It's now been 6 whole weeks since I landed in Sierra Leone. My team celebrated our one month "anniversary" by eating pizza - something we didn't know existed here until our team leader surprised us for lunch. :)
Our schedules are now pretty much set here. No week is ever fully predictable, but we have our tutoring and Lighthouse schedules, and we now all know when and where our group meetings and Bible studies fall.
I tutor three youth here. They are *drum roll please* - Papane: Papane is about 18 years old. He attends a Christian school and aspires to be a missionary one day. With Papane I try to work on reading, writing, geography (which I get most excited about, pouring over the world map and listening to his questions about different countries and their histories -so fun!). He just had exams these past 2 weeks so we spent a lot of our time cram studying for those too.
Victoria: I would guess Victoria is 16 or so. She attends a catering school, so we work on practical math, reading, grammar, etc. Finding somewhat creative ways to present these lessons is something I'm working on and want to do well. I meet her, and Papane, at the home of Auntie P, a friend of WMF who provides lunches for the kids and runs a catering business. Needless to say, I eat a lot of her yummy home-cooked food throughout the week - a whole plate of food (which is so big that I split it with Stephenie) costs us 2,500 Leons ... that's about 80 cents!
Lastly, Santigie: Santigie is the most advanced of the three, a really bright, friendly guy who has a knack for showing up late and says "ya man" a lot. He also likes looking at the world map, and he posed the very complicated and confusing question last week, "Katharine, how many races are there in the world?" Hm, no easy answer to that one! (As I'm thinking about my freshman year cultural anthro class where we spent 4 weeks asking "what is race really?") But it'll give us a lot to talk about!
I meet with each of these guys for 3 hours a week, one hour a day. Last week I also got my first opportunity to visit a medical clinic in Kroo Bay with a staff worker Erin. Erin is a Physical Therapist, and she is going to meet patients at the clinic weekly. I'd love to observe and learn from her - I did her note-taking last week and learned some new Krio phrases like "squeeze your leg tight," "don't drop your foot down" and "stand up" and "sit down." :) It was so sad to see these elderly people that have been living with body pains for years without anyone to get professional advice from.
Easter weekend! Easter weekend was wonderful - restful and fun, with so much to think about and be deeply grateful for. On Friday we watched The Passion movie. On Saturday the team celebrated by birthday with some yummy chocolate cake and a meal at Basha's - our favorite Lebanese restaurant, and I heard from some wonderful family and friends back home. Sunday morning we had a sunrise service at Aberdeen beach with all the Lighthouse youth. It was a new concept for them all, but I think they really had a good time. Our service wrapped up with a meal of "snapper" and bread -fish, just like Jesus cooked fish on the Galilee for his disciples, after his resurrection, ha! A bunch of the kids jumped in the water after that, or buried each other in the sand which was hilarious to watch.
And yesterday was a national holiday - Easter Monday - which everyone got off work and school. On that day we did something awesome. We climbed, with twenty of the Lighthouse kids, the highest peak on the Freetown peninsula - SugarLoaf Mountain! Haha, the climb was steep, and rocky and slippery with leaves and crazy branches hindering your sight half the way. At the very top two of the staff had hidden candy sweets for all the kids and everyone got to search for seven of them. And then we just enjoyed the amazing, green, mountainous, view from the top. Some kids climbed trees, others just sat and talked ... it was lovely! The day ended with a lunch of beans (which sounds like "bench" when Sierra Leoneans say it, causing some confusion for me) and bread (made by Auntie P) at the staff's house in town.
During this last week I've been very grateful for my team, for such interesting and fun and easy-to-be-around people. My birthday felt very special, and together we spent the last week focusing on the sacrifice and suffering of Christ. Christ, who makes all things new, in us and in this world. The cross somehow embodies that newness and I don't want to lose sight of that being the center of my salvation - what defines me and has given me life!
Thank you all so much for reading and for praying. I'll keep writing as life moves along here. Please pray for my team's relationship with our host family, the Zizers. And for time to process and live out what God's showing me here. Peace!
The group on Aberdeen beach for our Easter sunrise service
