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KNOCK!!! KNOCK!!! KNOCK!!! I woke up by Morten knocking on my door 4:30 in the morning. We had to get ready to catch a bus bound for Bo Town.

We took our packed bags, and David’s dad drove us down to the bus station where one of David’s brothers, Mustafa, kindly helped us buy tickets. (We paid a little extra in order to get our bags on board as well).

The bus was completely stuffed. It soon became clear to us that the famous computer game “Tetris” never made it to Sierra Leone; they started packing the bus from the front (in opposition to Tetris where you pack from the buttom), so people had to stand and wait for ages before they were able to enter. We finally got on the bus.

The ride out of Freetown was slowed by heavy traffic, but when we first came out of the center the ride went smoothly. Sierra Leone’s nature is absolutely astonishing; rivers, wide open spaces of grass, tall palm trees, high mountains - simply fantastic.

After an hours drive and 2 stops the quality of the road deteriorated drastically and we were exposed to a narrow, uneven, very bumpy gravel road. It was a bit strange to think of that what we drove on, was the main road between the capital, Freetown, and the 2nd biggest city, Bo Town.

After 5 hours ride we were received by David’s family in Bo Town. They were very very nice to us, and we quickly settled in in David’s house. Next, we went to eat down town in Bo at ‘Black & White’ and afterwards we went to a workshop to buy tools for use in Sahn Malen tomorrow. We bought different kinds of hoes and machetes which we will use to cut down grass and bushes tomorrow in Sahn Village - in order to deprive the mosquitoes of places to breed.

A long ride, the journey continues tomorrow, I hope you will join us.

-Jacob

So, I arrived in Sierra Leone 2 nights ago, and was a part of a the nation’s most popular radio Show. What a start.

My flight went well, and the entire original GMin Team is now gathered in Freetown. Yesterday we had some meetings concerning another project which David is also working on. So far it has been really interesting. Just walking down the streets of Freetown is an experience in itself. Despite the fact that the city is very poor, people are really friendly and people don’t seem to be out to cheat you when you are shopping as a tourist (unlike many other countries I’ve visited).

We had a small accident last night that made it even clearer why Mosquito nets are so important and essential for Sierra Leone.

Last evening, we went to the beach to chill out and have a nice time. We took a swim in the warm and salty water and everything was perfect. All our of a sudden a big wave caught Mathias by surprise and he was smacked to the ocean floor and had a small concussion as well as a wound in his head. Fortunately, some friendly people helped us, and we got him to the hospital where he got three stitches and a bit of rest. The doctors were very skillful and Mathias was walking again within 2 hours, but the hospital itself was in a terrible condition. Mathias was put in a ward to rest with 8 other people, where 2 suffered from malaria, and 1 from yellow fever. The rest of them I do not know.

The place had no mosquito nets, so mosquitos flew around in the room all the time, transferring malaria from the sick people to the healthy people.

After 5 minutes of rest the room went dark and the nurses lit candles. Initially I thought it was a kind of ritual or something like that - but it turns out that Freetown hasn’t had electricity for 3 months and everybody is therefore highly dependent on private generators, which the hospital, in order to save money, turned off in the evening. They only kept it on for our sake…

Except for that little accident, all is good. Mathias os fine again, and so is his head. So no worries. Elections are coming up in a month’s time, and all over the streets people are campaigning for their respective parties. It seems like it is going to be a close race between All Peoples Congress (APC) and Sierra Leonean People’s Party (SLPP). The parties are each allocated specific days for campaigning, and on those days the streets are filled with the party colours red (APC), green (SLPP) and orange (People’s Movement for Democratic Change).

We expect to see many more parades when we come back from Bo Town later this month.

The mood is very high in our team and we function well together. We are all looking forward to starting the project itself - which will hopefully be on Friday when we go to Sahn Malen via Bo Town.

We are trying to shoot a lot of video and pictures, but uploading them onto the blog is a bit difficult since the internet is very slow and unstable. We will do our best though. Do keep on reading.

-Jacob

It’s July 9th 22.30 and Jacob arrives to our hotel-like guest house, he’s 2 hours late..

