Post-SL Trip: Things I'm Thankful for

Count your blessings! - I know, I know - it's such an overused phrase, but it's so true.  There are just so many comforts of the U.S. that people forget about, and I guess this is just a list to remind me of all the things that I missed.

• Electricity! - I can't imagine how many times we'd be working in the factory and the electricity would just go off and someone would have to go and turn on the generator.  At the house we only had the electricity for 3 hours from 7-10pm from a generator, so there were many times when I'd be doing something where having the lights go off was VERY inconvenient. Or just doing things by candlelight was difficult:
• showering
• brushing teeth
• reading a book
• watching a scary movie - not fun...but the computer ran out of battery too, so didn't get to see the ending --still need to do that...
• vomiting my guts out
• baking
• entering data
• ...
• Internet - especially fast internet! Occasionally there's be internet at a decent speed, but just having internet was a blessing!  But in general, internet was useful mainly to stay in contact with my boss.
• Safe drinking water.  Yes, there were times when I had to conserve drinking water because I forgot to buy enough for upcountry.
• Milk!  Oh my goodness, I can't believe how awesome cold milk is until I came back. mmmmm! There was only powdered milk, which I was okay with.
• Orderliness/organization.  It's amazing how organized America is.  You can just step out on to the road and expect cars to follow the rules, or how you can just go to a store and expect to see the price on the product, and that would be the reasonable price to pay and not have to barter for every single thing.  You can just plan your day and that's generally how it'll go.  There's no saying what the day will bring in SL.  
• Factories/industries: So nice to be able to know that if you want something, you can just find a store for it and buy it.  I just wanted to find spatulas one time and I couldn't find them.  
• Hot showers! Oh man, every time I got into the shower I would think about how nice a hot shower would be.  
• Running water.  Yes, there was mostly running water, but upcountry there wasn't - and I felt kind of guilty that people had to carry buckets of water for us to the guesthouse.
• Food: So many people who didn't have that luxury. :(  There was a girl I talked to who I befriended upcountry.  One night she visited me, I asked what she had to eat during the day and she said she hadn't eaten all day (same as her brother).  When I asked her why, she said her dad had went to the city and didn't leave them any money.  When I asked why he went, she said to visit his other wife. 
• Anesthetics: Watching mothers give birth with no anesthetics has almost made me reconsider having children.
• Having reliable doctors/medicine.
• Blood banks
• ...

But overall, I gotta say that I had it good.  I was in a really nice compound that was fenced, and I got to live with some expatriots who were really amazing people!

Geek Ego Booster

Haha...for all you geeks/nerds out there...
http://sfbayarea.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/66795671.html

SL Tid bits

Interesting Sierra Leone Facts:
* Seattle gets 3 ft of rain each year.  Sierra Leone gets 16 ft/year - all during the rainy season (June - October)

Typical Rain Day (Note the massive amount of water overflowing everywhere)

* The record LOW temperature is 68 degrees F (19 C), which is the lowest record high of any other african country.
* The average number of children per woman is 6.3.
* Largest export is diamonds, but mostly unpolished, which are of significant less worth than polished diamonds.
* There are no peanut butter or peanut manufacturing companies in the country (sucks for our NGO, Project Peanut Butter)

What to do if you hit someone with your car:
1) Very few people around: take the person to the hospital.
2) Lots of people around, don't even bother getting out and drive away quickly or else you might get killed.
Sierra Leoneons are very nice and friendly, but people forget that they've been through a war.  So when something happens, they fuel each other on, and it can get ugly.  They're really tough because that's how they got through the war.  As someone said, "It's like a switch."  One moment they are the friendliest people, and the next, they're beating someone to death.  Someone I met talked about how they were heading to church when rocks started being hurled around.  Turned out something had caused the people to turned on the police, and the police were retreating.  It's kind of unnerving to know that the police have no control other than creating traffic.

Language fun:
* Bus means cat
* In Krio: e sounds like "a", i sounds like "e", ay sounds like "i"...
* I "flash" you means calling someone briefly to give them your number

First Poda Poda Experience!

Poda Podas are the equivalent to buses, but they are the size of a minivan, and generally hold 20 people excluding the driver.  It was very squished, and you can generally find one guy hanging out the door of the car, watching out for potential passengers.  Along with flowery, colorful designs, they also have interesting phrases on the back like "City Boy," "Madonna," and/or "Jesus is Great."  Yes, they can all be on the same poda poda.  Unfortunately, poda podas are the root of all traffic (well, okay, and police officers).  They just randomly stop in the middle of the road as people jump on and off.  On my poda poda experience, there was a rather large lady who tried to get on, but just as she sat down, she got up and left.  Turned out all the other passengers complained that she was taking too much room, and drove her off the poda poda.  Man, talk about democracy.    Anyhow, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.  In fact, I think I might incorporate poda podas into my nonexistent repertoire of public transportation.

Practicing Chinese in Sierra Leone

Who would've thought knowing Chinese would've been useful in Sierra Leone.  Even more curious is who would've thought the only sugar factory in all of Sierra Leone is operated by a Chinese family.  Anyhow, after looking up some business jargon on Google Translate and mentally rehearsing some of the things I might say, I think I managed to undergo a small business conversation in Chinese.  And to top it off, I got a free sprite.  We'll see if he really understood what I said after I see the result next week.


Also, before I would get really annoyed when people said "Ni Hao" or "Ching Chung" to me in the streets, and I would pretend I didn't speak Chinese, but then I realized sometimes it's a lot better to pretend I didn't speak English so that people would stop bothering me.  So then when people kept on bother me, I would just break into Chinese.  It really works!

Ah Bunge Di Squirrel

We were driving along the highway from Moyamba to Bo when all of a sudden, my driver cried out, "Ah Bunge Di Squirrel!"  He quickly pulled the car to the side of the road.  We asked, "What?!!" but he kept on repeating the same phrase.  He ran out the car, and by this time, we figured out that he had hit a squirrel.  He must have ran at least a few hundred yards back to check out the squirrel.  As he left the car, I yelled that he didn't have to worry about it and he can just leave it there.  Little did I expect him to return to the car proudly holding the squirrel by its tail.  He laughed as he told us how everyone from the nearby village was begging to have his dead squirrel.  Before we could say anything, he threw it in the car on the floor of the driver's seat.  We yelled at him to get it out of the car, but he said he was taking it to his brother so he can eat it.  How kind of him.  We decided it'd be okay, so we drove with this squirrel corpse and made him take a picture with it.