a sad day in freetown

after FIVE years with WMF in freetown, faye is shipping out tonight. i've known about this day for a long time now, but it really seems to have come too quickly. i'm excited for the adventures that await my friend, but i am heartbroken all the same. faye unexpectedly became a very pivotal friend in my life. her loyalty is unmatched, and i will miss her dearly.

the photo is of us on halloween (obviously), she is a flapper and i am carmen miranda (obviously). a lot of fun memories with this pretty lady.

so, as faye departs, i am faced with a new responsibility to communicate. my aunt jamie sent an e-mail to faye requesting that she urge me to start writing on my blog more often. without faye writing about it, how will my family ever know what is happening in my life?! and maybe faye has a few friends who would still like to know what is happening over here... i guess i owe it to you all to speak up every now and then.

so that is what i hope to do. i think i can spare an hour a week to make it happen.

be thinking of faye as she makes her transition. it will be a big one!

a song for... someone who needs somewhere... to long for.

things are going pretty well around here. see faye's blog (link in column at right) for some exciting info about a property we are going to rent. it is so great! we're all pretty pumped about that.

i was just looking at some photos taken by my friend courtney (link also to the right), and her creativity is contagious. so i felt inspired to write something down. not really anything too significant or insightful. just something. so here i am.

i guess that one thing i am realizing lately is the degree to which freetown has become my home. it honestly makes me a little uncomfortable. i mean, i still long for my own culture, and don't feel totally at ease in this one. but this is my life now. and as much as i want to go back to that other world a lot of the time, i'm no longer sure that it will feel completely right either. i have planted a piece of my heart here and i know that when i leave, whenever that time comes, i will feel a profound sense of loss. my home will always be across the ocean, no matter where i am.

that sounds so depressing, but that isn't really how i mean it. i think i am one of the lucky ones... to have so many people and places that do feel like home. i mean, maybe different parts of me have different homes. and so wherever i am, a part of me is in the right place... goodness how i ramble. i'm sure there will be a lot of INFPs commenting on this post. everyone else will just have to shrug it off.

moral of the story: being homesick means you have someplace to miss, something to long for. and that means that you have lived and loved well. can't be sad about that.

say my name.

my top ten favorite ways to hear my name pronounced in freetown:

10) "stee-fa-nee"
9) "stef-nee"
8) "stef-een"
7) "stef-inn"
6) "stef-ann"
5) "stef-ayne"
4) "stef-ling"
3) "steev-een"
2) "wayt gyal"
1) "faye"

have i mentioned that everyone thinks i'm faye? she hasn't lived in my house for almost 2 years, and people on my road still call me faye. tonight one of the girls who i buy fruit from (nearly every single day) called me faye while i was walking home. as usual, i didn't have the energy to explain that i'm not faye, but yes i know faye, no she's not my sister, no i'm not chinese, yes i will see faye tomorrow, yes i will greet her, etc... so anyway, i just said hi and kept walking. then i heard a boy voice say to the girl "that's not faye, that's steph." the girl disagreed. a loud debate ensued. back and forth. faye. steph. faye. steph. i'll clear it up tomorrow.

i told faye she needs to come visit so people will see her and think "oh. THAT ONE is faye." but i don't really think it will help. once i was planning to meet faye at her house and when i got out of my taxi, i could see her walking up her street just about 20 yards ahead of me. one man watched her walk by, and then when he saw me he looked back in faye's direction, and back to me, and then to faye... puzzled.

in other news, i got a desk today! somehow i think this will help me be more organized, but that is probably not true. it will at least keep me from doing work while sitting on my bed. that was getting old and wearing out my matress since it was being used as a bed and a desk... and i admit that i often sit on my bed for meals too. so now i have TWO pieces of furniture to use! livin' large.