We throw him into a cab and race off. Destination: UN. We’re waaay to many squeezed into such a little cab but nobody seems to mind–our thoughts are elsewhere. Jokes fly around, some a bit harsh others plain silly.

The cab stops, we stuble out and walk over to the UN guards who let us in after looking at our passports. We’re close now. Just a few meters in front of us is the UN radio station where DJ Base - old war hero, now radio star - welcomes us. We’ll be on Sierra Leones most popular radio show in 20min.

Jacob and I do media; taking pictures and recording video. David and Mathias do radio; talking - with two other Sierra Leoneans - about community service and volunteerism, and the idealogy that everyone could make an impact on their community, including youths.

It’s a huge success. People call in from all over the country to ask questions and the number of text messages is sky-rocketing. The show goes on for about an hour and a half.

We took a cab back to the guest house and go straight to bed. What a night!

-Morten

Here I am with an update from Freetown. We’ve accompanied David around the capital to visit a wealth of friends and relatives, and the above greeting has now entered our active vocabulary.

Freetown is a very interesting city, it is dense with houses that descend down green and red slopes to greet the Atlantic ocean. The streets are filled with cars and are lined by pedestrians that often carry large loads on their heads. There is a constant clamor of horns, voices, private power generators and engines. At night, most of the city goes pitch dark as the electrical grid hasn’t been working for more than three months now. Strolling through the city with David is in itself an immense learning experience, and we’ve felt nothing but welcome.

Now, as for a follow-up on my last post: We’ve held four key meetings, and they were all successful. First, we met with the Health Officer at UNICEF, and we agreed on the provision of the nets. Also, we agreed that research should be at the centre of our project. This means that the test of our project will be the results from the District Health Team’s surveys, in relation to the initial survey we will help conduct when we go to Sahn Malen.

Next day, we first met with the Representative for UNICEF in Sierra Leone, Geert Cappaelaere, (see picture below) and he fully endorsed our efforts. Later on that day, we met with the District Medical Officer of the Pujehun district, who welcomed our project warmly, but we didn’t go beyond arranging dates.

The final meeting that day was with the Chief of Sahn Malen village, who is also the chief representing in parliament all the chiefs from the Pujehun district. He also welcomed the project, and this meeting served mainly to square our understandings of the project. All of these meetings were supportive and gave a further boost to our enthusiasm for this project and confirmed it. One thing is to plan a project by making conference calls and sending e-mails, another thing is to be on the ground in a (to me) new country and meet everybody face to face.

Chief

Girl playing at David’s

The venue of the last meeting was David’s family’s house in Freetown. We’ve spent a good deal of time there, and I’ve uploaded a few pictures from the veranda, from a chilled-out afternoon. David’s father and brothers stay in Freetown, but his mother and sister live in Bo Town, where we are going on Tuesday. David’s father and eldest brother have already gone ahead to Sahn Malen via Bo Town to prepare the project and set up the survey. Before we join them, we’ll pick up Jacob Lennheden, possibly do a radio show, and hold a few meetings about possibly bringing Être: The face of human rights, a travelling exhibition, to Sierra Leone (more on that later).

As the pictures indicate, we’ve been doing other things than holding meetings in Freetown. We’ve met up with several graduates and students of United World Colleges, We’ve enjoyed the fresh fruit that is available from every street corner (even though they’re out of season) and we’ve traversed many different parts of Freetown. Additionally, we’ve been to the public Lumbley beach on a day with almost no rain, where the Atlantic Ocean was beating relentlessly upon the shore, the smell of salt was carried by a warm breeze and the soothing, luke warm water of the ocean surrounded our feet.

That was all for now from Freetown where the rain has returned and we expect it to stay along with the blackout, the clamor of noise and the amazing, tropical landscape.

“We go see”

-Mathias

We’ve arrived in Sierra Leone.

In the airport we met David, his older brother, and Ishiaka of Red Cross Nordic UWC ‘08. They took us to eat some very spicy food near the airport at a friend of the brother’s place under the shade of mango trees.

Flying in, we saw a tropical and very lush country covered in green. It is the rainy season here, with the occasional shower and the constant drizzle. The humidity is of course very high, but the temperature rests around a comfortable 25-30 degrees Celsius. There are people out and about everywhere in the streets, and the way people live here is very far from the neat, orderly arrangement of housing we know from suburban Denmark.

