First a correction on the founding of Freetown. The information in the previous post, that it was founded for slaves emancipated from this country, is incorrect. I misunderstood my guide, I think. Today we traveled by boat up the Sierra Leone River to Bunce Island from which slaves were shipped to the Americas and the Caribbean. On the boat ride we were shown a video that included some history of Sierra Leone, and according to it, Freetown came to be when runaway slaves from Novia Scotia arrived in Sierra Leone, around 1792. However, the printed materials we were permitted to view at Bunce Island say that Freetown was founded by British philanthropists for repatriation to Africa of freed slaves in 1787.
Please forgive the confusion. I imagine that all three of these views are true in their own way.
Bunce Island is a must. The Gullah people on the south coast of our United States trace their roots to Africans gathered on Bunce Island for shipping for sale. The slaves from the rice countries were particularly valuable, hence the rice country of Sierra Leone being a primary shipping point. The United States rice industry owes its success to expertize of slaves exported from the rice countries of Africa.
For fun, I have two photos of monkey paw prints in the sand where we landed. Another debarkation and embarkation requiring a two-man carry across the water from or to the boat. A breakdown on the way back to Freetown - the inboard sucked in a piece of floating plastic and was disabled for about an hour, which included a side trip to another island to take on water for the engine after it was fixed and cooled down. The children on the island began to cheer when they saw our boat was coming to them! I didn't see any monkeys, but I certainly heard one shriek. All the birds were hiding. The place is rife with cotton trees. Unripened mangoes half chewed by monkeys littered the ground at the ruins of the island castle. And, my favorite story, a young boy helped me down two steep slopes in our tour of the island, so I tried to slip him 2000 Leones (less than a dollar American I'm afraid but worth two bowls of rice) but the ancient indigenous caretaker who was our tour guide saw it and I am assured he took the money from the child after having himself been paid a great sum of money for taking us around.
So, some odds and ends to end this phase of my reports from Sierra Leone. The boat rides, both to Banana Island in the dugout with the 15 hp outboard, and the speedboat to Bunce, were nice diversions. I love being on the water. The lunches, most of which were in local restaurants in Freetown, and home cooking at the motel in Waterloo, gave us an opportunity for indigenous foods. You must try olele sometime, and definitely groundnut stew (if you like it hot! They will not tone down the heat.) We will take the ferry to Lungi airport tomorrow at 4 pm for our midnight flight to Heathrow. (The next ferry will not be until Monday - too late!) We'll have a long wait in the airport, but I am assured there is a restaurant on the second floor, and one duty free shop. I have a detective story to keep me occupied.
Newlin, my BP, wrote that I must be exhausted. I am. Even the days that were listed as relaxation were exhausting. And I fear I won't have much time to recover when I return. But in the end it is going to prove to have been worth it. Even though last night and this morning, I couldn't wait to go home, I now find I wish there were time to go back and do a couple of things or see a couple of places again. And I never did get on the beach to watch up close the fish nets being hauled in. Alas, there is always something left on the plate from which one has to walk away.
Once I get home and read through what I did write about, I can begin to fill in the blanks of what I did not write about. For now, this is your correspondent in the field, signing off until our return to the States - on behalf of myself and my companions, Kathy Dies and John Sutton, Peace from us to you.
Lois
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Dispatch from Sierra Leone - History and Future
There is so much to report, and it is all in my journal. I'll write more when I return next week. For today's entry I choose to write about Banana Island, which we visited on Wednesday, and Bunce Island, which we will visit tomorrow, Saturday.
Sierra Leone was an integral link in the slave trade. There is even a town here named for Captain Newton, who wrote "Amazing Grace" after he began to think his involvement in running slave ships might not be such a healthy thing for his soul. Slaves from all over Africa were brought to Bunce Island, which had a castle and an Anglican Church in which to house slaves, and guns for protection. From Bunce, which is just up the river from Freetown (which did not exist during the slave trade) the slaves were shipped to England, the American colony and later the United States, and the Caribbean.