2009 in photos - july

in july i took a road-trip to savannah, GA to see my friends rachel and bobby get married! i rode down with melissa and jason and we had a grand time listening to 80's music and some favorite disney tunes, and talking/crying/hoping about relationships and life as grown-ups. melissa is a marriage and family therapist, jason is a clinical counselor, and i am thinking about being an LCSW someday, so we all thoroughly enjoyed the freedom to be honest and the freedom to analyze each other. :)

but seriously, the ride down to GA was only the beginning of one of the most fun weeks i've had in a long time. we all stayed together in one huge house, and while savannah is a really cool and interesting city, i mostly enjoyed the time spent at the house entertaining each other with corn-hole, flip-cup, and evenings on the dock watching the boys try to catch some sort of seafood. my camera stopped working right before the wedding, so i have no photos of the actual event, but this one is a good summary of the week... beautiful friends, many reasons to celebrate (the wedding being highlight!), freedom to be ourselves, and a bag full of food.

i love my friends. i have the best friends all over the place. if you are my friend and you are reading this, no matter where you are and how i know you: i love you and i thank you. :)

2009 in photos - june

this unflattering photo (thanks for the warning, mom) was taken in saint pete beach, FL during the weekend of my cousin brad's wedding. 9 of us flew down together which was a bit like a national lampoons short film (thank you tyler and best-supporting actress, grandma dottie), but we did all manage to make it there and back so we can laugh about all of the drama now.

one of the highlights of the summer was getting to spend so much time with my brothers. it is kinda awkward to get to know each other as adults since i've not really lived at home in so long... sometimes frustrating, but mostly fun. tyler and i are suprisingly alike (except i have a better sense of style), and one of the things we enjoy doing is forcing the myers-briggs test onto others - infp's can't help ourselves. actually, i don't really do it so much anymore, but tyler has recently fixated so i join in to support him and help him hone his skills. :) we had a really fun time trying to figure out nate, who refuses to be figured out... he's not a big fan of being boxed-in and labeled (typical isfp). except in his unflinching love of all things larry david - which is especially funny since he's kinda like kramer. i think that i could write a sit-com based on members of my family. i'll save that for another blog. someone remind me if i forget...

2009 in photos - may

did you know i make the rockin' world go round? at least that's what freddie mercury told me...

this picture was taken in montreux, switzerland which is on lake geneva. faye and i visited there one afternoon with some of our new friends from l'abri. i took a lot of amazing pictures that day with gorgeous mountain views behind bright spring flowers... but THIS is what we call random, so it made the blog.

apparently mr. mercury made montreux into his second home, and who can blame him!?! switzerland is easily the most picturesque place i have ever visited. i wouldn't say it is the most beautiful in the greater sense of the word -but it is impossible to take a picture that does not look like it belongs on a postcard. and montreux is like a wonderland - a wonderland that my wallet could only afford to spend one afternoon in. all the same, i would visit switzerland again in a heartbeat. highly recommended.

2009 in photos - april

in april i visited the WMF field in romania. all of the WMF sierra leone staff were supposed to go, but there was a visa issue for our sierra leoneans, and so they couldn't be with us. those of us who were able to go tried to represent the gang as best we could. it was a big dissapointment for everyone that things didn't work out as planned, but we did enjoy our time in romania. i laughed a lot while i was there.

this person helped! this is my new friend john koon. a fellow ohioan (from bexley, as you may have guessed from this classy display), he works with WMF in galati and hopes to move to moldova soon. i'm about to use a lot of names that you don't know, but try to follow me... the story behind this picture is that rachel borrowed this highlighting cap from anna. when rachel returned it, anna ended up carrying it around in her purse for a few days until she discovered it while we were all at dinner. naturally, she put it on her head. and naturally, we all laughed. next, anna's husband paul decided to wear the cap, and we laughed even harder. then, it got passed on to john, who really stole the show. i laughed until i cried. of course, the cap was passed on down the line to me, where the game died. i just couldn't follow that act.

2009 in photos - march (but not really)

apparently i didn't take any pictures in march... so here is a picture of my beautiful friend allison when she visited in december. we went to the beach by boat with some of my friends on christmas day, and we came back to the city as the sun was setting. very nice memory. having one of my best friends here for the holiday was the best gift ever! i will never forget it.

allison got married on august 1, and i couldn't be there, but i thought of her all day. funny enough, i was at dinner with some friends on her wedding day, and they asked about her and how she was doing. i looked at my the time on my phone and said "she's a married woman now. let the dream die." :) congrats allison. love you lots!

2009 in photos - february

quite a while back, chris started inviting the lighthouse peeps to the beach every saturday morning to play ultimate frisbee. it used to be football (soccer to the americans) but i think they were ruining the balls every other week, so that got kinda expensive after a while... anyway, at first the kids weren't so sure about the whole frisbee thing. but once they got the hang of it, they were addicted. so now they go every saturday unless it is pouring rain.

i don't play sports with the boys because they think of me like a sister, but our mom isn't around to tell them not to hurt me... get the point? they are what we might call "competitive" and also what we might call "much stronger than this wimpy white girl." anyway, i never used to go, but in february i started to. i just watch and enjoy being by the water and hanging out with the kids who aren't playing. this picture was taken one saturday, and i will not name the kid, but i will tell you that he is one of my favorite kids on the planet earth. with that said, many of you will know who this is. isn't he a heart-breaker!?!

