From New York to SL

Monday 24th November 2008. I was half way through a short 4 day trip to the Big Apple, taken on a romantic notion and never regretted! Wednesday 24th November 2010 (location Freetown!) and I’m fondly reflecting on that trip only 2 years ago and started comparing Freetown to New York in my head. Here are a few highly subjective similarities in a random order:

· Chaotic traffic and enormous jams (but there are no bulldozers randomly taking the front of buildings off so the road can be widened!)
· Yellow taxis (although most of the NYC taxis don’t have smashed windscreens held together with Man United stickers and back axles scraping on the ground or scary sounding clunks as you drive along)
· Able to buy things day and night (although the choice here is severely limited)
· Friendly people
· Massive inequity between rich and poor (the relative differences I haven’t economically assessed)
· Buzz, pulse, beat, however its described – the pulsating life of a city that both NYC and FT have but lots of cities don’t have
· Some great food!
· Lots of people living in a small space
· Creative ways to make money, lots of entrepreneurs!
· Surrounded by sea
· Dirty air and Noisy (all kinds of sounds, including music everywhere?)
· Amazing hairstyles and clothes
· Areas that aren’t safe at night (but you could say that of any city)
· Some good places to have a beer!
· Lots of religious buildings!
· Lots of languages spoken

There are lots of differences too. There’s the obvious developed v under developed massive differences for people; levels and access to education, health care (although in both places, many poor people still have to pay for their health care), life expectancy, housing etc. But my comparisons are, well, a little less heavy in this blog! Freetown is hilly and wooded and there are hardly any tall buildings, no proper shops, overstretched and underdeveloped telecommunication systems, most buildings are not maintained, no proper public transport infrastructure and almost no galleries or theatre but it does have amazing countryside and beaches less than an hour away. Both towns have that essential life blood which makes them interesting, fascinating and exciting places to live. Freetown is definitely the Big Apple (or should I say Mango, as all apples are imported) of Salone and despite the fact that its not New York. I still love it.

In true Carole style, these photos have nothing to do with the blog but the 1st is the Taiama workshop photo taken with my colleagues last month (note I am the only women, hence the opening phase by the permanent secretary.... good morning Lady and Gentlemen!) and the 2nd is the kids in Peter's (Ministry Driver) village waving us goodbye!

Thanks to a certain lovely Irish guy for showing me the real New York and inspiring this blog (you know who you are)

Its a dogs life

Two weeks ago I met 3 female vets at Balmaya (one of them starred in a previous blog!). That day they had neutered 279 male dogs! Talk about being on a mission, impressive eh! I didnt ask how, too much information. But this is totally necessary. There are dogs everywhere and they almost all look the same, beige with white socks, the gene pool must be very limited! They breed and breed, leading to more canine misery as most of the dogs are homeless, thin and hungry. They fight alot and howl or bark continuously at night. Most of them have bits of their ears missing, wounds from the endless fights for food.

Although I am totally in agreement with this mass neutering, sometimes I wish these committed lady vets were removing the larnyx instead of the other bits, as I havent had a single nights sleep which hasn't been interrupted by bloody dogs barking and howling!!

'Dumbo' stars in the photo, an extremely skinny dog who lives at Hamilton Beach with abnormally large ears (of course!)

(Lack of!) Future Plans

I have decided to stay on longer in Freetown after my VSO placement ends at Christmas, for another 6 months or more. However I have to overcome some minor problems: (1) I have no job yet (2) I will have nowhere to live in 8 weeks time! I still have no idea whether I'm going home for Christmas or not and the flights are getting booked up! Mmmm... well at least I have started to look for a job and even applied for 2 but no luck yet. Plan A is to get funding to stay in the Ministry (easier said than done). Plan B is to work for a partner agency here but I'd prefer the Ministry in order to put the last 8 months to good use. Plan C is to give up on health and open a good italian coffee shop, with great coffee, paninis and cake! I even have the name..... Caroluccios! Watch this space!

To blog or not to blog?

I’ve decided that I should really only blog when I have something interesting, useful or pertinent to say. However life carries on here much the same as it does in the rest of the world. However, its been a month since I blogged! Things do pop into my head sometimes ‘that would be a good thing to write about’ and actually as I sit here, the reason I decide to blog has frankly escaped into the ether! So… I’ll just talk a little bit about my last month here.

