In Which We Become Overnight Millionaires
on Zoe Page (Sierra Leone), 24/Sep/2010 06:33, 34 days ago
Our Krio text has the most random mix of vocabulary ever. In fact, the words often make almost complete sentences in the order they come, though“bruda butu insay tuylεt” (brother, bend over inside toilet) is probably not one I’ll be using that often...Our partners arrive for a session, but there is a big important meeting at the Ministry of Health and Sanitation so I’m not the only health volunteer without anyone there. We have a lot of paperwork to go through, including an emergency evacuation plan. The idea is, we work out how much it would cost to get back to Freetown in an emergency (like a nice little military coup) and VSO give us the money to hold ontofor the time we’re here, so we have it if we need it. First step, of course, is working out how much it would cost to charter a taxi / helicopter to wing us back from the provinces...After lunch (Ris de...I don’t know why I bothered asking how to say ‘Ris no de’, aka ‘there is no rice’) we talk gender role and sexual harassment before we finish, making this the first day we haven’t had a lecture on Secret Societies. Thing is, depending on who is preaching, these range from being like the Masons to scary ass groups who drag girls off for a quick round of FGM, and there’s a big difference between The Secret Seven Put On A Pinny and The Secret Seven Slice Off Your Bits.We get a wodge of cash for various things, in advance of our bank account opening tomorrow, and it feels quite cool to be a millionaire, albeit in Leones. Then Cheryl and I walk right, over the bridge, and into an area where people seem to think we’re French, greeting us with ‘Salut!’ as massive UN trucks whizz past. We buy cassava root, which kinda smells and feels like chestnuts, but is more like a bread/sweet potato hybrid.. Apparently it’s ‘heaven’ with butter on, but since we’re butterless, we try it with Laughing Cow and peanut butter, to variable effect... It comes wrapped in the equivalent of old newspaper – except it’s some secretarial journal, and there’s an ad for Standard Life on my sheet. Random.