2009 in photos - january

we had visitors from WMF romania in january, and they helped me celebrate my birthday! this photo was taken in a poda-poda on my last day as a 27-year-old. we were on our way to the best beach in the world (river number 2!!!) where we enjoyed pepper chicken a-la-florence and chocolate cake. :)

pictured left to right: poda-poda apprentice, cami's neck, chris, aunty sally, george, noah, david, faye's forehead, me. unpictured: erin, keyara, florence, lenuta, magda, fanel, and poda-poda driver.

staring blankly again...

i felt the urge to write something today, but now i'm staring at the screen again. hmmmm.

i guess i'll just tell you what has been going on since i returned to freetown. this is what i just wrote in my board report that was due this week (it can only be a maximum of 2 pages, so this is a pretty brief synopsis);

I returned to Freetown in mid-July after 3 months away from the field. We left for camp 4 days later and I spent the week dealing with the most intense culture-shock I’ve ever experienced. The following week we did a work-project with a church in Kroo Bay, and it was so fun that I wish we did it every year. And after that I had exactly 2 weeks to get my ducks in a row for the Servant Team who arrived on August 16. They are a great group and are adjusting very well. They have been very giving and very entertaining already.

so that's what has been going on for the last 6 weeks. busy busy.

i wish i had something interesting to say... this post was boring for even me. sorry. more soon!

words and words and fish-balls

i promise you i go to this blog at least every 2 weeks, open a window for a new post, stare at it for a few minutes, and tell myself i'll write another time. i don't know what it is, but i just find myself without words. always without words. i still love writing, but there has been some sort of block on my brain for the last year... don't worry, there is still plenty going on up there ;-) i'm just not finding the words to let it all out. and when i do find words, i'm not usually willing to share them. i don't know...

i actually think that this is good in some ways. i kinda feel like i used to write for validation as much as for any other reason. i wanted to be affirmed for what i was doing, wanted people to know i was smart, wanted people to hear all of the important things i had to say. i don't feel that way about my words anymore. i really don't. i think i have lost my pretense in my old age. i don't care so much what people think about what i'm doing. i don't think i'm all that smart. and i don't think i have anything to say that is more important than what anyone else could say about life, love, God... we're all just doing the best we can in the place where we find ourselves. i guess the "place i find myself" might seem a bit more interesting or exotic than the mid-west, but after 2 years in freetown, it mostly just feels like the city where i live. the things that used to seem so foreign that i HAD TO write about them are no longer so shocking... i'm sure if i wrote them down they would get a laugh, but honestly, i don't even notice the chickens in church, or the watchman peeing off of my veranda in the mornings. i guess my indifference is as funny as the thing itself, huh?

i'm quickly approaching my 2nd anniversary with this crazy city. i can't believe it! time seems to have flown by, but i know that i am a much different person than i was when i arrived. this makes me happy and sad in the same moment. while i have grown up and matured in so many ways that i probably can't even name them all, i know that i have sacrificed a great deal of my idealism to this place. freetown isn't kind to dreamers. i do believe that this place could use a few more hopeful people to believe in its potential, but being one of those hopeful ones often feels like a willful plank-walk. you believe because want to, but you know - save a miracle - it isn't going to get you anywhere good.

like i said, a lot has changed in the last 2 years. maybe that is why i have had so much trouble with words. you kinda have to know what you think about something before you can tell anyone what you think. one of my very most favoritest books is "till we have faces" by c.s. lewis. the climax of the book comes to mind now;

When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

i do hope to find ways to say what is going on. and i hope that writing it all down will help me remember the things that do make this season of my life so interesting and valuable. there is no time like the present, right?! i want to hold it with 2 hands, look it square in the eye, and find the lessons and laughs that wait for me here. thanks for continuing to check in on me. i'll try to come around this page more often ...

one short story, just for a laugh: my third servant team arrived last sunday and we've spent this week roaming the city and having lots and lots of orientation meetings. yesterday we made lunch at my house and one of the guys was asking about something that he ate the night before with his host family. he said that they had a variety of fried things - fish, chicken, plantains, dough balls - with a spicy sauce over it and it was all really good. i told him that meal is aptly named fry-fry and is one of my favorite meals here. (you know what i health nut i am...) he was unsure of something he ate and described that it had a meat-like texture but tasted like seafood. i asked him if it was shaped like a ball. he said yes. i told him it was probably a fish-ball. he looked suprised and said "really?! but those were some pretty big balls for a fish!"

he was serious. i still can't get over it.

to sum up an entire year...