Banana Island is at the southern end of the Freetown peninsula. A 20 minute canoe ride, in a fifty foot canoe powered by a 15 hp outboard, will take you across the Atlantic to Banana from Kent. The country is all so beautiful, and marred by the poor living conditions of the inhabitants. The mountains run right down to the Atlantic. The ride was a delight. There will probably be photos available of me being two-man carried through the water to be deposited in the canoe. I expect to charge admission to see those photos!
Banana Island was a Portuguese settlement. The remains of slave occupation is mainly of those the Portuguese brought to work on Banana Island. However, there are some ruins of buildings in which slaves were housed for sale and transport, and a circle of stone marking the pit into which sick slaves, those too sick to sell and transport, were thrown to die.
This juxtaposition of natural beauty and painful, horrible history is very hard to process. I do not know when I will recover from some of the things I have seen. I imagine I will recover, but I'm not sure I should.
The staff in the hotel have learned we are here to see a school we are helping to build. My waitress this afternoon, when she brought the bill for my tea to sign, got up the courage to tell me there is a school in the Eastern section of Freetown, a primary school, which has no support at all. She broke my heart. These people want education for their children. Education is required for primary age children. At the same time, while primary education is technically free, it costs money for books and uniforms and pencils and paper - all the things we take for granted. I was glad to be able to tell her about FAWE, Forum for African Women Educationalists and she will tell her child's teacher about them. I don't know if they can help - they probably can't help every school. But at least I had something to tell her that might mean hope.
Freetown, I wrote above, did not exist during the slave trade days. It was founded by freed slaves who wanted to return to Africa after the United States emancipated our slaves. Before the ten year war, which ended around 2001 or 2002, the hills that surround Freetown were all woods. Now every square inch is covered with housing. During the war much of Freetown was burned. Churches were burned down. The police station was burned down. The people who did not leave for England began to build on the hillsides. Now, there is rebuilding in Freetown. At the same time the houses remain on the hillsides, side by side with the shacks of the "squatters" who were displaced from their villages in the countryside and make their living now selling goods up and down the streets, taking advantage of the traffic jams.
I seem to be dumping my brain into this blog, so it may be truly rambling. But you have not experienced driving until you have been a passenger in a car on the streets of Freetown!
One last item, from yesterday, Thursday. We received an invitation, off our schedule, to attend the opening of an exhibition at the National Museum in Freetown, an exhibition of photographs called Women's Voices. I have left my notes in my room, but this much I remember. Women from two villages were given digital cameras and rudimentary instruction in their use, to record their lives and the lives of the women in their villages. I believe they took pictures for a year. The youngest woman was 12 years old. After the pictures were all taken and the sponsoring organizations gathered them up, the women were brought together with the male leaders of their communities, and the photographs, and told the stories that the photographs represented. The women found their voices. Now they, and this exhibit are part of the drive for equality of women alongside men in Sierra Leone.
As one of the women from the project said yesterday during the opening ceremony, woman was not taken from the man's backbone to walk behind him, or from his headbone to walk above him, or from his footbone to walk under him. Woman was taken from his side, from his ribs, to walk alongside him as equal. It was so powerful an image. And as the indigenous woman official who gave the opening remarks said, if we have done something wrong in supplanting for one month the regular exhibits of the museum with this exhibition, it is with very little apology that we do so.
As an old, aging hippie feminist, I tell you, these women are on the move. And they have support for the changes they are hoping to make.
My time is up. I'm going up to enjoy the view of the Atlantic and the black kites (raptors) soaring back and forth in front of my balcony, and get some rest from the enormous multitude of images that flood my brain every day here. God's Peace be with you all, and may you add to your prayers for today, the girls and women of Sierra Leone, some of whose stories I will try to tell in future posts.
Yours faithfully,
Lois
Sierra Leone was an integral link in the slave trade. There is even a town here named for Captain Newton, who wrote "Amazing Grace" after he began to think his involvement in running slave ships might not be such a healthy thing for his soul. Slaves from all over Africa were brought to Bunce Island, which had a castle and an Anglican Church in which to house slaves, and guns for protection. From Bunce, which is just up the river from Freetown (which did not exist during the slave trade) the slaves were shipped to England, the American colony and later the United States, and the Caribbean.
