[Maro] Welcome to Moyamba
on M&S Diary (Sierra Leone), 07/Mar/2007 01:10, 34 days ago
A few weeks in and life in the small town of Moyamba is treating me well. I have had tea and eaten Bombay mix with the Indian nuns at St Joseph’s convent, been taken on a walk down an ancient trail to a secret lake deep in the jungle, watched dust devils dance, absorbed the beats of Steady Bongo, battled with huge spiders in our new house and been introduced to more new faces than I can remember...People are enormously friendly and very curious about what has brought us here. The 10 minute walk from our house to the district council office where I am working usually takes at least half an hour as people stop me in the street to ask my name, shake my hand and find out what has brought me to Moyamba. My favourite neighbour so far is Amma Kamara. A very small and wiry old lady who runs down the path from her house whenever she sees me to greet me with a beaming toothless smile and flurry of chatter. Yesterday she told me that since Simon has gone to Freetown and I am alone I must consider her my mother and come and find her if I’m lonely or have any problems. Having a decent grasp of Krio has been a big help and has made it much easier to settle in and make friends. The new challenge is to learn some Mende – the language spoken by the tribe who dominate the southern part of the country.Our new home is a house rented by the district council. It is rather big by Sierra Leonean standards– since the arrival of more volunteers is anticipated over the coming years –and people find it hilarious that me and Simon are alone there for now. The place is slowly starting to feel like home; I’ve got my charcoal stove up and running, have bought some furniture, have more on order and amslowly chasing out the mice and spiders! There is no running water or electricity – but we are used to that from Freetown – and it’s amazing how easy it is to adapt to living without either. I have to say that a real blessing of this year has been the ways in which it has made me think about and question our consumption habits in the UK.There is not much food available in Moyamba– and certainly nothing imported - so my Sierra Leonean cooking skills are now being truly tested. Plassas – greens cooked in palm oil – or groundnut stew is about as much variation as there gets. At the back of our house is a stream surrounded by small vegetable gardens where people grow cassava, yams, potatoes, okra, sorrel and corn. The patch outside our house is much neglected and I’m hoping that Albert – who lives in the back part of the house and helps us fetch water from the well – is going to help me revive it. But the most exciting thing of all is that both across the stream and right outside our kitchen window are several huge mango trees – and mango season is nearly upon us!