...would be impossible. but, i am making an honest and zealous attempt to jump back into the blog world. i realize that people kinda wonder if i'm still alive when i don't tell them that i'm still alive. so i'm going to try and let you in on my world on a regular basis again.

so, in honor of my return, i gave the blog a face-lift. one reason for my long absence was that i really truly don't know what to say most of the time. everything feels heavy and very difficult to communicate. i feel like freetown has changed me- so much sometimes that it feels a bit misleading to still be called 'stephanie', you know? so while i'm not about to go through the hastle of a legal name-change, i thought it would be appropriate to rearrange my little corner of the WWW.

the poem that you now see at the top of my page is a relatively new favorite. i have kristina and ben to thank for it. they were members of my first servant team (could it really have been a YEAR ago???) and they gave me a letter with this poem before they left freetown. it was like rilke (and kristina) had read my soul. and each time i read the words, it resounds deeply in me. so i thought, why not name my page after it?

i am the dove outside. i hope that my won-back heart can be satisfied: free through all it has given up. my soul fills my chest differently now - heavier by the weight of where i have been...

things i should and shouldn't tell you

the boss of one of my friends here is a lebanese Christian who thinks that all american missionaries work for the CIA. that's right. i am the jason bourne of freetown. anyway, shortly after he made this accusation i signed in on facebook and most of the adverts on my page were in arabic and i had invitations to join some lebanese political groups. so i was like, "oh yeah? who's the spy now?!?" and sometimes i jokingly call my lebanese friends "terrorists." just in jest. it's light-hearted fun. well, 2 minutes ago when i checked my blog, the page was in arabic. yeah. saw the 2 boxes where you are supposed to put your sign-in name and your password. but i, of course, put them in the wrong places because, well, arabic goes left to right. so i tried again, and then once i signed in i saw english... anyway, it looks like my cover is blown and now they're just messing with my head.

okay so, here are some stories that i swore i would never tell my mom, but now that they are in the distant past, i think they're are slightly amusing. sorry mom.

a few months ago was supposed to go out to one of the refugee camps with florence and erin. the day kinda boxed up and we left a bit later than we planned to, and i hadn't had time to eat all morning. we had to take one kind of transport to get to another kind of transport and florence kept telling me i needed to eat something, but i'm stubborn and i kept saying i would just get a plate of rice once we got to the camp since we were already late. this was right when it was getting really hot after the rains ended, and the sun was in full force. we ended up sitting in traffic for over an hour without moving a mile, and by then it was too late to go to the camp since we wouldn't get back until late and the east end of the city isn't somewhere you really want to be late at night. so we got down from the bus and started walking back toward town. i needed to stop at a friend's shop to pick something up, so the girls came with me. as soon as we reached, i started to feel sick. i told erin i needed some water and i sat down. then my friend looks at me and says "oh no. what's wrong with you? you're yellow!" so i ask to go to the bathroom. he shows me to the back of the store. i enter the bathroom, the room starts to spin, i think i'm going to die, i leave the bathroom because i don't want to die alone, i fall down in the hallway, lay there for a minute while everyone runs to see what happened, i gain enough strength to run back to the bathroom and throw up, then i started to feel better. they force-fed me 2 candy bars and 2 liters of water before they let me go home. so... the moral of this story is, you are never too busy to eat when it is 95 degrees and insanely humid. i learned my lesson. please don't lecture me.

