Rape Statistics/quotes. Might be triggering.

None of this is surprising, but it's an important reminder sometimes:

"(Dispute-resolution in rape cases) can also result in the victim being married to the perpetrator, particularly in remote areas, as families are often concerned that the victim will not be able to marry if she is not a virgin. If the victim has been so brutally raped that she cannot bear children, this may encourage her family to marry her to the perpetrator, as she might be seen as not eligible for marriage to other men because of her inability to bear children."

"The high status given to virginity means that rape of a virgin is considered a serious crime; indeed, it is still widely believed that rape of a virgin is the only form of rape." Also, "Any man who invades the husband's exclusive sexual rights over a wife compensates the husband, and not the wife, for 'woman damage.'"

Also: I read today that the first rape case to be sent to trial and fully prosecuted in Sierra Leone occured in 1999. Nineteen-ninety-nine. Not even ten years ago. The first case. Ever. I want to barf.

But! Also also: Paris Hilton may or may not have had breast implants.

And people wonder why I keep taking breaks.

Photos from the drive to work.

I brought my camera to work today so that I could take some photos on the way of everyday scenes in Sierra Leone. The photos are crap quality because I took them inside a moving vehicle, so the light sucks and I didn't aim at any particular scenery or anything... But these are just some random photos of the drive to work in the mornings and shows what the streets of Freetown look like:

It's really crazy to see the things people carry on their heads sometimes:

I leaned over the driver's arms to take this photo outside her window. I just liked the greenery:

And other random, older, photos of areas near my office:

A little stream I found buried behind an old shack:

Where I work:

Where I buy fruit:

And lastly, photos of the beautiful children who make living here totally worth it:

When I'm Warm More Likely That You Notice Me.

Good god, I can't believe it's March 27th already. I left on what day, the 16th? Could that be true? Because that actually makes me feel better if it's the case. That would mean that I've only been here eleven days. It felt like much more because I'm so worried about my work deadline and was so pissed at the local NGOs for slowing me down (they are NOT working towards our April 13th deadline with any expediency and it's screwing up my timeline) I felt that time was flying by. Have I seriously only been here for a week and a half? Not bad. I'm doing well, then, making progress professionally despite recent setbacks, and learning and seeing new things. I've been lucky to have had many enlightening conversations during my time here with both the locals and with the people I meet.

This evening I had dinner upstairs (the green part of my house) at Cindy and Grant's place. They've lived in so many countries -SL, Senegal, Kyrgykstan, and Kuwait amongst others - and have a beautifully decorated apartment full of African masks and middle-Eastern statues. It's the kind of place I've always wanted for my future home. We were joined by Jeremy, a recent addition to Save the Children who is helping us with logistics and emergency planning. He lives in Senegal and has lived in Nigeria and Kenya, so the group had all kinds of entertaining stories to tell about African snakes (a Mamba snake is apparently very common here and can stand up on its tail up to 2 meters and is known for attacking cars.) We drank Malibu Rum-and-Cokes. We ate chicken and potatoes with mango chutney and had salad with homemade dressing that was surprisingly incredible. Chocolate cake with icing was a beautiful dessert. You wouldn't believe how incredibly important it is to have a home-cooked meal here and how intensely amazing the women cooks are. Elizabeth cooks for them twice a week and I fully intend to sneak upstairs the next time she supplies them with an African feast.

I'd had an absolutely horrible day - what is it with the fact that I've had SIX ex-boyfriends either come on to me or suddenly write to me with no prodding whatsoever in the last six weeks?! I have been an emotional hemophiliac for 6 weeks now - and this dinner invitation was a wonderful way to end my professionally- and personally-shitty day. One ex-boyfriend is a lot to handle. Six is ridiculous. I guess Cindy felt sympathy when she saw me walking around with slumped shoulders and called me upstairs to join her for dinner. I came upstairs and when she put a rum-and-coke in my hand I almost collapsed with gratitude at her sympathy for an obviously Anguished Anna. A couple of drinks, an amazing dinner, a beautiful sunset, puppies to play with and so much talk of law, politics and stories about Africa totally brought up my spirits.

Liquid diamonds.

Yesterday was my mother's birthday and I missed it because a) I am far away, b) I don't have access to email on weekends and c) the phone I was given appears to be locked so that I can't make international calls. Oops. Sorry mommy. I will write to you today.

