Hi everybody,
In many ways Sierra Leone is a country in total contrast to the entire western world. In this blog post I will highlight some of these contrasts through what I’ve experienced for the past week. New updates, reflections and achievements concerning the project can likewise be found in the second half of this post.
I arrived in Freetown airport Friday evening a couple of hours delayed. Not very convenient as Ishiaka (my former roomy from RCN), his 1st year (Prince), and two uncles of his were waiting for me… They picked me up, we rushed to the ferry but were too late. One guy stayed behind with the car and the rest of us boarded after a couple of steps through the water. The ferry was packed!
It was not possible to see much of Freetown as it was dark, and there is no permanent electricity supply in Freetown. The ferry was quite cozy; there wasn’t much light, the temperature was tropic and the air was very humid. It’s the rainy season. From the center of the ferry a few hens jumped out of a bag and started crowing. No-one seemed to pay much attention.
The ferry entered the dark harbor solely guided by a lantern placed on land. We pushed through the crowds of people to disembark the same way as the cars, which seemed to be a bit tricky, but obviously not a problem here in Sierra Leone. We went into a little office by the harbor front and further into a little office with a sign saying “Ferry Manager” where another of Ishiaka’s uncles was sitting by his desk. The first thing he said was: “Welcome home”, just as many others I’ve met in my first hour in this very hospitable country. We Danes could learn a lot from this part of the mentality!
Later, we rode through the city, which seemed very busy even though there wasn’t much light. Driving through Freetown seems quite hazardous. A little bit like driving through the walking streets of Copenhagen in fourth gear on a Saturday night, with the horn honked almost constantly. We arrived to Ishiaka’s place where we got something to eat. Nice spicy food with fish, rice and potato leaves called “Crincrin”. There was light here. Prince left a bit later, and I went to bed early. We needed to get up at 4-5 am in order to catch the bus for Bo.
We got up at 6 am, and were late for the more comfortable public busses. We had the option of either waiting till Monday for the next bus or rush to a clay factory nearby to catch some smaller busses, which seemed like they were made of tin plates and soft-drink cans. I was told from beforehand that the road was rough, but I would never have imagined that it was in such a poor condition. To put the trip into a frame of reference it felt like being in the middle of a richter 7 scale earthquake. Nevertheless, the trip was a quite educative experience, and I especially enjoyed the stops we had to buy roasted corns and other foods.
Ishiaka and I arrived safely in Bo where Mathias, Morten and David where waiting, Jacob though had a hard time dealing with a throat infection… The day passed with more nice food, talking and a deeper introduction to Bo Town.
Over the weekend we mainly relaxed, visited family members as well as friends in Bo. One of David’s friends is running for parliament in the coming elections (first round will take place on the 11th of August). There is some rising tensions before the election, so far with a single violent episode in the east. Otherwise the situation seems calm, and it’s very unlikely that the situation will get unstable. We also spent some time on planning and discussing our next trip to Sahn Malen where the project is taking place. I had an idea about trying to investigate economical effects of the implementation of the nets, which some of the others were a bit skeptical about, mainly given the circumstances in the village and the lack of pre-planning. Of course I don’t know much about the scenery till I’ve been there. We might find a method of how such a research can be conducted. Another thing we’ve talked quite a bit about is how to create a reliable control group.
Our main objectives the next two days in Sahn are to ensure that the nets are properly installed, to help those who havn’t installed them yet and then to run some interviews… We will buy string and hooks for the nets tomorrow morning before catching the bus. They have told me that this road is even rougher than the one from Freetown. Oh no…
I’m going to bed now, need to get up early… Amu kpokoh (good night)…
Next morning, we got up early so that we could pack our stuff, eat breakfast and buy equipment to suspend the nets for those people who hadn’t done it yet. For many people it’s even a challenge to get hold of string and nails to hang up their nets. We were discussing back and forth what the best method of hanging up the nets would be, some thought it would be best to use nails, others that it would be better to use screws, as mud houses may be too fragile when hammering in the nails. We bought plenty of both screws, nails and string.
From Denmark I had brought some water-cleaners which look pretty similar to tea bags, and could be rather effective. However, the use of them is limited as they cannot clean all of the bacteria and chemicals which are commonly found in the fresh water here. So, before we left I bought a 12 pack of half-liter water bottles so that we would be able to take water samples from different locations around Sahn, Bo and Freetown. We will then get the samples analyzed either in Denmark or at a hospital up north which I’ll visit after the others have left Sierra Leone.
We got our stuff attached on top of the “bus”, which was something like a minor VW Transporter from the early 80s, only with home made seats etc. We were sitting 21 people inside, two persons were hanging on the back of the van, and three were sitting on the roof…on top of the 21 people’s luggage. It was even more painful than the ride from Freetown to Bo.
We arrived to the village four hours later, and started to plan for the next day. Our job this time was, as mentioned earlier, to ensure that people had suspended their nets, possibly to help them with it. We visited the health center to ask if they wished to have a representative with us around in the village, as well as to investigate a possible volunteer option, which, though, seemed not to be possible. At the health center we found detailed records of all malaria from two years back; such data is being recorded for all villages where the district health team is operating. That enables us to compare the next three years of records with the data from the past two years in Sahn, and likewise compare all the data with one or more “control villages” which may match the infrastructure of Sahn Malen’s. Hence, we’ll be able to evaluate the change in Sahn itself as well as an overall change in malaria cases by the implementation of the LLINs.
Additionally, we spent some time discussing a method of how to investigate an economical change for the village and in each household after the LLINs has been given. At first, the main challenge was that we couldn’t just ask people about their average income per day, week, month and so on, as they mainly were subsistence farmers, and don’t have the same system of money as we have. Furthermore, collecting such data from a “control” village would seem to be even more of a challenge as no preparations nor an official agreement had been made. The second thought was to count all mud houses and stone houses in a village, as stone houses are significantly more expensive, and it tend to be “richer” people living in these. Plus, such data would be more easily obtained from another village. The idea was dismissed after thorough discussion. This was partly because most people living in these houses have family members in the bigger cities which they depend on for remittances, as well as people often have other priorities than building a new house, such as sending their children to school, buying fishing nets etc. A useful method could have been to observe changes in the productive sector, but that would require we maintain the data collection for enough years ahead for children, from two different villages, to grow up, enter school, and graduate, which would be far beyond the scope of our project.
Next day, we finally went around to see the nets. We were followed by 30-40 kids either calling us “Pmui” (‘white man’ in Mende - the local language) or “Jacob”. Jacob seemed to have astounded this little society with his brilliant football skills… We figured that most houses already had put up their nets, which was a great relief. The ones who hadn’t yet, we either helped, or gave string, so they could do it themselves. We likewise figured that we needed neither nails nor screws to put up the nets, they could simply be tied to poles and planks in the houses’ structure.
When we came back I made a “Devil Stick” - out of two guawa fruits, some palm sticks, string and some leaves - for the kids who followed us around. A Devil Stick is basically a stick with a certain weight balance that enables it to be thrown and spun around two other sticks which you’ll hold in each of your hands. It was quite a success.
Some went playing football, and Jacob’s team lost.. HA!
We spent the most of Tuesday evening entering the data on our computers, evaluating the past days and extinguishing a fire in our generator which almost exploded.
We woke up at 5 am next morning to catch the “bus” back to Bo. We left the generator behind. The trip back was pretty fine and I got to hang outside the bus for a part of the tour, which was a lot of fun!
Now we are back in Bo, and are at the moment trying to plan the rest of our stay here in SL. Our project is almost finished, we only need a couple of more meetings. We’ll head for Freetown Wednesday.
So long for now…
- Gustav