Banana Island is at the southern end of the Freetown peninsula. A 20 minute canoe ride, in a fifty foot canoe powered by a 15 hp outboard, will take you across the Atlantic to Banana from Kent. The country is all so beautiful, and marred by the poor living conditions of the inhabitants. The mountains run right down to the Atlantic. The ride was a delight. There will probably be photos available of me being two-man carried through the water to be deposited in the canoe. I expect to charge admission to see those photos!
Banana Island was a Portuguese settlement. The remains of slave occupation is mainly of those the Portuguese brought to work on Banana Island. However, there are some ruins of buildings in which slaves were housed for sale and transport, and a circle of stone marking the pit into which sick slaves, those too sick to sell and transport, were thrown to die.
This juxtaposition of natural beauty and painful, horrible history is very hard to process. I do not know when I will recover from some of the things I have seen. I imagine I will recover, but I'm not sure I should.
The staff in the hotel have learned we are here to see a school we are helping to build. My waitress this afternoon, when she brought the bill for my tea to sign, got up the courage to tell me there is a school in the Eastern section of Freetown, a primary school, which has no support at all. She broke my heart. These people want education for their children. Education is required for primary age children. At the same time, while primary education is technically free, it costs money for books and uniforms and pencils and paper - all the things we take for granted. I was glad to be able to tell her about FAWE, Forum for African Women Educationalists and she will tell her child's teacher about them. I don't know if they can help - they probably can't help every school. But at least I had something to tell her that might mean hope.
Freetown, I wrote above, did not exist during the slave trade days. It was founded by freed slaves who wanted to return to Africa after the United States emancipated our slaves. Before the ten year war, which ended around 2001 or 2002, the hills that surround Freetown were all woods. Now every square inch is covered with housing. During the war much of Freetown was burned. Churches were burned down. The police station was burned down. The people who did not leave for England began to build on the hillsides. Now, there is rebuilding in Freetown. At the same time the houses remain on the hillsides, side by side with the shacks of the "squatters" who were displaced from their villages in the countryside and make their living now selling goods up and down the streets, taking advantage of the traffic jams.
I seem to be dumping my brain into this blog, so it may be truly rambling. But you have not experienced driving until you have been a passenger in a car on the streets of Freetown!
One last item, from yesterday, Thursday. We received an invitation, off our schedule, to attend the opening of an exhibition at the National Museum in Freetown, an exhibition of photographs called Women's Voices. I have left my notes in my room, but this much I remember. Women from two villages were given digital cameras and rudimentary instruction in their use, to record their lives and the lives of the women in their villages. I believe they took pictures for a year. The youngest woman was 12 years old. After the pictures were all taken and the sponsoring organizations gathered them up, the women were brought together with the male leaders of their communities, and the photographs, and told the stories that the photographs represented. The women found their voices. Now they, and this exhibit are part of the drive for equality of women alongside men in Sierra Leone.
As one of the women from the project said yesterday during the opening ceremony, woman was not taken from the man's backbone to walk behind him, or from his headbone to walk above him, or from his footbone to walk under him. Woman was taken from his side, from his ribs, to walk alongside him as equal. It was so powerful an image. And as the indigenous woman official who gave the opening remarks said, if we have done something wrong in supplanting for one month the regular exhibits of the museum with this exhibition, it is with very little apology that we do so.
As an old, aging hippie feminist, I tell you, these women are on the move. And they have support for the changes they are hoping to make.
My time is up. I'm going up to enjoy the view of the Atlantic and the black kites (raptors) soaring back and forth in front of my balcony, and get some rest from the enormous multitude of images that flood my brain every day here. God's Peace be with you all, and may you add to your prayers for today, the girls and women of Sierra Leone, some of whose stories I will try to tell in future posts.
