Sierra Leone Trip Step One: What to expect 03.25

Today we had our first informational meeting with Taylor and Mal to get some basic information about what to expect in Sierra Leone, both the country and at the hospital.  There was a lot to take in, and I realized that I have quite a few misconceptions about what life is like in Africa.  First, when I asked if it would be a good idea to bring personal 'trinkets' to give people I meet and connect with, I was told that simple presents like friendship bracelets that people can remember me by are okay, but shouldn't be given too liberally.  And that 'toys' and such for kids are not a good idea.  For so long, people have tried to help out by just donating material goods and expecting it to help.  As a result, they have come to expect to receive most things without having to work for them.  If you start giving hand-outs, people will expect them from you and everyone will ask where "theirs" is.  It doesn't help that everyone thinks that white + American = LOADED.  I was told that people will ask for money non-stop, proposed to me plenty of times, and that people will ask to come back to America with me all the time.  They are also under the impression that everyone in America has it easy, that everyone has money and life is a breeze.  Taylor said when she told people, "I can't just take you back to America with me, it's not that simple," that the response nine times out of ten was, "Of course it's that simple.  It's AMERICA!"  It's definitely time to transition from thinking of this as a service mission to a sustaining mission.  We are not there to give, but to help sustain so that they can eventually survive without our help.
It sounds like the culture will be different, but nothing unmanageable.  As one would expect, because caucasians are the minority, there's a certain amount of fascination with someone so 'exotic.'  Usually, twenty-one year old females are married with at least a couple kids.  Taylor was apparently told often that she is a burden to her father for remaining unmarried for so long.  Polygamy is also legal in Sierra Leone, and women are not considered equal to men.  Women tend to dress modestly, and it's advised that skirts and shorts should reach at least to the tops of your knees, and that showing your midrif or too much shoulder is considered scandalous.  Because people are so used to having everything handed to them, locals tend to be somewhat lazy and have poor accountability.  They expect that if they don't do it, that someone else will pick up the slack for them.
We will be staying in a guest house on the hospital grounds that has electricity during select hours, but 24hour a day internet (a little backward? lol) and running cold what in the sink and shower.  The guesthouse is safe and lockable, with cleaners who clean for you and do the laundry as well.  All laundry is ironed to kill any mosquito eggs trying to live in it.  Drinking water from the tap is not safe, and must be filtered, or you can buy bottled water.  While there is a real chance I could get melaria, typhoid, etc., if I get sick I get free care there at the hospital, which has a lot of experience with such diseases and can easily treat them.  I will need quite a regiment of vaccines to make sure I'm healthy for the trip.  Mail is unreliable and slow, and envelops that are thick at all end up opened and searched for trinkets that can be stolen.  Packages rarely arrive at all.
One thing that blew my mind was that anyone who has a means of charging a cell phone has not just one, but sometimes as many as four cell phones.  Because service changes from one server to another depending on location, everyone has all the cell phones that will cover the areas they visit.  By the sound of it, people are even worse about constantly being on their phones than here in the US (how is that possible?)
There has been so much to process! I'm so excited, I can't wait to see it for myself!

Let's start at the very beginning... 03.13

        As Julie Andrews taught me in The Sound Of Music, the beginning is always the best place to start.  Therefore, I'm going to be super ahead of things and start my story of Sierra Leone now.  At the beginning of last semester, fall 2010, I went in to talk to my advisor Prof. Borrello and asked him if he had any suggestions for summer internships or service trips I could partake in this coming summer.  He suggested a clinic in Sierra Leone, and the more he talked about it, the more excited I got about it.  He told me that Dr. Hulme, one of the political science professors here at AC has been trying to help fund a clinic in Sierra Leone, and is hoping that the college can 'adopt' the clinic in a sense and help fund their cause.  Life in Sierra Leone for natives, especially in the bush, is short.  Sierra Leone is 180th out of 182 on the development scale, so it's the lowest of the low.  I don't know the exact statistic, but I'm pretty sure you can count all the health care facilities in the country on two hands.  Infant mortality is very high, and maternal death rates are almost highest in the world, 2,000 deaths per 100,000 births.
        Education is required from age six through three years of junior secondary education, but because there are so few teachers they can't implement it.  As a result, most people aren't educated on public health issues as simple as using protection can keep you from getting sexually transmitted diseases.  Electricity, even at the clinic, is sketchy, and people living outside the city have no way of knowing when the next time that the power will be on is going to be.  It's not uncommon for people to only have a general sense of how old they are, and it's a rarity if someone knows their actual birthday because they don't take an interest in recording such things.  Despite all this hardship, the country is a fairly safe place, free of civil war.  People living in the bush tend to come together to help, rather than become divided by greed.
         Out in the bush of Sierra Leone is a clinic run by a man named Dr. ABD, who has dedicated everything he has to provide health care to as many as possible.  They have a maternity ward, a therapeutic feeding center, and an operating run that rarely gets any rest from the constant flow of surgeries.  Mr. Borrello told me that it was absolutely an amazing opportunity, that it would change my life and make me an invaluable assest to any institution where I might want to study medicine or work after medical school.  I was so excited, and saw it as an opportunity to finally take a step toward living my dream.  I want to someday work for Doctors Without Borders, and taking a short term trip to see first hand what that would be like would be invaluable insight.  I started preparing my application right away.
        After many hours spent re-writing my answers to the application questions, and much research on the cost of air fare, vaccinations, weather in Sierra Leone, and so on, and a very helpful informational meeting about the clinic from two students who had already been there, I submitted my application.
        And then. Today.  I got an email saying my application was accepted.
WOOOOOTOOOOOOOO WOOWOIOSUOHAOUEKSKOQIWOQHBKEWEJKWET OIJJJJJAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHSJHJOWPEPWNDLJSJLJLJJJJJJDJDE UH HUH!!! UH HUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(That was me being excited.  Just FYI.)

So here starts the story of my journey to Sierra Leone.  How I prepare, obstacles I encounter, what I see there, everything.  GET READY!!!