the next story is a bit more disturbing. i'll spare the frightening details, and beef up the more entertaining ones... i think this happened in october... me and faye and our friends nicole and samir were walking on the beach one friday after work. we got caught up talking to some other friends and it started to get dark before we got back to samir's jeep. well, being the very smart girls that we are, nicole and i started to lag behind faye and samir (who is tall and manly and the kind of guy you want to keep up with if you are at lumley beach when it is getting dark). nicole pulls out her camera because we wanted to laugh at a picture she took earlier of samir (tall and manly) imitating the way faye walks (bouncy and girly). so yeah, 2 girls, lumley beach at dusk, nice digital camera. before we knew it, a guy runs up behind us and tries to take the camera out of nicole's hand. she refuses to let go (she's a very petite little thing too) and ends up getting thrown on the ground by the guy (who honestly wasn't much bigger than she was). anyway, being bigger than both of them, i started shoving the guy as hard as i possibly can. this doesn't sound funny, but it was a little bit because i had my rainbow sandals in my hands and i have a feeling those might cause a sting if you were hit in the face with them, which he was. so there's nicole laying between us in the fetal position with her camera, this little (yet strong) man bent down trying to get the camera with one hand and blocking blows from me and my sandals with the other hand. it was really pretty scary, but he didn't get the camera (even after another guy showed up to help) and i'm pretty sure they had friends watching who will never let them forget that they couldn't get a camera away from those 2 american girls. faye and samir did run back to help us too. i'm actually pretty sure that those guys would have gotten the camera had it not been for faye and samir. i think nicole and i managed for those first 30 seconds on just instinct alone, but once we realized what happened, we were crazy. she was really upset (who wouldn't be?) and i was just mad. so yeah, another lesson learned. and don't worry, i'm too paranoid now to let anything similar happen again. i'm pretty sure i shouldn't have told you this story...

people have asked about a mailing address and a phone number. mail is a funny thing here, and i'm still waiting on a few letters that i know were mailed 4 months ago. but faye did receive some Christmas packages - she received them after Christmas, but she received them. so, it's a gamble, but here is my address:

PO Box 545
Freetown, Sierra Leone
WEST AFRICA

and i use the phone company that does the best job of receiving international calls, but they're not perfect. you might have to try a couple of times to get through. if you are calling from the US, my mobile number is:

011-232-76-23-44-88

oh! and my birthday was nice and i spent it at the beach. this is the first birthday i remember not needing a winter coat... but it was nice. and not as painful as i expected. :) i'm dramatic, i know.

love love love you all.

i'm on a roll

that's right folks, only one week later and you're hearing from me again.

i don't know what's gotten into me! maybe it's the fact that we have electricity and i'm able to write from the comfort of my own kitchen table. maybe it's the fact that we have electricity and i'm able to sleep to the soothing whir and breeze from my very own FAN. maybe it's the fact that we have electricity and i'm able to start my day with a glass of COLD water from our fridge that makes things COLD. my friends, life is good.

i recieved quite a few responses to my last post which made me realize something... i live in africa. my life is interesting. funny things happen to me every single day and after only 4 months, they seem normal. i actually went back and read that post after reading the responses and i laughed at it myself. i do have some unique stories to share. so i'm honestly going to try to be better. i think that i've been waiting around for some big earth-shaking insight that the world must know, but really, we all just want to laugh at the white girl in africa. that's what all of my neighbors want, so why should i think you're any different? :)

so, for your reading pleasure, here are a couple of notes from my time tutoring in the afternoons... both of these stories involve snack time, so it would appear that they just come here and eat, but i promise that we learn every once in a while too.

a few weeks ago the 3 regulars were sitting at the table eating egg sandwiches, and they were making a MESS as usual. they don't eat at a table in their house, so even when one is available they don't use it. so little saidu is sitting with his legs up on the arm of the chair, his plate on his lap, food flying in every direction... he stood up, and there were crumbs ALL OVER his chair. and this is when i made my first real language error. i've made mistakes, sure. but i've never made an offensive mistake. so to make that kind of mistake in front of children... ouch. it's really not fair, because the polite way of referring to a person's back side in english, is to call it just that - their "back side." what i didn't know is this - that is pretty much the MOST offensive way to refer to it in Krio. does that seem fair to you? so i made some comment about food and his backside and saidu and mari start laughing. mari was in tears. saidu just staring at me laughing with his eyes WIDE like i had absolutely made his day. and then there's remie... "auntie steph, you done cuss." so serious and sober. while the others are crying. he told them that they should correct me first, then laugh. which i enjoyed. anyway, completely embarrassing. i apologized to remie, then saidu yells "i'm the one you cussed!" so they laughed again. moral of the story, be careful with krio. i've said it before and i'll say it again; it's just close enough to english to really get you into trouble.