Yours faithfully,
Lois
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Dispatch from Sierra Leone - Waterloo School
I have returned to Freetown from Waterloo and three days with the girls of the FAWE junior and secondary school, which Grace Church has been helping to build. Since we sent money to finish one classroom and build another, that building is finished, and more people have learned about the project and are helping as well. There is now a two floor, four room wing being constructed, and the contributors for the second floor are also supporting a computer lab for one of the rooms.
The girls are wonderful. They are, no surprise, what you would expect from girls who are growing up in difficult, even poor conditions. They are clever, they are also very bright. They have great ambitions for themselves. The important thing will be to keep them in school so they can get the education they will need to fulfill their ambitions.
The curriculum is ambitious. They have English as a language, as well as English literature, maths, agriculture, science. Many of the girls will not stay for more than one year. They are needed to sell things in the market and on the side of the road, or work in the fields. But maybe they will be able to read or write a little. In the first class I took to teach, they were learning story versions of Shakespeare plays. At the same time, they do not know a lot about their own country.
We had a long, hard three days, and didn't get back into Freetown until 6:30 p.m. so I am going to keep this brief so I can go to bed. There is a funny thing happening, however. I have a good ear, I suppose because I'm a musician, and as I type this, my brain is thinking in the rhythm and way of speaking English of the people I have met here.
That's all for now. More tomorrow, I hope, after we spend the early afternoon at the National Museum for the opening of a photographic exhibition "Voices of Women" sponsored by the International Rescue Committee and the National Museum of Sierra Leone. The exhibition lets women at risk tell their stories through photographs taken of their daily lives. Hope I can be clearer about that tomorrow.
Good night.
Lois
The girls are wonderful. They are, no surprise, what you would expect from girls who are growing up in difficult, even poor conditions. They are clever, they are also very bright. They have great ambitions for themselves. The important thing will be to keep them in school so they can get the education they will need to fulfill their ambitions.
The curriculum is ambitious. They have English as a language, as well as English literature, maths, agriculture, science. Many of the girls will not stay for more than one year. They are needed to sell things in the market and on the side of the road, or work in the fields. But maybe they will be able to read or write a little. In the first class I took to teach, they were learning story versions of Shakespeare plays. At the same time, they do not know a lot about their own country.
We had a long, hard three days, and didn't get back into Freetown until 6:30 p.m. so I am going to keep this brief so I can go to bed. There is a funny thing happening, however. I have a good ear, I suppose because I'm a musician, and as I type this, my brain is thinking in the rhythm and way of speaking English of the people I have met here.
That's all for now. More tomorrow, I hope, after we spend the early afternoon at the National Museum for the opening of a photographic exhibition "Voices of Women" sponsored by the International Rescue Committee and the National Museum of Sierra Leone. The exhibition lets women at risk tell their stories through photographs taken of their daily lives. Hope I can be clearer about that tomorrow.
Good night.
Lois
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Dispatch from Sierra Leone - First Impressions
That last post was written in hast while I was sharing online time with the other two members of our party. Here in Sierra Leone internet time is about $2 American or 5,000 Leones. This may be my last post until Thursday. We're in Freetown, the capital, but we're off to Waterloo tomorrow. Waterloo is where the school for girls is, the one Grace Church has been helping to build. I don't know if we will have internet access there.
Today I read one of the columnists in the newspaper who wrote that Sierra Leone is officially the poorest country in the world. I can believe it. It is amazingly beautiful. The natural beauty is the backdrop for the grinding poverty of the displaced persons from the war. As we drove along the beach road today, the coastal mountains suddenly rose up in the near distance, shrouded partially in mist. It was primordial beauty, breathtaking. At the same time, the destruction that still scars the city is alongside the building of new housing that will sell for half a million dollars per house.
About the girls and the school in Waterloo, I have been told that no one has unrealistic expectations for their education. When they graduate they will be able barely to read and write. There is a heavy emphasis on vocational education and training. The girls come from families with a history of illiteracy. It is a huge step for these families to send their girls to school at all. What I read between the lines is this: These girls are the first step in changing the culture of their families. If they graduate from school, they will be more likely to send their own daughters to school, and these daughters will do even better than their mothers.
