She's Your... Queeeeen To Be!!

On the first floor of the hostel there was a bar full of Stars, the national lager, going for a meager three thousand leones. Most of the time, pumoys usually are first told four. Three quarters for a cold beer’s not a bad price though, particularly on a Peace Corps salary. That first morning we were given twenty-five dollars in the local currency–to last the next two weeks. After we were paid I began putting out feelers for a hold ‘em tournament with a twenty grand buy-in. Our secondary projects (things we should be doing while not teaching) are supposed to be centered around assessing our new community’s needs. So far I had not seen a single casino.

Our first night in Freetown happened to fall on a Saturday. Our first real night. I asked my friend Ronald the driver if he could make a beer run. The volunteers apparently were forbidden to leave the stadium grounds. Most were happy about this. He said no problem, “just give me some of the female volunteer phone numbers and I got you.” Fortunately for the girls, he laughed, as he often tends to while speaking and driving, and told me the hostel lobby had a bar, so we went there for a drink. Eric and I were still sweaty from playing ball in the Freetown heat, which even at dusk is still like soup, so the Stars went down like not too cold water. I was happy to be drinking a new beer, even one that always comes with a napkin to clean the rusty top (until I was told later by Musa our logistics man that Star was a product of Heineken). There were a few well-dressed Sierra Leoneans at the bar, a nice sized, rectangular, sparsely decorated room with no tables and only a few stools. We began buying beers. I saw the ninety-eight thou going real quick.

The bar tender put on some music and some people started to dance. Part of our Peace Corps mission is to break stereotypes about Americans so I thought why not start with the one about white guys being crap dancers. Somebody wearing what felt like (I later gave him the Seinfeld fabric pinch) a thin velvet shirt the color of cabernet began clapping to the beat and my off-beat stutter step. He introduced himself as Alfred. “I lek your moves,” he said when I sauntered back to the bar where he stood. “You come to the wedding tonight.” Seriously?” I replied. “Open bar?” In the next room (I hadn’t noticed it yet) moving away from the main part of the lobby, was a large reception area where many tables were elaborately set with fine silverware, linen and flower arrangements. “There’s a wedding here tonight?” I dumbly asked. “Okay, I go change.” I went up to my room to take one of the last showers I may take for a long time and headed back to the lobby. Most of the volunteers were down there drinking. We got a card game going, which was interrupted briefly when our airport arrival was shown on the local news. Everyone was pretty buzzed. The clip was almost five minutes, grainy, repetitive, and thrilling. It was like watching a seventies news-story about an aunt or uncle we strongly resembled, not possibly something that had happened yesterday. After taping the television, I went back to the poker game, lost my money to Marty (a math teacher from Chicago) chasing a flush draw and figured it was time to check out the wedding.

It was hopefully my first of many African weddings. I had my camera (which was fortuitous, I was the only volunteer to catch the news segment on video) and as Alfred pulled me into the wedding party I asked him if it was all right for me to snap some shots. He said no problem. As I squeezed through the crowded doorway, past lavishly dressed women and children (the crowd resembled some wet lush English garden in September), I began filming the dance show happening in the center of the room. A scantily clad woman was shaking her hips like a box of juice needing to be well shaken until her entire body was one full gyration. She was flanked by what I thought and soon learned were men in almost though not quite black, skintight clown outfits with short, multicolored afros and joker-like lipstick. They’re called comedians. Divine comedy indeed. They scared the shit out of me. Because of their height, muscles, make-up and leotards they appeared at first to be naked, penis-less men–Africa’s version of post-op trannies. Another man I met earlier at the bar but whose name I can’t remember came hurtling towards me as I stood filming the scene. I thought he would tell me to stop what I was doing but instead he began motioning for me to come closer until I was standing right next to the now dancing clowns. Then he told me to dance (dance monkey boy dance!!) and now I was dancing with the clowns and certainly one of them. The roar of the crowd was a mixture of mockery, delight, wonder and enlightenment. Black and white clowns dancing in near unison (you could say we were in, what they call in Africa, WMT (white man time), which is the opposite of BMT. In actuality though I was pretty far from WMT, which simply means, “on time”). After we danced we shook hands and hugged. No one is really scary after a firm shake and a good snuggle. The important thing was I kept filming while I danced, the camera looping with my arm, catching the room in waves of floor crowd ceiling crowd floor. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to straighten it out when Alfred took me over to the head table to meet the bride and groom. They were very handsome and happy. At that point while I crouched by their table and filmed the Maid of Honor speech while talking with Alfred, Eric motioned towards me, saying it was time to go. Our program director was there, and this was our first experience learning about having a curfew.

