It has always been important to me to make my living space “my happy place”. The sign above has hung on my door or wall in every place I have lived for the past five years or so. The sign is not to tell others this is my happy place so much as it is to remind myself to create and maintain a space that is untroubled and peaceful so when I am home, I can recharge. This matters to me so much that I brought the sign with me to Sierra Leone. I knew that I would need to put thought and effort into creating my happy place here and that doing so would make my experience better.
When I was planning for this trip, I did a lot of research and asked people here some questions, but there is really no way to prepare for such a significant change of lifestyle. I knew it would take a while to feel settled in my space and in my daily routines, and after three months, I think I am finally there.
My living space is a happy place for me. When I return “home” after my day at the office, teaching, or visiting schools, I can relax and recharge. My daily routines have become second nature and are not as effortful as they were when I first arrived. If you know me, you might guess that figuring out the food would be an issue for me, but rest assured, I am all set there as well.
The Porch
One of the things I like best about my place is the porch. I moved some furniture from the living room out there so I can enjoy it. I sit out there most mornings with my first cup of coffee and reflect on this once-in-a-lifetime gift that I have been given. I don’t want this experience to be over and feel that it went by without me truly appreciating it.
The porch is the perfect place to enjoy the almost daily rain showers during the rainy season (which has just ended). I also enjoy a glass of wine on the porch occasionally at the end of the day. It’s no roof-top with a lake view, and it’s missing a key element, but it will do for now.
The other thing that I enjoy about the porch is that it invites people to sit and chat. I made friends with a young security guard (in charge of the residence area). His name is Santigie. He is about the same age as my son, Noah, and he reminds me of him in many ways. Santigie and I hang out on the porch most afternoons before his shift ends. He is obsessed with the U.S. (even though he has never been there). We talk about the U.S. and he practices English while I practice Krio.
I also enjoy visiting with my neighbors, Francisca (on one side of my unit) and Jess & Ferenkeh (on the other). Francisca is from Nigeria. She is a professor of agriculture and has been here for about eight months as a visiting professor while on sabbatical. Jess is from the UK. She has been here for eight years. She is a professor of anthropology and also in charge of PhD programs at UNIMAK. Her fiance, Ferenkeh, is a Sierra Leonean. He is in Human Resources at UNIMAK.
My neighbors across the way change frequently. A professor and grad student from the Netherlands were staying there for about a month and some of my PhD students from Guinea stayed there for a couple of weeks.
I love having the opportunity to talk with other scholars about the work they are doing here and afar and share about my work with them. We are all intensely focused in very different fields, but the common variable of doing our work here in Sierra Leone makes the conversations quite interesting and engaging. I wish we had more time for these conversations, but everyone is busy.
Orphan Annie
There are stray dogs everywhere in Sierra Leone (the reason for the rabies pre-exposure shots). Unless they become a nuisance, people generally ignore them. The sweet pup in the picture above is a neighborhood “pet”. She doesn’t belong to anyone; she just stays around the area. When I walk to campus in the morning, she walks with me down the road a ways to send me on my way. When I come home from campus she comes to greet me. She barks and growls at people or other dogs who “don’t belong” and she entertains me by doing all the usual silly things dogs do. No one has named her, so I decided to name her Annie. She’s an orphan, but she has a pretty good life here at the UNIMAK staff residences.
New Routines
In the U.S. we have so many modern conveniences that make our lives easier (and still most of us find a way to be too busy and always exhausted). Most of those modern conveniences do not exist in Sierra Leone and so things that I did not even need to think about at home, are time-consuming routines here.
Water. You can’t drink water out of the tap here, so the constant boiling of water (for drinking, cooking, brushing teeth) is part of my routine. I have an electric kettle, so that makes boiling water easier (when the power is on). Before I go to bed, I boil water so it can cool over night. I use that water to fill up bottles in the bathroom for brushing teeth and in the kitchen for drinking. Then, I boil water for coffee. Whatever clean water I don’t use for coffee, I pour into a container for sun tea (which is another routine). Then I boil water for use in the kitchen later and let it cool while I’m working. In the evening after dinner, I boil water for washing dishes and then, of course, boil more water for the morning. The power goes out frequently, so I also just boil water when the kettle is empty… just in case.