I have been upcountry twice. Once to a workshop with the top Docs in Taiama (near Bo). It was an interesting day, a topic I knew a little bit about and could contribute and the place was nice (aircon and hot water now make me feel totally spoilt!!) however, my driver, Peter drank some dodgy water and ended up on a drip in the nearby clinic. Never have so many Drs tended to one patient! The poor CHO (Community Health Officer) was overwhelmed! They did have some drugs but no electricity (or running water, in contrast our hotel 500m away)), so I had to hold Peter’s hand in the dark while he slept. The poor chap was a bit pathetic and therefore this was the source of major teasing for the next week! The next day he was a lot better and off the drip and I got to drive him almost home (from Moyamba Junction to Waterloo). We stopped just before the police check point and swapped over (I am unsure about all the legalities here, like insurance etc!!)

The next time I went up country was to Makeni for 5 days. I was facilitating a workshop with Patricia, my colleague. We were developing a Community Health Worker national programme and a number of representative from NGOs and donors were there. It was hard work but by the end of the week and lots of group work and discussion, we had a draft training manual and programme. I got to know Makeni a little better. I’ve been there at least 5 times but never spent this long there. I stayed with some of the Makeni VSOs and discovered that they also have a good social life which is centred around eating delicious food! I put on weight! Thanks Alice, Kim and Angel.

Work has therefore picked up a lot since I came back from the UK and I’m quite busy. Just over a week ago, I facilitated the Ministry retreat with John and Nathan (Tony Blair guys).On the second day I did most of the facilitating and I enjoyed it. We came out with useful plans to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of how we work in the Ministry and some have already been put into place. That evening there was a big dinner, hosted by the SL Medical and Dental Association (a bit like the BMA here) and it was all incredibly familiar. Men dressed in smart suits, ladies in beautiful outfits (the Salonean women know how to dress up!) but the only difference was that the main meal was served at 11.20pm and the speeches finished at 12.30am and then there was the dancing…. I sloped off about 1am and cadged a lift from one of the Drs who is also a Reverend. He had a sermon to do for the next day!

Socially there is always loads going on. An irish bar O’Caseys has just opened here! One of the new VSOs (Beth) does yoga lessons. We had a party last Friday and loads of folks came. Apparently it was a good party, photos to come. This weekend I’m organising a beach trip to Samso’s (named after Samso in Jutland Denmark, the guy lived there for a while) on Hamilton Beach.

For some reason I cant load photos anymore. The internet disconnects! Its probably a salonean bug! My USB stick is so infected that I don’t like touching it… I’ve lent it to John instead. He does the equivalent of sticking it in dettol every couple of days…. So no photos for a while. I’ll try again soon.

So sorry for the rambling blog but I'll try and remember what I was originally going to write about! Its a muslim holiday today (hence time to blog at 7.30am!) and there is going to be a big carnival in town later. I'll try to cover that! I'll also cover the massive road building programme and the interesting technique of simply bulldozing the front of people's houses if they are in the way. Folks just rebuild a front wall and live in a smaller house! This is a topic where photos tell the story....

I've had better weeks

I wrote this blog a month ago (around 20th October) and couldn't decide whether to post it or not but it was how I was felt at the time so here it is.....

Sometimes I think that my skills and experience are simply not noticed, recognised or utilised….its been a frustrating week so far. The bureaucracy of external funders, the fragility (or lack of) local health systems and skills, overload of so called expert consultants doing piecemeal and (in my opinion) sometimes unsustainable work, The lack of processes at every level. Sometimes the workload is mundane (I write a lot of letters) and the constant learning curve to understand things in a totally new context can leave me exhausted and sometimes dejected. You think you are getting somewhere and then there is some big setback. Might sound a bit familiar (friends in the NHS?)?

To add to my work and other frustrations this week was when on my way to work I discovered an injured dog in the road, with taxis and podas driving around it. I see human suffering and misery everyday which is hard enough and so I have learned to blank out the suffering in the animal kingdom, but not on this morning. With the help of a press-ganged passerby, we gently pushed the dog out of the way of oncoming traffic. It clearly had a head injury and broken bones after being whacked by a car once or maybe two or three times? It was 8.30am and according to the person working at the house next to the road, the dog had been there for some hours, but he had left the dog in the road to suffer and had done nothing. He got the dog some water (I kind of gave him no choice) and I went to find my lovely and resourceful neighbour Joe. I had no idea that we were literally about 300 yards from an animal rescue place, but Joe did and they stretchered the dog there, sedated him, examined him and agreed that there was nothing that could be done for him. A British vet was there, who had arrived 2 days before to volunteer her services for 2 months, brave woman. She concurred with the local vets diagnosis. I put my hand on his head and said goodbye.

