have i mentioned the view?

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...

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...

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...