldn't have convinced me what this experience would impart to and imprint on me, likewise it would be impossible to express how much I regret every mile between myself and everyone I know living life under Oregon's umbrella of Douglas Firs. Fires, floods, earthquakes, or half naked brigades of children demanding I play soccer couldn't drive me out of Sierra Leone before my two years are served. But when it's time to head home, I'll be at the airport check-in at least two hours early.