last week the kids didn't have school but i told the boys to come at 3 when i finished my krio lesson. at 3:30 on friday i called noah to ask where they were so he sent them and they reached my house at 4. (i thought i had a fluid sense of time...) we only had an hour before i had to be somewhere else, so i decided i would just give them some ginger cookies and tea - no sandwich. well, then they told me that they hadn't eaten that day, which i didn't really believe, but i sent remie to buy some bananas anyway just in case they really were hungry. long story short, cami overhears them tell me that they hadn't eaten, she sees noah that afternoon and asks him if it's true. of course, it isn't. we decide that as punishment for lying, they won't get a snack at my house this week. so i saw saidu the next day and asked, "my friend, what happened yesterday?" he responds, in a very quiet voice with his eyes to the ground, "something very wrong." it has never been so easy to forgive someone. :)

and hillary, you won't believe this, but i haven't fallen down or tripped in a really long time! my reflexes and night vision are greatly improving. however, last week i was walking to the youth center and all of these people were saying to me "osh ya" and "take time white girl" and i started to realize that they must have thought i was someone else who HAD fallen on that corner... i never figured it out, but even when i stay upright, i get credit for falling. forced humility.

i turn 27 next week. gross. i'll try to have fun anyway, and i'll let you know what i do to dull the pain of reaching my LATE 20'S...

a couple of months later...

well, well, well. here i am again. i don te.

it would appear that i have vanished from the face of the earth, but the truth is that i really haven't had a lot of spare time for that whole communication thing. or maybe a more true statement would be that i haven't had the time to process my life so i haven't really known what to say. the last 2 months have been quite eventful - in work, in play, in learning, in every other area... there has been plenty to write about, but no space in which to write. i know that's my own fault, so please forgive me. i will try to be better in 2008. :)

faye reprimanded me the other day about my 2 month absence from the blog-world. she brought it up right after we were invited to the beach this past sunday where one of our favorite uncles would be slaughtering and roasting a goat... faye's suggestion was that i video the killing of said goat, and then post it on this blog to "draw back the audience." good idea, but that would require that i witness the slaughter myself, and i really wasn't up for that. she was a cute goat. black and white, with kind eyes. they drove her to the beach that morning in the back of my friend's jeep. they said she was quiet and well-mannered on the drive. i said it was nice that they were able to spend some time getting to know her before they cut her throat... almost enough to make me a vegetarian, but no. don't worry dad, i'm still a country girl. and i still love me some red meat.

Christmas was eventful and busy and fun and kinda strange this year. i have spent the holiday away from home before, but i was traveling and distracted and excited about the change of scenery. but this year wasn't like that. i told a few people that i think part of the difficulty was that the excitement of living here was starting to wear off at the exact wrong time... i still want to be here, don't get me wrong. but after 4 months, it's not all new and different and exotic anymore. it's like, i live here. this is it. so hitting that phase during holiday time wasn't fun. because i really just wanted to be with my family in my culture where i knew and understood all of the traditions and got to eat all of my favorite food and hear bing crosby and wear sweaters. it's the little things, it really is...

it was good though. our Christmas parties for the kroo bay kids and the lighthouse program went really well. it was fun to celebrate with the kids, and i was told by numerous people (who could easily see how homesick i was) that they would be glad to stand in as family for me. so, i missed the moselys and mcGuires immensly, but was so so so humbled by the willingness of others to welcome me into their own lives and homes and families. wow.

new year's was an event worth writing home about. one of my friends here is a lebanese guy who used to make a living playing "one man shows" in beirut. basically he gets set up on two very complicated keyboards at once and sings and plays hours and hours worth of arabic music. so he was hired to do a show at a resturant on the water for new year's eve. most of you are probably aware that the lebanese know how to work. they have a reputation across the globe as good business people. what you may not know is that the lebanese also know how to have fun. i had no clue what they were capable of in this area! anyway, it was a cultural experience that i certainly enjoyed. food, music, food, dancing, food. happy new year.

and, of course, i spent a lot of time at the beach over the holidays. so that sure helped with that whole homesick thing... :) but now it's back to reality. busy busy.

