Jakobo.net

I spent a long weekend (doesn’t that sound extravagant?) in the most eastern region of Sierra Leone. The program moved to Kailahun, where the war started in 1991. In most of Freetown, any signs of the war has been removed, but in Kailahun, and the surrounding villages, the war is still very much present. Burned down houses are scattered throughout the terrain and every village has horror stories of its own to tell. All this is in stark contrast to the humor of the locals. Everywhere I went, I was greeted with a “Pumui” (”white man”… Wouldn’t go down so well in the states, would it?) and big grins. Yesterday I was even invited for some food (yes, cassava) with a family living next to our guest house. It’s really just the story repeating itself: everywhere I have visited in this country, and that’s not so few, actually, I’ve been greeted with happy faces and warm embraces (sometimes literally, sometimes not). It’s just amazing!

The road to Kailahun was probably one of the worst I’ve ever been on. It makes the dirt road to Hoejgaard look like a golf green. Our car broke down on the way there, which gave us a couple of hours to venture around the area and have some freshly tapped palm wine with the locals.

On the prior trip (Kenema) we spent a night at a catholic convent (or something like that). Incredibly tranquil and with an atmosphere that could almost (I said almost!) make you believe in some sort of supernatural being. I wandered around the huge compound with my iPod listening to the Band of Horses, thinking about sad things in life (at a more personal level than war, amputations, rapes, etc). It really does clean your ’soul’ to delve into it head on at times…

Ok, no more sentimentalities! Leaving Sierra Leone tomorrow (wow), I can now say that I like:
-Cassava (believe it or not)
-Sierra Leonean people
-To be challenged in my believes about the universality of human rights and the application of them (that sounds a little geeky, I realize)
-Mac
-The sound of the generator switching on to let you know that power has arrived and you can charge your essential electronic stuff
-To play football anywhere in the world (Beckham drove by as we were playing on the beach the other morning)
-People who engage in other people lives without having to. Isn’t that what proves that humans are essentially good, although we’re capable of horrible, horrible things?)
-To experience how justice some places in the world doesn’t mean to punish someone for what they’ve done, but to ‘heal’ those who have been injured and start a process making sure the crime wont happen again. (Actually, this should be on the top of the list! It really is just so, so amazing to experience this. It challenges any definition we have of justic in our part of the world!)

All for now. Next time you’ll here from me, it’ll be from the city that never sleeps but definitely does freeeeeeze!

Tamba (my African name

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 3:59 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.