I went to the British High Commission's private beach-house at Toké beach on Friday night. There were about 22 other expats there and the night was spent roasting marshmallows and hotdogs, eating fish freshly taken from the ocean and grilled on the stove, swimming under the stars and sleeping next to the fire.

The last time I went to the BHC beach we noticed something beautiful occurring at night in the water, something that Michelle called "phosphorescence." I don't know how the hell I'd ever describe it, but I will try: When you swim at night and swish your arms around under water, where bubbles would normally appear, rise brightly illuminated strange "lights." They are not actually "lights" but appear as such. You get the impression that you have come across a nest of some kind of underwater lightbugs and that they are all scattering in a panic as a result of your movement. It is an absolutely incredible thing to witness and we squealed and jumped about trying to make more of these bugs/reflections/whatevers appear. We spent much time discussing whether these bright lights were a result of the reflection of the fire, a reflection of the moonlight, a result of our drunken eyes imagining something, or whether it was biological in origin. It was decided, however, that the light cast off from the fire was entirely too far away, as was (of course) the moon. This was not a reflection of external light but probably the result of some ocean bacteria, much like the bright colours you see exhibited by corals and tropical fish. Michelle's endless talk of "No, it's phosphorescence, I know it! That's what it's called, I swear!" convinced us that this phenomenon was a) not caused by drunken hallucinations b) particular to certain areas of the world, and c) actually named something specific. I disagreed with Michelle's term for it because to be "phosphorescent" is, to me anyway, a description of something much more general, like glow-in-the-dark stickers and blacklights. They experience phosphorescence also, don't they? So what the hell is this particular phosphorescent thing? I repeatedly swore that I would look it up on Wikipedia and indeed did so, skimming over most of the technical jargon but realising that Michelle was probably right - this thing was not mentioned, but it is still definitely phosphorescent. Whatever this thing is, I never found out what it was.
I will never be able to adequately describe the beauty caused by swishing your hands around underwater in almost-blackness when you have these blue-white sparkly things, these little dots of cold fire, responding to your touch. But most interestingly, I discovered that these things are definitely a biological phenomenon and not simply a strange underwater lightshow. The first time I'd been at the BHC beach I'd gone swimming at night alone, staring at these lights by myself, convinced that it was just something I was imagining or that was caused by the light of the moon/fire. I eventually came out of the water because I'd found myself being bitten by some kind of underwater bug ("bug?") and the constant pricking of my skin annoyed me too much to stay in the ocean. Shortly afterwards the rest of the gang decided to swim and we all dove in and experienced (together this time) this vision of liquid diamonds underwater.

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to experience it again. I went swimming with Justin Hane and American Justin (who does not like to be called that, so I should stop, but how will my readers distinguish the two Justins?)... This time, while swimming, I yanked on some seaweed and viewed the most extraordinary thing: The seaweed, pulled out the water, began to glitter with cool white flashing lights against the skin on my hand. Justin Hane describes them as "little stars that you can hold in your hands, but that slide through your fingers and disappear into the night." That's exactly what it was. Slippery, sparkling, little stars.

The whole phosphorescence thing is *definitely* caused by some kind of bacteria or bug because once again the crowd experienced sudden, strange pinpricks on the skin. It was like being swarmed with mosquitos underwater so we eventually bolted out of the water towards the warmth of the fire. I was personally not assaulted by these underwater bacterial beasts but remembered them from the first trip and found them way too creepy to stay in the water myself. I am positive that the pricking sensation is linked with these wet stars. Beauty and the beast in one entity?

So that's that. Now: Does anyone know what the heck I am talking about?

My work.

Today was a wonderful day. It started out a pretty mediocre - I've been very tired recently, feeling lonely despite constant socialising, and I've been finding my work depressing. It's a project that I think is supremely important and no one but my boss seemed to be very interested in it. I spent the day reading the Convention on Children's Rights, wishing that people would help a little more and wondering why no one seemed too willing to provide much information. Yesterday I finally understood why - apparently the information that was sent out to the various teams of NGOs was rather incomplete and made the project sound like Save the Children was basically asking other people to do our work for us. No wonder everyone has been polite but otherwise too busy to really contribute. Let me tell you what I'm doing (even though I wrote it in another post, but nobody else seems to have read it. Besides, it will help me organise my project.) In point-form so that it's not too boring for you to read:

- SL signed the UNCRC in 1990. Article 44 of this Convention says that each signatory State has to provide a report on how they are protecting children's rights every two-to-ten years.