OH! this information won't be super exciting for you since you didn't know the situation beforehand, but... we have electricity at our house now! that's right, we haven't had electricity since we moved in. we would occasionally borrow a generator so we could turn the lights on and charge things, but then we figured out that the house wasn't grounded (after cami's fan caught on fire and her computer battery was fried) so we haven't been able to plug anything in at our house for the last 2 months. anytime i've needed to charge anything i've had to haul it to a friend's house. but now the electricty situation is being sorted out, so we are all happy. i slept with a fan on ALL night last night. it was the best thing ever. i'm worried that i'm going to revert back to my old over-sleeping self now. this seems like an appropriate time to tell you that we also don't have running water. :) we buy water in 5 gallon rubber containers, and take bucket showers. hopefully that will get sorted out soon as well. i'll keep you posted.

8 weeks

today is the 8 week anniversary of my arrival in freetown! faye said we need to celebrate and that she'll buy me a coke. i said that the last thing i need is another coke. i rarely drink regular pop in the states, but i cannot get enough of it here... oh i love coke. bottled. canned. on ice. lukewarm. love love love coke.

soooo, a lot has happened since late september. cami and faye both left for the states at the end of the month. faye's trip was planned, but cami's departure was a bit sudden. they are both back now, and things are getting back to normal, but that week and a half without either of them really wore me out. i said a lot of "i don't know the answer" and "i don't know how to do that" during those 11 days. ah, humility.

also, we moved. it was a very quick and chaotic move, but we actually moved, so no one is complaining. it happened at the end of ramadan, which made it even more interesting. i said to a friend during the process, "moving never goes as planned, and we live in africa, where NOTHING goes as planned to begin with... so i wonder what today is gonna be like..." we had a lot a lot a lot of help from some very generous friends who loaned us trucks and workers and boxes and all sorts of things. oh!! and the funniest part... we had a specific day that we needed to be out of the old house because someone was moving in. but we were still waiting on some little details to be finished at the new place. so on a wednesday, faye and i were talking to some friends about needing to be out by the next tuesday. it seemed like plenty of time... what we were forgetting was that the weekend marked the end of ramadan, which meant a 3-day weekend. however, we didn't know exactly which day was the last day of ramadan because they had to wait to see what the moon would do in saudi arabia. so the holiday would either be friday/saturday/sunday. or saturday/sunday/monday. but we wouldn't know until thursday night, and this was on a wednesday. so at 10 o'clock on wednesday we realized that we absolutely had to move on thursday if we were going to be certain that we were out by tuesday... i'm tired again just recounting this. anyway, it was crazy, but it's over and here is a picture of my new room:

the new place is great, and so convenient. i can walk anywhere work-related that i need to go. and we can catch transport to a lot of places right out of the front door. we have a pretty good breeze most of the time because we're on the third floor and i can see water from my bedroom window! it's really far away, but i'm from the midwest, so i don't care. i live by the sea!!! the biggest negative for me is that the place is so loud. so so so loud. all day it's loud. usually quiet by 11 at night. loud again starting with the call to prayer around 5:30. many of you know how difficult it is to wake me up. i love to sleep and i do it very well. but not here. i wake up early every day, and i run on not enough sleep until i'm so tired that i can't function, and then i get 10 hours of sleep a couple of days in a row and start the whole process over again. so that's kinda hard. but i'm adjusting.

things with the kids are going okay. we're getting used to each other. they push my limits sometimes, and i am insensitive sometimes, and in between those times we laugh and try to get to know each other. again, adjusting.

tutoring the little ones is going well. that's my favorite part of the day. monday i will start working with them at our house instead of at noah's and i think that will be much better. first of all, it's more convenient for me, so i'll have more time with them. secondly, the child who needs the most one-on-one attention goes to school right by our house, so he'll be able to get there before the others and get the attention he needs. also, there won't be other people going in and out of the house so the kids that have trouble focusing might actually be able to focus. i'm excited about the change. and the kids are REALLY excited. they just like to be at our house. it's maybe something like what i felt when i got to go to Grandma's. oh no, did i just equate myself to a grandma? i think you know what i mean...

i've been to the beach twice so far and i'm going again this weekend, so i'll try to take some pictures and post them. and then i can introduce you to some of my new friends. i've made some really fun friends who i enjoy a lot. they keep me sane. most of the time... i'm still me, so i can't be sane aalllll of the time. you know.

okay thanks for being so patient waiting for this boring update. i love you all and will try try try to post more often. happy fall! i can't believe it's november... it's getting hotter here and colder there. i'm all mixed up. anyway, ENJOY!

i'm alive i'm alive

wow. i had no idea that i hadn't written in over a month... i really thought it had been a couple of weeks. that should tell you something.

so i'm working on a nice long informative blog, but i just wanted to let you all know that i'm okay. things have been a bit hectic (which i will fill you in on) but they are slowing down and i'm trying to figure out some sort of pace and rhythym and balance. it's a process for sure!!

thanks for continuing to check in on me and getting on my case when you haven't heard anything in a while. let's me know that you notice when i'm gone. :)

much love, and i promise more soon soon soon!

it was a day much like today

This week has flown by! I’m actually on some sort of schedule now, so that makes things a bit more manageable.