We at Grace Church, and the others in the community who have been contributing to the building of classrooms, are taking part in a long term dream, the dream of a better future and a better life for girls of post-war Sierra Leone.
I can hardly wait to meet the girls. Tomorrow we will see them for the first time, at a Thanksgiving service, giving thanks, in part, for our part in their lives. The following day, Monday morning, we three from Grace Church will dedicate the second classroom which we helped to build. I can hardly stand the wait - this is an emotionally full experience for me.
I am going to do something I would not normally do on this blog, but if you are inspired to be on the ground floor of the beginning of a generations-long cultural revolution in the education of girls, and you want to contribute to the fund for building another classroom, or, if it is more needed, a well for more clean water for the school, then please make your check payable to Grace Episcopal Church for Waterloo School and send it to Grace Episcopal Church, 1 Union Park, Norwalk, CT 06850, attention Kathy Dies. That's Attn: Kathy Dies and that part is very important in getting the funds credited to the school fund.
However, if this is an inappropriate request, please add Waterloo School for Girls to your prayer list.
I will write again as soon as I can. I have taken no pictures so far. Every opportunity has seemed too exploitative - like I should give money to the persons I would like to photograph or something, and that is not encouraged. So, so far, no pics. But I will try to do better in Waterloo.
Until next time, I am faithfully yours,
Lois
Today I read one of the columnists in the newspaper who wrote that Sierra Leone is officially the poorest country in the world. I can believe it. It is amazingly beautiful. The natural beauty is the backdrop for the grinding poverty of the displaced persons from the war. As we drove along the beach road today, the coastal mountains suddenly rose up in the near distance, shrouded partially in mist. It was primordial beauty, breathtaking. At the same time, the destruction that still scars the city is alongside the building of new housing that will sell for half a million dollars per house.
About the girls and the school in Waterloo, I have been told that no one has unrealistic expectations for their education. When they graduate they will be able barely to read and write. There is a heavy emphasis on vocational education and training. The girls come from families with a history of illiteracy. It is a huge step for these families to send their girls to school at all. What I read between the lines is this: These girls are the first step in changing the culture of their families. If they graduate from school, they will be more likely to send their own daughters to school, and these daughters will do even better than their mothers.
We at Grace Church, and the others in the community who have been contributing to the building of classrooms, are taking part in a long term dream, the dream of a better future and a better life for girls of post-war Sierra Leone.
I can hardly wait to meet the girls. Tomorrow we will see them for the first time, at a Thanksgiving service, giving thanks, in part, for our part in their lives. The following day, Monday morning, we three from Grace Church will dedicate the second classroom which we helped to build. I can hardly stand the wait - this is an emotionally full experience for me.
I am going to do something I would not normally do on this blog, but if you are inspired to be on the ground floor of the beginning of a generations-long cultural revolution in the education of girls, and you want to contribute to the fund for building another classroom, or, if it is more needed, a well for more clean water for the school, then please make your check payable to Grace Episcopal Church for Waterloo School and send it to Grace Episcopal Church, 1 Union Park, Norwalk, CT 06850, attention Kathy Dies. That's Attn: Kathy Dies and that part is very important in getting the funds credited to the school fund.
However, if this is an inappropriate request, please add Waterloo School for Girls to your prayer list.
I will write again as soon as I can. I have taken no pictures so far. Every opportunity has seemed too exploitative - like I should give money to the persons I would like to photograph or something, and that is not encouraged. So, so far, no pics. But I will try to do better in Waterloo.
Until next time, I am faithfully yours,
Lois
Dispatch from Sierra Leone - Arrival
Lois has intermittent access to email from Sierra Leone and asked me to post the following. I will post entries from Lois as we receive them.
--Grace Church Webmaster
We have arrived in Sierra Leone. We had 14 hours flight and 7 minutes in a helicopter - the first for all of us. Freetown is an eyeopener. The beaches, the ocean, the mountains are beautiful. All along the road along the beach are people who were displaced by the civil war. They have no where to go, no where to live. So they have built squatters' huts and little shacks from which to sell various things. Today we passed the amputees, young men who had various body parts cut off during the war. They were organizing for a soccer game.