The next day we were invited to the acting ambassador’s house up on signal hill for a cocktail party, a sort of prelude to the following day’s ceremony at the state house where we would meet the Sierra Leonean president Ernest Bai Koroma. The Ambassador’s place had a beautiful view of the harbour and the wine served was not bad. I mentioned to the catering bar tender that I used to do his job until very recently, bar tending, catering. He nodded and looked at me the way I looked at friendly people who said the same to me: as if he could give two shits. At the party was a forestry worker who served in the Peace Corps in Liberia. He mentioned that three guys who served with him contracted HIV. “Three?” I asked. “Yeah, be safe,” he said, “but have fun.” I mused on that but for the rest of the night.

When we returned to the hotel our outfits for the following day’s big ceremony had arrived. We would be meeting the leader of Salone (Krio for Sierra Leone, which I believe means “lion of the mountain” in Portuguese) wearing his nation’s native garb, only unlike most of his people, we would be sweating our asses off. My friend Regan said she was going to call her blog “These people don’t sweat.” (the expression “you people” is very polite here, ironically enough. Everybody calls us, “you people”). I asked the driver Ibrahim how it’s so hot and he seems so cool and he said, “Please lamb, it is the rainy season. Wait til it is really warm.” In Sierra Leone, the sky does all the sweating. It rains about six times a day. And African men all think I’m named after sheep. In the morning I pulled on my “kundi.” I felt like I was wearing a rug. But I dug the lime green and blue cross pattern, and the matching sort of yarmulkes skully. We got in our rides, tossed around a few “Aw di bodis” (Krio lessons had begun the night before) to any Sierra Leoneans we saw on the passing streets (really Eric only) and drove into the State House.

President Bai Koroma is the fourth president in Sierra Leone’s history, though other commander’s in chief have held the title Prime Minister. He was elected in September of 2007 on a platform of zero tolerance for corruption (the African continent’s political white whale), an emphasis on agriculture and tourism, a pledge to fight mismanagement of resources, and the plan to provide the provision of electricity. His All People’s Congress (APC) is the party of the Northern regions (he hails from Makeni, the capital city of the Bombali district), yet war-weariness combined with great respect for his business acumen has gained him strong support in many parts of the country. We all felt honored, unworthy (we hadn’t done anything yet, except show up), and looked forward to seeing him and hearing him speak.

While we sat in the state assembly room waiting for Mr. Bai Koroma there was a nervous, quiet buzz from the eighty or so people in the room. There was a surprising lack of security (I soon learned that all guns are now illegal in Sierra Leone, including those for hunting) and I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if I lost the plot for a moment and did something completely obscene. What if the leader of my new nation came in the room, reserved and respectable, and I jumped in the aisle and began singing “Ooh my little president, my president, won’t you give me some of your BAI KOROMA!!” What would happen? Would I be tackled by some guy looking like Hugo Weaving? Would it really be so terrible? The only Sierra Leonean I had seen with a gun had only just re-christened me Songbo outside the place, and though none of my teachers seemed to know what the hell it meant while I butchered it’s pronunciation, I figured my namesake would have my back if things got dicey (though I never saw him again,… and no one calls me Songbo). A lone television camera came floating up and down the aisle and instinctively I gave a big smile and thumbs up, while Eric clasped his hands and shook them on both sides of his head. He was very proud later when the maneuver wound up on the news broadcast. The arrival of the President and vice-President was then announced and we gravely rose while they solemnly entered and I focused my thoughts on anything other then the Knack.