Last Sunday I had a long chat with a rather good looking young man who sells locally made bags outside one of the cafes (Bliss). His grandfather makes the bags and he sells them for a living. I’m going to buy a bag next week from Ibraheim. He has no hands, being one of the many in Freetown who were victims of the war atrocities. There are also people who were so badly beaten that their limbs no longer work. Every day I am confronted with a row of wheelchair ridden young people (mainly), begging for food outside my office. Sometimes I give them money, sometimes food. But often I also walk by. I buy medicines for the lower paid staff in the office and I often bring in food. Government drivers earn approximately £45 per month and that’s sought after position in a country with mass unemployment. I haven’t even started to talk about the Freetown slums or the opportunities (or lack of) for the young, especially if their family cant afford to send them to school. People somehow manage to live by selling cucumbers (and a massive array of other things) on their head’s, so its hard to justify getting so upset over a dog in this context. But then again all living creatures feel pain and suffering.

I’m pretty sure that things are improving, we are slowly seeing this in the health sector, especially after the launch of free health care, but sometimes the enormity of the task is quite overwhelming. I have every respect for my Sierra Leonian colleagues, who simply keep going, despite the slowness of progress and the complexity of everything. This makes my frustrations pale into insignificance.

The crack in the pavement

So I’m in a taxi coming to work last Tuesday and thinking about the fact that (a) I was a bit late for work (b) I hadn’t blogged for a while and what on earth could I write about? (c) The sun newspaper never printed anything about Sierra Leone in July so I couldn’t be a VSO with 15 minutes of fame (or should I check yet again on the website??) and (d) why had I STILL not joined the UN gym (for the outdoor pool!) when half the latest group of VSOs were already members in less than 4 weeks and I’d been here 7 months (and I live closer to the UN than anyone and dented pride! else!!!). So I had lots of really important stuff on my mind.

The only thing I made a decision on was that it might be amusing to do a summary blog of all the daft things I had thought, did and said, since I arrived thus demonstrating how much I know now and how far I had come in this challenging environment in the last 7 months!!

So decision made, I started to mentally list the ridiculous incidents, like thinking that the previous occupant of my room was too lazy to fix the two giant holes in the window nets but had just covered them with wood panels instead, Whereas in fact these were covering the holes that you are meant to use to put your arms through to actually open and close the windows!! Anyway, I arrived at the Youyi Building (my work) and jumped out of the taxi whilst continuing to write the blog in my head, then took a step straight into the sewer between two flag stones. I was lucky not to break my leg and get away with only cuts and bruises. But no gym joining for a couple of days! The moral of the story… look where you are going of course and never think that your own stupidity reduces with age and experience, it doesn’t!

Birthday Bash!

Last Tuesday I turned 45 years old which means I am half way to 90 and can look forward to arthritis, memory loss, repeating the same stories continuously (have I written this blog before??) varicose veins and droopy boobs. Interestingly as soon as I reached this age, I discovered a rather large vein beginning to stick out of my right leg! Does the fact that I know myself fairly well and I’m a little wiser and knowledgeable than in my 20s make up for this slow deterioration? No it bloody doesn’t!!







Anyway back to 28th Sept 2010 and celebrating my Birthday in West Africa. In 2009 I was in the UK, 2008 I was in Miami, Florida and can’t remember further back than that! On 'B' day was at work and didn’t tell anyone, but in the morning I was in a meeting with most of the senior ministry staff and they all sang Happy Birthday to me which was nice and a bit bizarre! I had some calls from home which was a bit emotional including from my Mum and Grandma and Otto. Gran just wanted to know when I was coming home.
The working day was therefore OK but ended badly when I couldn’t get a lift home and couldn’t get a poda or taxi either. So, I walked home in a strop which quickly dissipated as I watched people sell things and greeted passers by on the way. Also, the storm that threatened did not materialise. Later I went to Senegalise (an African restaurant on Wilkinson Road) where 19 of my closest friends (!) had turned up to celebrate with me and this even included chocolate cake, a candle and singing (and prior to this an outstanding baracuda kebab!)!! As no-one can really send me a card here, I had a small but perfect collection of 6 cards, from home and friends here but the dearth of presents and cards hardly mattered as I had a great night. Thanks especially to Natalie for organising it and to John and Allie for the lift!

Also thanks for the 50 or so messages on Facebook and numerous emails! I might be far away but I was very touched at how many folks remembered, makes turning 45 almost bearable!!! Thank you.

There doesn't seem to be any photos of me, so here's the cake instead!!