At the same time, there were young men in long, low fishing canoes with nets, and people on the shore pulling the nets in with their catch for the day. These days those young people are in danger because the commercial fishing trawlers are cutting them off, and even cutting their nets. Such beauty next so much other stuff I can't even write about yet, but more later in the week.
Peace, Lois Keen
--Grace Church Webmaster
We have arrived in Sierra Leone. We had 14 hours flight and 7 minutes in a helicopter - the first for all of us. Freetown is an eyeopener. The beaches, the ocean, the mountains are beautiful. All along the road along the beach are people who were displaced by the civil war. They have no where to go, no where to live. So they have built squatters' huts and little shacks from which to sell various things. Today we passed the amputees, young men who had various body parts cut off during the war. They were organizing for a soccer game.
At the same time, there were young men in long, low fishing canoes with nets, and people on the shore pulling the nets in with their catch for the day. These days those young people are in danger because the commercial fishing trawlers are cutting them off, and even cutting their nets. Such beauty next so much other stuff I can't even write about yet, but more later in the week.
Peace, Lois Keen
Monday, February 16, 2009
Mission Trip to Sierra Leone
I have my visa to enter Sierra Leone - wow! REALLY getting scared now.
Little things like, everyone drinks bottled water, so that means, don't you think, that eating fresh veg and fruits is not a good idea, since they may have been washed in the regular water.
And trip insurance - since my part in this trip is being paid by a grant, I should be able to get insurance to cover the church in case something happens that I can't go and the church has to pay back the grant. But can you find such a thing? NO! Not unless you also pay for a lot of other coverage I neither need nor want, which jacks the price up. I know I'm unreasonable - I think $200+ for this insurance, which will have to come out of my own money, is way out of line. But in the end I'm going to have to do it because I am a hyper-responsible person.
And breakfast - it is supposedly included, but it is a free continental breakfast, which means no protein, only unhealthy, sugary carbohydrates, which I cannot eat first thing in the day, and juice, which I don't drink, and I still can't tolerate milk or tomatoes since the chemo. So I worry how I will start my day. I might just have to accept that I have only tea in the morning and will eat rice and maybe some fish and come home lots slimmer (always look for the silver lining!).
Truthfully, I have no business traveling anywhere outside the United States, Canada and Great Britain. I've become like the older women who traveled with Newlin and me to Israel and Egypt in 1984. They wanted to make that pilgrimage but they wanted to have nothing to do with anything indigenous. They wanted expensive United States style cuisine and Newlin and I, having very little money, were eating humous and falafels. All they did was complain (according to my perception).
Now that I'm older, and have the usual health issues of a woman of over 63, I worry for my comfort and my health. I'm chock full of immunizations for exotic diseases, and burdened with pills against malaria and traveler's diarrhea. I want to meet the girls of the school in Waterloo. I also want to stay home where I know the food and the water and the terrain and the climate won't do me in.
But I will go, and I will try as hard as I can not to make my fellow travelers miserable. There is nothing at all on my calendar for this week, so that's good. I have time to do my "practice packing" ( ! ). Next week, Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, Ash Wednesday two services plus a couple of visits to shut-ins, Thursday in the office giving last minute instructions to my secretary, and Thursday night at 10:30 p.m., I'll be rambling off into the wild blue yonder, headed east for Africa.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Meanwhile, I heard from one of my friends from my one term at Westcott House in Michaelmas 1996. She found this blog and isn't that just a miracle! Way cool. Cheers, all.
Little things like, everyone drinks bottled water, so that means, don't you think, that eating fresh veg and fruits is not a good idea, since they may have been washed in the regular water.
And trip insurance - since my part in this trip is being paid by a grant, I should be able to get insurance to cover the church in case something happens that I can't go and the church has to pay back the grant. But can you find such a thing? NO! Not unless you also pay for a lot of other coverage I neither need nor want, which jacks the price up. I know I'm unreasonable - I think $200+ for this insurance, which will have to come out of my own money, is way out of line. But in the end I'm going to have to do it because I am a hyper-responsible person.