The next thirty minutes were typical in my experience of hearing political speeches. There’s a fairly quick progress from “this is interesting and fascinating” to “when is this gonna wrap up?” It was no fault of the President, I’d been lucky enough once to hear Bill Clinton speak and it was pretty much the same vibe, stump speech stuff, except then I had food, wine, and wasn’t wearing an itchy kundi. And Bill’s coif was a sight to behold. It was a star on the side of his head away from looking like a Dallas Cowboy helmet. We then went outside for a group photo and some more hobnobbing. At this point Eric was starting to run away with our competition to collect the business cards of prominent Sierra Leoneans, before we entered the building he’d been given his Sierra Leonean name, ‘Mohammed,’ by a man who’s card read “Boss K-office of the Vice President.” We both collected the card of H.E. Bockary K. Stevens, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenitentiary, but I figured if I could get Mr. Bai Koroma’s it would trump Boss K; depending on its insignia, color tone and type. As it turned out, he was all out. But shaking his hand was humbling, though I forgot to clutch my right arm with my left hand. The farther up your shaking arm you grip, the greater respect shown for the shakee. I’d figured the armpit would be a sign of ultimate respect, but in the moment, I panicked. I did remember to say “Ay gladdi fo sabi yu” which means I am happy to know you. As I am now finding with many Sierra Leoneans, I’m not sure they actually speak Krio, a kind of jive Jamaican island hybrid English. Many words are similar but the meaning is lost in the intonation and speed of the speaker. It sort of parallels Italian people’s relationship to opera–when you Krio you should be trying to sound like your singing a reggae tune.

Oke, wi go si bak. Gud ivin O (Which means, see you later. Good night.)

The next day we left for the training site, in Sierra Leone’s second city, the town of Bo…

Freetown fallin'

On the first night I fainted, on the second I danced, and on the third day I shook hands with the president of Sierra Leone. Who needs training with progression such as this? A week has passed since I awoke in New York City on a Tuesday morning hoping my ATM card was still sitting under the till at Ryan’s Daughter from when I’d been Saturday night after the barbecue/Bapple-Schleg seven-hour jam (with Coco on the fiddle). Of greater concern was whether the place would even be open. Thank God for the Irish-only a pub run by such a quality race would be open at nine-thirty AM, with punters getting the early start, no less. “Where ya headed?” an old man in a cabbie’s cap drinking a Guiness inquired after I expressed my relief, my card being one of twenty or so left over from the weekend. I mentioned the continent. “Have a pint first?” The barman asked. I'll miss my old gig. Rarely do teachers get to ask questions of such pertinence. I paused, thought thrice, shook my head and hit the road for DC. While in town I made Wa, Wigs, J, and Maddy watch Blood Diamond with me so we could practice some Krio. All I could discern was “dem guvment trups” when Leo was getting saucy with an arms dealer. I didn’t know whether I’d want to see dem guv trups or not. Not sure I’ll ever quite be sure.

“I hate that movie,” ranted Joseph Opalo, while explaining to the future volunteers of Sierra Leone just what exactly happened here, things that few Americans actually know, or can fathom. “There wasn’t really a civil war, it was just civil chaos.”

He would know, having lived in Sierra Leone from 1974 until 1997, when he escaped to Guinea on a boat loaded with refugees. That was six years after rebel fighting officially began with a Coup d’Etat led by 27-year-old Captain Valentine Strasser; and twelve following the start of disintegration into failed statehood. This condition is rarely not an intricately layered web, vulnerable in the wilds, but it is best explained by the Britain’s intentional suppression of education during their colonization following the 1880’s Scramble for Africa and subsequent summer-school crash-course in how to run a democracy before high tailing it in 1961. That, and the seventeen-year dictatorship of Saika Stevens. “What happened wasn’t because of DeBeers, the diamonds, or any exploitation of mineral resources for that matter, that’s a natural result of a complete governmental collapse, which becomes inevitable when the leader of a country steals everything that isn’t nailed down.” Stevens came into power in 1968, a year in which three military coups occurred to replace Albert Morgai, the 2nd president of Sierra Leone. Stevens had been a labor leader promising the end of corruption. He wound up building himself the biggest house in the world with government funds. Selling all the x-ray machines, trucks, antibody vaccines, anything he could get his hands on. He sold fishing grounds to nuclear waste companies, made a mockery of his army by giving his soldiers one bullet per year, and systematically dismantled every institution and civil service in the country. Then he made jokes about his corruption as part of his celebrated charisma. “I went in to meet him, and after ten minutes wondered if I was being drugged, the man was that charming,” said Mr. Opalo. His genius was in destroying organizations, not people. He didn’t kill many political enemies, he rendered them powerless. He ran his kleptocracy by seeking out criminals, the uneducated, drunks, and drug addicts to reek havoc when necessary. They were classified the SSD (Special Security Division), or “Palace Guard.” He turned the national newspapers into tabloids with headlines such as “MAN THROWS SHIT AT JUDGE” or some such thing you’d see on the New York Post (how I miss you), thus he could claim the right of free speech was lawful, yet there was no place for it to be heard or read. This former labor leader eliminated unions, outlawed student governments, and gave jobs to civil servants whose positions he’d eradicated. He’d essentially left the country without an immune system, and on a continent where 12,000 new cases of HIV are diagnosed a day, Magic Johnson Sierra Leone was not.

