Halfway

Foindu, Sierra Leone

The work here is keeping us very busy. I have been visiting with farmers (who comprise 95% of the economy) to learn about their farm practices and uncover methods to grow more food. Here is rural Sierra Leone, people have enough to eat only after the rice harvest in the fall. The remainder of the year, food is apportioned carefully to avoid running out completely. Still, the “hungry season” as it is known, is time when food intake is most severely restricted, and can last upwards of three months.

Life here is dug from the soil. Work is very manual, and the labor extremely hard. I visited with a farmer who grows ground nuts in an upland area. The road to his farm is really a foot path, wide enough only for one person, and the walk to his farm takes about 20 minutes. Everything used on the farm during the day must be carried along this path. Nuts are planted in a cleared area of several acres only after all the other vegetation has been cleared. The seeds are inserted into the soil, and the continuous process of pulling weeds begins. All of this, too is done by hand. When you live in the rainforest, it is a constant battle against the will of nature. The jungle wants to reclaim anything, and a farm clearing is an open invitation for re-growth to take place on an accelerated pace.

The rest of our team has also been extremely busy. Our health team, comprised of Betsy, Lorrin, Winston and Andy from Birmingham, assisted by Ben, an intern from Amherst, has been seeing patients in each village. As soon as they arrive, the line begins to form, a procession that will only end when they pack up and leave. Yesterday in Pujehun, there was a small child with malaria and dehydration who was rushed to a hospital in Bunumbu after Jeff arranged transportation. There are no ambulances here, and a ride on the back of a motorbike is sometimes the difference between life and death. They have been seeing about 50 people per day on average, trying to attend to those most seriously ill, but they have also been able to see many people with chronic but not life-threatening conditions.

Our Education team of Benjamin, Tamara, and another Amherst intern, Karen, have been busy meeting with teachers and education committees, starting work on adult literacy, and presenting awards to top students. Last Friday, we stopped in at the Foindu primary school and were honored with two songs (including “When Your’re Happy and You Know It”, which we all knew). The mass of children singing, all in their blue school uniforms, is truly a memorable event.

Our third Amherst intern, Sid, has been working extremely hard learning about the work of the loan officers in each village, the status of the many loans they make to farmers, and how the process of originating and collecting loans works. As far as we know, none of the villages have expressed a need for TARP money! Sid is also responsible for working with the water committees in each village this summer. As you may know, clean water is extremely rare in developing countries, even in a place like Sierra Leone that gets abundant rainfall. Ground water is dangerous to drink, and presents considerable health hazard. There are at least three wells in each village, but some require repair and many run dry as the dry season progresses. A well specialist came to the villages yesterday, and told us of a new method of drilling bore hole wells with a manual machine instead of the traditional shovel method. Ordinarily, the well digger would find bedrock 30-35 feet belowground. This new drill can go down an additional 40-50 feet, and the well will never go dry.