And breakfast - it is supposedly included, but it is a free continental breakfast, which means no protein, only unhealthy, sugary carbohydrates, which I cannot eat first thing in the day, and juice, which I don't drink, and I still can't tolerate milk or tomatoes since the chemo. So I worry how I will start my day. I might just have to accept that I have only tea in the morning and will eat rice and maybe some fish and come home lots slimmer (always look for the silver lining!).
Truthfully, I have no business traveling anywhere outside the United States, Canada and Great Britain. I've become like the older women who traveled with Newlin and me to Israel and Egypt in 1984. They wanted to make that pilgrimage but they wanted to have nothing to do with anything indigenous. They wanted expensive United States style cuisine and Newlin and I, having very little money, were eating humous and falafels. All they did was complain (according to my perception).
Now that I'm older, and have the usual health issues of a woman of over 63, I worry for my comfort and my health. I'm chock full of immunizations for exotic diseases, and burdened with pills against malaria and traveler's diarrhea. I want to meet the girls of the school in Waterloo. I also want to stay home where I know the food and the water and the terrain and the climate won't do me in.
But I will go, and I will try as hard as I can not to make my fellow travelers miserable. There is nothing at all on my calendar for this week, so that's good. I have time to do my "practice packing" ( ! ). Next week, Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, Ash Wednesday two services plus a couple of visits to shut-ins, Thursday in the office giving last minute instructions to my secretary, and Thursday night at 10:30 p.m., I'll be rambling off into the wild blue yonder, headed east for Africa.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Meanwhile, I heard from one of my friends from my one term at Westcott House in Michaelmas 1996. She found this blog and isn't that just a miracle! Way cool. Cheers, all.
Monday, February 2, 2009
On a Mission from God
24 days and counting. We leave for Sierra Leone on the 26th of this month. I've had my shots - HepA, Polio booster, typhoid and yellow fever. That was an adventure - stuck in four different places! Still need to fill scripts for an anti-malarial and for cipro (antibiotic in case of traveler's diarrhea "with fever and/or blood" - that's enough to scare one to stay home!). All my documents are in order. Awaiting the visa to enter the country.
I'll admit to being a little afraid. I'm at risk for lymphedema after the breast cancer surgery just two years ago. Need to take care of my arm - keep it covered, treat any bug bites right away, don't get sunburn - on the equator! Is the water safe? I don't know. What if everything we're served to eat has tomatoes in it? I haven't been able to eat tomatoey things since the chemo.
At the same time, when I think of meeting the girls of the school we're helping to build, I can't wait to get there. We had each wanted to interact with the girls by teaching them things or learning from them. I've decided I'm going to have them teach me as many songs as they know, so I can bring them back with me to Grace Church. We're making a scrapbook to take with us so they'll have part of Grace Church's people with them.
I'm sure it will all be well. And I also don't know any such thing, that all will be well. But off I'll be flying on February 26, leaving the congregation to take care of one another until the four of us return.
May God in his mercy give us grace.
I'll admit to being a little afraid. I'm at risk for lymphedema after the breast cancer surgery just two years ago. Need to take care of my arm - keep it covered, treat any bug bites right away, don't get sunburn - on the equator! Is the water safe? I don't know. What if everything we're served to eat has tomatoes in it? I haven't been able to eat tomatoey things since the chemo.
At the same time, when I think of meeting the girls of the school we're helping to build, I can't wait to get there. We had each wanted to interact with the girls by teaching them things or learning from them. I've decided I'm going to have them teach me as many songs as they know, so I can bring them back with me to Grace Church. We're making a scrapbook to take with us so they'll have part of Grace Church's people with them.
I'm sure it will all be well. And I also don't know any such thing, that all will be well. But off I'll be flying on February 26, leaving the congregation to take care of one another until the four of us return.
May God in his mercy give us grace.
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