*The water situation for me, living here at UNIMAK in staff housing, is far better, though, than most people who live in Sierra Leone. Most do not have water tanks or wells and plumbing that provides (mostly) clean water from a tap. The majority of Sierra Leoneans have to walk long distances to fill 5-gallon jugs with water from rivers or streams to use at home.
Fans and Windows. It’s very hot here (most days in the 90’s with “feels like” temps around 100) and there is no air-conditioning, so moving around fans and opening and closing windows and curtains has become another routine (OK, I’ll admit, a bit of an obsession). It’s always nice in the morning so when I get up, I open the curtains to let the air flow through the windows and I move the fans to blow in cooler air. Before I leave for the day, I turn off the fans and close the curtains so the sunlight doesn’t heat up my living room and bedroom too much. Later in the evening when the sun is no longer shining in my windows, I open up the curtains and move the fans to blow the cooler inside air around and not blow in hot air from outside. You are probably thinking this is nuts, but I’m not kidding you, it’s hot here… and did I mention, no air conditioning?
There are many other little habits that I’ve developed out of lessons learned. For example, I bring a flashlight with me to take a shower. One completely dark shower and voila – new habit. I shake out clothes before getting dressed and towels before using them. One large spider crawling out of my shirt and up my neck and voila – new habit.
New Foods
If you know me, you know that I do not cook (especially when I’m alone). I can cook – I mean, I can follow a recipe – but I do not enjoy it. If I’m left to my own devices, I eat Cheerios for dinner. Luckily, meals were provided for me the first few days here. Samuel (a chef from the campus canteen) prepared them and delivered them to my place. When that ended, I had to figure out what to eat here, and guess what… no Cheerios.
As you would expect, the food in Sierra Leone is much different from the U.S. If you are going to cook, you buy everything fresh at the open market. This was (is) quite intimidating for me, and so I went looking for anything along the line of Cheerios. I found Quick Oats and yogurt at a grocery store in Makeni and canned soup at a grocery store in Freetown. I lived on those for a couple of weeks and then slowly started figuring out other options that don’t require much in the way of cooking.
I learned that they sell fresh eggs in the finance office on campus and I now have someone who texts me when eggs are delivered. I also worked out a deal with Samuel to make something for me once a week (cassava stew and rice, black-eye bean stew and rice) and that’s dinner for a few days. I also go to a nearby restaurant every now and then.
I walk to the market to buy apples and any other produce that looks good. I’ve been looking for avocados (they call them pears here), but no luck yet. I’ve been told that mangoes are plentiful around April and May and I’m looking forward to that!
My favorite snacks are plantain chips and puff cakes. You get these from women who walk around selling them (big baskets of them carried on their heads). They make long chips that are great for scooping tuna salad or egg salad and small ones that taste like slightly sweet potato chips. Puff cakes are just fried dough – slightly sweet and perfect with my coffee in the mornings. I made friends with Aminata, a security guard at the front gate. I give her money and she gets chips and puff cakes for me when the ladies selling them come by campus.
Of course there are challenges to living here. I do not have the modern conveniences or food that I am used to; I miss my friends and family (especially Andrew); and the work is challenging and complex in so many ways, but there are a million little things about my day-to-day life here in Sierra Leone that make this a happy place for me and I am immensely grateful for the experience.
Thank you for sharing your happy place in Sierra Leone. 🙂
Thank you for reading it.
great to see you are getting used to things there and acclimated… how long will you be there for again?
I will be here until July .
Wow! .. so happy that you are making everything work.
Thank you.
Kim, I think about this every morning when I run the tap until it’s hot so I can warm the coffee thermos. Beautiful clear sparkling water going down the drain just so my coffee won’t get cool. I realize in the moment how lucky we are here.
Thank you for sharing. I love reading about the details like this! It makes me want to visit there someday. One question: Is there any food that replaced the carrots? 😂 Lol