We took the ferry to Freetown and I got a chance to recap with David on the swingy ferry ride while the fresh, hot ocean air was blowing in our faces. Later on we met Paul, David’s father, who has taken very good care of us and has arranged a stay in a comfortable guest house for us. He works for UNICEF and has been instrumental in planning the project, and we’ve now squared our understanding of the project with him. So, the GMin Eradicate Malaria project is as follows:

The UNICEF division in Sierra Leone has most generously decided to donate approximately an extra 600 Long Lasting Insecticide-Treated bed Nets - also known as LLINs - for the Pujehun district in Sierra Leone. We are meeting with UNICEF’s representative tomorrow, the first of a series of meetings this week. Then, we will meet with the District Medical Officer (DMO) of the Pujehun District who has also agreed most generously to donate these nets to the GMin project in the Sahn Malen Village, in the Sahn Malen Chiefdom. We will work with the DMO’s health team and utilize their expertise and sustained presence in the village. It is the purpose of the project to equip everyone with a mosquito net. However, there are several steps we need to take before this becomes reality.

First, we need to square our understanding of the project with all interested parties in the course of the coming week, where we will be based in Freetown.

Next, we will travel to Sahn Malen via Bo Town which is about 8 hours of rough ride from Freetown. Once there, we will seek to make friend and partnerships with the people in the village. Although they have already expressed that they are happy about this project, we still feel that a challenging exercise awaits: We will have to engage in a dialogue that is based on their reality - and thus not a sermon on our part - and we have to uncover the problems that make people stop using bed nets even though they have been provided free of charge. Furthermore, the culture is obviously very different (for the Danes), and we will have high school students acting as our ‘buddies’ - personal guides and translators. It is a demanding task, but we are confident that we through various initiatives and activities will establish a bond with the village, and that our visit will create some lasting publicity and general awareness about the importance of using bed nets. More about how that goes later.

The final step is the work of the District Health Team. The money GMin has fundraised will act as a long-term incentive for them to make a sustainable effort in achieving a high rate of bed net usage. At best, they will write a report each year for the coming three years.

This is how the project looks now, and we will consider ourselves blessed if all goes according to plan. We will try to update as frequently as possible (which will be more frequently when in Freetown) and hope that you enjoy following our blog.

We’re all gonna blog at some point, so our posts will represent various points of views and experiences. Till next time!

-Mathias

The interest for the LifeStraws have so far been enormous. I will first join the others in Sierra Leone the coming monday, and I’m currently enjoying my time at the big rock festival known as the Roskilde Festival.

I brought a LifeStraw along for testing purposes, as well as to get an opportunity to show off with my little new gadget. Since Denmark has experienced heavy rain the last couple of days, finding a suitable waterhole at the Roskilde festival turned out to be an easy task.

I decided to use myself as a guinea pig, and stuck the lifestraw into the dirty mud-like water and sucked.

Before I got any water in my mouth I heard people yell “You can’t drink that water, you are insane” or “What is he doing!?!?”.

Having faith in my little gadget I keept sucking and when the water finally reached my mouth I was happy to realise that the water tasted like any other water you from the tab, and that it was complete transparent. (in comparison to the brownish color of the water).

I let two very skeptical drunk Norwegians try it - and both of them stood up with a big smile and said “It works, it works”.

So yeah - even though my test wasn’t very scientific in anyway, the interest for the gadget showed to be very big. Hopefully we can manage to use this little tool in other projects in the future.

If you have any interest in being part of an eventual project, perhaps involving LifeStraws, perhaps something different - feel free to contact us at info@gmin.org.

That’s all for now from the part of the the GMin team, which is still in Denmark.

-Jacob

Okay, so we’re now in Freetown the capital of Sierra Leone.

David’s dad have been introducing us to a bunch of people right from a Unicef rep to the chief of Sahn Malen. More on that in tomorrows longer post.

It’s quite exciting and in many ways different from what we thought it would be (guess that’s to be expected) while at the same time confirming some of it.

Anyways, we should have some photos ready for you tomorrow (now that we have found a place with wireless Internet).

-Morten