Tuesday, August 23, 2005

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...

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