I didn’t mention in my last post how fun my trip to the airport was on Friday… It is really difficult to know how long it will take you to get to and from the airport, and like I mentioned, the ferry schedule is completely unpredictable so you really just have to use the hurry-up-and-wait approach. If there is an opportunity to move in the right direction, you take it. You can’t count on having another opportunity. So, we arrived at the airport with 5 hours to spare… but that was nothing… chris and erin arrived without a hitch. With all of their bags, bright-eyed and ready to go. Since they felt good, we decided to take the ferry across the bay instead of paying the big bucks to take the hovercraft.

Let’s just say that the ferry thing didn’t work out. I was promised by the guys selling the bus tickets that the ferry would not leave the dock without our bus. Promised. Not a flippant, ‘yeah sure’ kind of promise, but a long drawn-out nagging-white-woman ‘you better swear to me with every fiber of your being’ kind of promise. Well, I learned my lesson. When a guy has the chance to sell 4 bus tickets at once, he’ll tell you whatever you want to hear. Honestly, I can’t say I blame him either. So, we didn’t make the ferry, and I was not happy about that, but it gets funnier. The ferry that didn’t wait on us got stuck in the mud about 30 yards from the dock. For 5 hours. So… once the tide rose, and the ferry finally moved, it had to cross over to freetown, then load up again and come back. So we boarded the ferry around 2:30 am and were dropped at the house at 5. I took a shower and fell asleep listening to the Islamic call to prayer. Not my favorite Freetown experience to date, but we all survived. And I have made the decision that I will never again attempt to welcome someone to freetown with the ferry. It’s worth the $35 extra per person to not have that happen again. Ugh.

Other than that little hang-up, things are going well. I started Krio lessons this week. And I started tutoring my favorite little people in kroo bay. I love them. They make me completely crazy and I love them. I think they will all grow up into really incredible big people. You know how you just get that sense about some kids? I get that sense with all of them. They have all had it rough in their short number of years. Really rough, in ways that I can’t even imagine. And they sure do have their issues and struggles and brokenness. But they are just so beautiful inside and out. Every one of them. I just love them. Love love love.

Patty griffin continues to provide the soundtrack to my life right now, and the song of this week was ‘goodbye’. Parts of it could not possibly be more fitting. 2 years ago this week, I was living in freetown and called home to hear that my grandpa (who had been dealing with cancer for the previous 9 months) wouldn’t likely make it through the night. Even now, remembering those days is so difficult. I have never felt so far from home. I wrote about it on this blog, so you can check that out in my archive if you feel so inclined. (September 2005) Anyway, I want to leave you with a few lines from the song, and just say that I still miss my grandpa to this day, but it is a blessing to have known someone like him, and even more of a blessing to have his blood in my veins. How could you not miss someone like him?!?! I am so grateful to come from the family I am from – a long line of really amazing people.

Occurred to me the other day that you’ve been gone now a couple years.
Well I guess it takes a while for someone to really disappear.
I remember where it was when the word came about you;
It was a day much like today, the sky was bright and white and blue.

And I wonder where you are, and if the pain ends when you die.
And I wonder if there was some better way to say goodbye.

Today my heart is big and sore. It’s trying to push right through my skin.
I won’t see you anymore. I guess that’s finally sinkin’ in…

my future home-sweet-home

i may or may not have mentioned this before i left...

right now we live a few miles away from downtown, but we have a contract on an apartment in town that is not yet finished. it was supposed to be finished a couple of months ago, but who knows when we'll actually live there. maybe within a week... likely not.

anyway, faye wrote a funny blog about our recent excursion to check in on the progress of the place. you can read it here and look at the pictures and envy the amazing view we will have from our roof. eventually... maybe. i hope soon.

the quote of that day came from the man faye calls "C." he wasn't even in the same room as a most of the commotion at the time, but he shouted in exasperation, "senegalese!!! you talk too much!" for some reason that made me laugh until i choked. aaaah, west africa, i love you.