- SL was supposed to submit a report in 1996. They finally finished writing it in 2005. It was published in December 2006. Ten years late, they finally told the UN in a 93-page report how wonderful they are at protecting children.

- The report is misleading and often makes it sound like the government has completely revolutionised children's rights in SL. They have not. The report is not entirely faulty and the country admits to having many problems, but also implies that children's rights are being adequately protected. They are not.

-Article 45 of the UNCRC says that it is up to NGOs to monitor the implementation of this convention. It says that NGOs may coordinate a coalition to write a counter-report to that of the Government.

- I am fully aware that absolutely nobody is reading this.

- After the Government submitted its report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF asked Save the Children to organise the writing of a complementary report to what the government wrote so that the Committee can hear about both sides of the issues: What the Government says is happening vs. what the relief workers are actually seeing on the ground.

- This report will be submitted to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in April after which it will be presented orally in Geneva in June. It is this report that will be used by the Committee when the UN is making decisions on children's rights policies in the future. The next report will not be created for another ten years or so. This is the ultimate opportunity for each NGO to say: The Convention says X, the Government says Y, and our reality is Z. We want changes.

-Now, when presented this way and the NGOs suddenly realise that their comments and contributions are going in a report straight to the UN, that their words, their experiences, and their statistics will be directly compared to what the Government is saying, suddenly I see results.

- Today I had a meeting with the director of World Vision who started slapping his desk saying "It's going to the UN? Oh, that changes everything! We'll help!" The International Rescue Committee is on board with us. We now have submissions from Mercy Ships, the Forum for African Women Educationalists, Caritas Makeni, and the Red Cross. Tomorrow I have a meeting with the director of Catholic Relief Services, the Justice Sector Development Program, and am going to go see Medicos del Mundo. We finally have a team.

- And I am still writing despite the fact that there is nobody reading this. You are brats for not caring about my work. :P

- Once I have submissions and comments from all the NGOs, I have to take their comments on child abuses, compare them to what the Government says in the report, do a comparative analysis with the UNCRC, the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, and the Optional Protocol on Children in Armed Conflict and the Child Rights Act, and then write it all into the report.

- I have a month. The project is due April 13th or we won't be able to have it ready for the oral submissions in Geneva. Wish me luck.

March 20th.

I have a meeting with Justin Hane tomorrow. Justin works for Mercy Ships and will be helping provide us with statistics for the UNCRC report that we're handing in. Justin is Canadian, thinks he looks decent when showered "but not necessarily when shaven" and wrote a poem about Pamplemousse, a kitten who died after being mauled by a dog. I know all this despite not having ever met Justin Hane because he has a blog on the Internet in which he talks about his time in Sierra Leone. I've been reading it for the past two weeks.

Justin wrote an entry a while ago in which he talked about the meaninglessness of meaningless posts in a Blog and about how he has a tendency to write about writing about nothing. I completely understood. He swore that he would write about something even if it was nothing. Dude, I so understand. I vow to do the same all the time. I noticed, however, that most of his posts are short. They are entertaining to read. I read about 6 months of his life in about an hour. I know that others are interested. I wish that my thoughts were equally as entertaining, but I'm afraid that I'm a rambler with no interest in journalism and no talent for writing. BUT. I force myself to write about it because otherwise I tend to disappear, so this is all we get:

Today I went to Mamba Point after work. It was Movie Night. Mamba Point is the local expat bar. It is riddled with white people and if you hang out there long enough you will almost certainly make a lot of friends. You will learn very little about Sierra Leone and the nationals there, but you will eat a good pizza. Today I had copious amounts of beer (Star Beer, Sierra Leone's local brew) and ate a mediocre hummous. It's mediocre but I crave it and order it all the time.

