Back in Freetown

One of the best sections of road from Freetown to Tiama (it's paved!)

Sunrise out Chelsea's window

A mud-brick house. These are everywhere

I made it back to Freetown the day before yesterday and it's finally our first day without the team. It's pretty exciting to finally be on our own and not have to worry about having the group around and doing all the group things. I'll probably get a chance to post a little more in depth about the "group experience" in a couple days. All I'll say right now is that at one point I honestly started thinking that this could easily be a trip for patients at a mental institute... some loony people in the American bunch! Tiama (the village we were in) was cool. African villages really do look kind of like the National Geographics you see. There really are mud huts, thatched roofs and all that. This is such a beautiful country. Chelsea was right about that. And it's something you can't really get in a picture. The people have been so nice. In Tiama the kids are a little clingy and crazy around Americans just because they have been given so many handouts from white people (like our group- which was one of my big gripes about the group I was with) but once you convince them you aren't handing out toys, even the kids are really sweet and just want to play with you. During most of the time on the trip I ended up working as a pharmacist. I got picked to work in the pharmacy bcause of my chemistry background (however limited it is). It was an intense job, but now I can read perscriptions and am pretty much a pharmacy tech now. The medical clinic saw 406 people over the 6 days it was open. Even after seeing that many patients, we still had to send some people away without treatment because there just wasn't any more time.

The Trip-
When we left Freetown last week, it took us a 5 hour drive in a bus to get to Tiama. When we finally got there, they had a tribal welcome for us. That was just a little too intense for me. We got off the bus in the middle of a HUGE crowd. Hundreds of people singing and chanting and playing insturments. I didn't understand the language or what was going on, but all I could think was ' They've decided to kill us!' They obviously didn't. It was very crowded and loud- not my favorite part of teh week, but we got to meet the "chief" kind of guy. Then we headed to the Njala Agricultural College guesthoue. It was nice. Everybody got there own room in one of 4 houses and we had our meals made for us. (They must think that all Americans eat is fried chicken though because we had that all but one day.) The first day at the village was busy. I thought my brain was going to explode. I went with a small group to check out the community farm. The coolest part to me was we got to see them digging a well by hand. I had never even thought about how that would work. That was cool. I was pretty clueless about how to make improvements to the farm so I'm glad I got put into the pharmacy rather than having to try to find things to "fix" on the farm when I thought it could be left well enough alone. After being there for a couple of hours, we went back to the clinic where I just spent the rest of the day mingling and trying to learn Mende, the local language. That was when I was pretty sure my brain was full. I've learned a little Mende but not enough to even talk to a kid. i can really just say hi and a few other things, but I'm even still practically useless. But I guess that's not so bad for a few days of trying. By the end of the first work day they had put me into the pharmacy where I stayed for the rest of the week. Oh man, even the first day I got to see the disaster caused by taking gifts on these mission trips. One member of our team had taken bracelets to pass out to people and started pretty immediately. It just caused so much trouble. People didn't get one and were disappointed. Big kids took them from little kids. There were mobs around her trying to get a gift. And they were just little plastic bracelets. It was just really sad seing the white people playing Santa Clause just because we have more stuff. It was like our help was secondary and the fact that we could give things became the focus. i don't really know how to put it, but the passing out of trinkets (which happened CONSTANTLY) was my biggest pet peve on the trip. I guess I'll write in a little less detail about the rest of the days later, but it was a good time and I look forward to getting to go back to Tiama without the group in a few days!

I am loving it here and everything is going well. Chelsea and I are on the way to the beach so I'll blog again in a couple days.