Sitting in the hotel at the Sierra Leone airport with A FAST CONNECTION! You don't know how painful it has been, taking 10 minutes for every page to load. This keyboard does have a broken down-arrow key, but nothing's perfect.
Yesterday was my last day of teaching. I made a half hearted attempt at perimeter and area of a rectangle - but most of it was spent explaining the difference between a millimeter, centimeter, and meter. I brought in loads of stickers and that was enough to get them on an adrenaline high for five hours.
At ten the entire school stopped and every one of the children and all the teachers brought their chairs into the dirt courtyard. I had to sit at the front while song after song was sung for me. Mr Koroma was asked to say a prayer for me but the look of disgust on his face while he ranted on about how I needed to accept Jesus into my heart said it all. Miss Jones was laughing and winking at me while he was on his soapbox. I then gave out my presents of buckets and cups - one for each class. Not nearly as exciting as a goat - but they were quite beautiful and multicolored and very practical. There is no water fountain at the school, so each class has a bucket at the front of the room with a cup, which they all drink communally from when thirsty. Their existing buckets were flaking old paint cans and looked dreadfully unsanitary.
It was really sweet. The Class V children gave me a present and so did Miss Jones. Necklaces and material which I can make into bags (well, Mum, hopefully that you can help me make into bags). Some of them were crying when I left and I took a million photos. As if they weren't already high enough on the stickers, the flash of the camera sent them into complete euphoria.
Last night was also Haja's birthday. She dressed up in a low cut, long floral flock, with her new wig and make-up and looked very beautiful. It's only when she takes off her hair and opens her mouth that the words ‘crone’ and ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ come to mind. For some reason, after cutting the cake she went into her room and got changed into a skin tight, see-through gold number with matching underwear lines and high heels. Half the room, my beloved excluded, jumped to get their cameras. In case there's any doubt about the extent of her vanity, get this: she hired a photographer to take pictures of her. After the photo shoot she got changed back again. It was both weird and unsurprising. She was overheard taking to Mr Mike on the phone about how she didn't like some of the volunteers, and as she loves Steve and Christina, and gets on okay with Ide, I think that leaves me as part of the 'some'. I don't know what I've done to offend her, because I think I've always been very cordial. Christina and Steve arranged for a birthday cake to be made for her. It was bright pink with white flowers - but as we hadn't had dessert for weeks it was heaven to eat.
Captures her personality perfectly:
This morning’s drive to the ferry was not without event. There was a massive traffic jam so Haja zipped and zapped through traffic on every side of the road. While this saved us at least half an hour unfortunately she hit a podapoda in the process. The traffic was at a standstill, and all the podapoda guys jumped out and started screaming at us. As you may have gathered, Haja is excellent at screaming back, and maintained that she was completely innocent. On the one hand the podapoda had about a thousand dings in it already. On the other hand, our SUV also had a shiny new dent on the front bumper and Ide did hear the thud as we collided. Maintaining her blamelessness and refusing to talk to the police she drove away.
We avoided hitting anyone for the rest of the journey although we did see a motorcycle accident on the side of the road, and another bike hitting a woman who swore at them and walked off uninjured.
As usual the ferry was agonizing. Religious zealots were wandering the deck handing out pamphlets. A lady with the biggest buck teeth I’ve ever seen, wearing red pants and a pink shirt, made Ishmael take one. He tried to give it back to her but she refused to take it and huffed away, so after a while he dropped it on the ground. Everyone around turned to look at him and the zealot came back and started admonishing him at the top of her lungs and abusing the color of his (blue) shirt. This of course brought comment from everyone around, including a large lady with crooked red eyebrows, purple eye shadow, blue and pink sparkly barrettes in her hair, a magenta feather sticking out of her head, huge red circular earrings, and two inch wide hot pink bangles. A friendly looking business man with a blue checkered shirt and an older gentleman with gold spectacles listening to an iPod joined in, while two teenagers and a twenty-something stared disinterestedly.
Haja, uncharacteristically generously, had paid for our transport to the hotel. Funnily enough, half way through the ferry ride the driver refused to take us and we were left with the cab fare. Hmmm…
So here we are. Our room smells of moldy sheets and dirt and there are two foot wide singles pushed together for a bed, but it has air conditioning and free wireless – so how much better could life be?