I went to the bar with Virginia, my boss, and V.J., our new logisitics guy. Virginia is Spanish and extraordinarily kind to me, which I find strange since Charly told me that Virginia does not really like to associate with staff members. Virginia is a Spaniard Taurus (um, aren't all Spaniards Torros?), a dark-haired, hot-blooded, crazy woman who has worked as a project manager in just about every dangerous country you can name. She is minuscule, works out all the time, appears not to eat, and is extremely intelligent. She is 31 years old. We bonded on Saint Patrick's Day and hugged fiercely after both admitting that we'd broken up with men we'd hoped to marry. She has since introduced me to just about every single man in Freetown. Each time she does so, she says, "Hi ____, this is Anna, she is very, very smart, and very beautiful." It is embarrassing and I have no idea how to react: Smile, blush, nod, or just sit and do all the above. I smile awkwardly, blush awkwardly, and awkwardly fidget, shyly playing with my hair.

Tomorrow we are going for Salsa lessons and on Sunday we are going to the private beach owned (run? borrowed?) by the Spanish consular. Apparently there will be tons of booze and caviar. I have signed up for Spanish lessons on Monday Nights, Tuesday Nights are Movie Night at Mamba Point, Wednesdays are Salsa, Thursdays are (so far) free, Friday nights everyone goes to Atlantic (a club), and weekends are for beaches. Life in Sierra Leone is going to be a constant wave of movement for me this time. After my (far-too) wild times in Paris, my attempt to calm down during my first time in SL (and my apparently lackluster personality given all it did for my relationship) we'll see how I do with this current schedule. I think I prefer hanging out with the kids and feeding them candies while they smother me with dirty hands. I'd rather read a book to kids who understand none of my words and pet a lamb than awkwardly look away while men argue over who gets to be my Spanish teacher.

First Day Back in Sierra Leone.

It is my first "real" day back in Sierra Leone. I arrived yesterday evening but the act of just traveling through the airport, over the bay by ferry and then settling in the home at night doesn't really count. You can't feel the heat of the sun at night, you see very little, and the fatigue of traveling makes everything a little blurry anyway. But one thing last night stood out powerfully for me, reminding me that Anna You Are in Africa, Welcome Back: the smell.

Sierra Leone is a very odiferous country. It is not "smelly" like, for example, Gaie Paris, where the smell of sewage frequently rapes the nostrils and dampens the excitement of your "romantic" rendez-vous. But Sierra Leone is nonetheless a country bathed in various odours, some of them objectively pleasant-smelling (like the strong scent of wood baking in the heat of the sun) some of them less-so, like the gangrenous smell of burning garbage. All of it somehow smelled wonderful to me last night. The warm air combining with engine oil from the airplanes smelled like home to me as I stood on the tarmac after exiting the aircraft. The airport smelled like sweat and dirt and African hair. The taxi that took me to the ferry was probably the most well-kept taxi I've seen during my time here and it still bore the scents of spilled engine oil and gasoline. As we drove from the airport, the scent of baked dirt wafted into the vehicle making it impossible for me to conceal my smile. Moses, one of Save the Children's drivers (and incidentally my favourite) glanced at me in the backseat and caught me staring out the window with a dreamy smile. He laughed. "Sierra Leone loves you too, Miss Anna," he said. I hadn't realized that my love for the country was so transparent and Moses' comment made me simultaneously blush and beam with pleasure and gratitude. What an adorable idea.
I woke up this morning long after morning had actually passed – 2pm. The jetlag is obviously taking its toll. As I write this I am sitting in the Save the Children residential compound outside the gigantic guest house where I will be lodged throughout my stay. The apartment house is enormous and since I today found out that my boss lives on a separate compound, I thoroughly intend to throw a house party before I leave.

I have only been outside for the past three hours yet my white t-shirt and new jeans are already sprinkled with a thin coat of red dirt. My sunglasses become regularly fogged, smearing my makeup (looks like I will be switching to waterproof mascara) and I can tell that my skin has received a mild tan through the clouds blocking the sun. Despite the dull cloudiness the air and skies are still bright. A strong, persistent wind blows today, which is odd. It cools the air only slightly as I am sweating regardless of its presence. The only sounds are the twinkling of endless leaves in the wind, occasional cries of children playing in the streets and the staccatoed banging of a hammer far off in the distance. This morning I was awakened by the crows of a rooster. I feel like I am at the centre of a very peaceful place that encourages health (mental and emotional, anyway.) I feel absolutely wonderful.

I'm so happy to be back.