After ’85 the country fell apart,” Opalo claimed. “The country could no longer afford petrol, I’d offer someone a fifty and couldn’t fill my bike’s tank. When someone was breaking into my house I called the police and they told me they’d come to my house but I’d have to walk over to the station first and bring money for gas. I started sleeping with a gun under my pillow. They stopped paying teachers. They stopped paying the police. Then they stopped printing money.” You get the picture. “Finally when Strasser wanted to get the US government to recognize his legitimacy he called me into his office, ridden with bullet holes, windows shot out. He needed me because his people couldn’t understand English well enough to negotiate for themselves, so I walked over to the US Embassy, banged on the front gate amid all the turmoil and madness in the streets, went in, and eventually got him his recognition. It was a crazy day.” I looked out the window from the conference room where we sat, the late afternoon sun causing Opalo’s sunglasses to be not merely for effect. Freetown climbed up mountains behind our backs and around our shoulders. It looked like the Hollywood Hills after a small earthquake, thousands of smaller, more colorful, leaning towers of Pisas, homes clutching the earth. I’d been there four days, drinking star beer, playing basketball with kids, meeting the country’s politicians and diplomats, congratulating us for work we hadn’t done. It was now sinking in what had happened here.

When I stepped off the plane at the country’s only international airport, across the harbor from Freetown’s center, the first thing I noticed while looking out the window a bus hurtling through nameless villages was the darkness. That African darkness. Because of the rain the stars did not light the sky and the moon seemed a bit intimated, too. I had my hand out the window waving to the people whose feet I saw at the bottom of a flashlight’s teepee, until an oncoming bus nearly slapped me five. I did not want to join the over 1,700 hundred young men left mutilated by the war the first night. On the ferry to Freetown they gave us our first dose of Malaria medicine. As I swallowed it I noticed a long slash along my forearm. I didn’t remember being cut. AIDS. Not here an hour and I was one of the twelve thousand new African cases A DAY. I’ve become a Billy Beane-like stat freak. I drank some water, stood up, and fell down. I felt vertigo for the second time in my life. The African heat, the medicine, the cut and blood, twenty hours of sleepless flying, five glasses of wine, four beers, two glasses of champagne, a shot of whiskey and United Airlines cuisine had done me in. I thought they might throw me overboard.

Fortunately it started to rain as it has every day since I arrived. The warm clean sky water and long deep breaths revived me enough to get back on the bus and I began to drift off. I looked out the window first at Freetown at night but it could not resonate for me the state I was in. I couldn’t tell if the other volunteers were pissing themselves because everyone’s pants were wet. The streets were packed with waving hands and scowling faces. Rain struck the ground like lightening. The darkness was lit by the streaking flash of motorcycle lights. Brandon, the second oldest volunteer after yours truly, sat next to me, his head out the window telling every kid on a bike. “Hey, we’re teachers with Peace Corps!” They did not look impressed. I was surprised to find that Sierra Leonean drive on the right side of the road. Perhaps a subtle fuck you to their former colonizers (though most football fans here are supporting England in the cup..). It seemed though that no one told our driver this little fact, as he sped up the left lane, making power moves, but only causing a twenty minute long eight car honk. The left wheel of the bus teetered on the edge of some five-foot deep pothole that might have been a Jacuzzi in better days. Somehow I fell soundly asleep, for what felt like seconds because then we were at the hostel. I brought my bags up stairs and climbed into my first night of sleeping in a net.

When I woke up I felt like I was camping. Nine straight hours of sweaty sleep and I was a new man. The hostel was next door to the national soccer stadium and a playground with a full court hoop and lots of tall African men. I was in my element. During the first break from orientation, this kid from Brooklyn, the only Jew in this Peace Corps crew, and I went over the court with a driver we befriended that morning. Whenever traveling to any new country, your first friend should always be someone with a car. Or a Jew. Four hours and I had both. By the end of the day I was talking recruitment with the Sierra Leone national basketball coach. Coach K this was not. Sierra Leone does not have one indoor basketball court. Good thing it barely drops below seventy. Of course, guaranteed rain from June until November puts a damper on player’s cutting abilities. Guys were slipping like a bear on skates, and not from my stutter step. But the connections were good. Now it was time to drink with the locals…