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Tuesday, Jan 27, 1976, 10:30 pm - Day 0
Well, the time has finally arrived. I left San Jose at 10:00 pm on a 707 and flew up to San Francisco to wait an hour and a half. It was my first time on a airplane and I really enjoyed it. I could really feel the acceleration when we took off but once we left the ground it seemed like we almost came to a stop again. But, upon looking down, I could see we were well above the ground and it looked like we were very slowly moving along. It is probably the altitude that makes us seem to go so slow. Like in driving in the car and looking out to the side the telephone poles are zipping right by but the mountains farther off don't seem to hardly move at all.
Wednesday, Jan 28, 1976, 8:00 am - Day 1
We'll be in Washington DC in another hour. It was clear most of the way to Chicago and I could look down and see all of the towns' lights. We were flying at 41,000 ft. but will only be going as high as 33,000 ft from here to Washington DC. The temperature in Chicago was 5F with about a half foot of snow on the ground. They say that it is 30F in Washington DC. It's been cloudy since we left Chicago and it looks like it will continue all of the way to Washington DC.
Wednesday, Jan 28, 1976, 12:00 noon - Day 1
The hotel that I am staying at is just about six blocks from the White House. I walked over and went to the top of the Washington Monument. It is the tallest building in Washington DC at 550 ft and is also the tallest masonry building in the world. Its walls are 15 ft thick at the base. From the top I could check out the whole city. There is no snow at the moment but there is ice in all of the puddles.
Wednesday, Jan 28, 1976, 6:00 pm - Day 1
There are 3 other volunteers starting out on the same program that I am. They are Greg Smith from Newark NJ, Chuck Harris from Kansas City, and Skip Nordmark from Hartford, Conn. We all got our immunizations today (small pox, yellow fever, and cholera). Tomorrow we fly to New York where we catch a plane to Monrovia, Liberia and arrive on Friday morning (Jan 30).
Friday, Jan 30, 1976, 6:00 pm - Day 3
We arrived in Monrovia on time. It had rained the day before and early that morning so that everything was still drying out and it was very humid. The airport was about 40 miles outside of town but Greg and I managed to get a ride into town with a person from the plane. We rode on a good percentage of the paved roads in Liberia by just going into town. In town we walked around, just taking in the sights and smells. The people (we only saw about 10 whites the whole time) seemed friendly enough but alot of the time we couldn't seem to communicate. Liberia used to be an American colony and the official language is English and alot of the advertising was for things that we have in the United States. The houses, buildings, roads, etc. were all basicly in a very sad state of disrepair. In the countrya lot of them had thatched roofs with adobe walls. In the city a lot of the buildings were of stone or reinforced concrete block and most of the windows didn't have glass.
The heat and humidy was getting to us, so Greg and I caught a taxi back to the airport. We were able to schedule an earlier flight than what we already had and ended up taking a Nigerian Airways plane which put us into Freetown Airport by 4:00 pm. There we were met by 4 Peace Corps Volunteers who helped us through Customs and then took us by car to the hotel. The trip included a 30 minute ferry ride and a trip through the streets of Freetown. I think that I like Freetown better than Monrovia because it seems cleaner and the houses seem to be in a better state of repair.
The hotel is a good one. They serve western food so at the moment I haven't eaten Sierra Leoneon. Tomorrow we have our first Krio lessons, get some more shots, meet some more Peace Corps people, and get to walk about Freetown.
Sunday, February 1, 1976, 9:00 pm - Day 5
Last night we went to a dinner party at one of the Peace Corps director's houses. It was modest for America but was luxury in Sierra Leone. When it comes time for me to move into a house I think I would like to get something a bit more modest, to keep with the Peace Corps image.
This morning I went with one of our 2 language teachers to visit his cousin. It seems strange to me how quickly you can go from the luxury of our hotel to the little rusted tin shacks of the poorer people. His cousin's house was located on a street (dirt and rock path) surrounded by these shacks and rundown houses and compared to them his house looked pretty good. But to compare his house to those in the USA, it would fit in the worst of slums.
This afternoon we checked out of the hotel and moved to the village of Regent which is about 5 miles from Freetown. There we split up among the different families. The houses range from lower middle class USA to little rundown shacks. Even with the poverty, the people still try to keep a clean house and they are all very friendly and try to help us learn the language. We will stay in this village for 8 days, after which we will move in with other families in the city of Bo, which is inland in the south.
Monday, February 2, 1976, 6:00 pm - Day 6
Today we had about 5 hours of Krio lessons. I am beginning to learn a few things, but still have a long way to go. I get befuddled very easily when trying to talk to a villager, Also today we spent an hour and a half going around Regent and asking the people at each house
who the owner is and what the number of the house was. "Udat get dis os? Watin na dis os numba?" Once they found out that we were trying to learn Krio, then they were all very friendly and helpful. Then, with all of this information, we made up a map of the village.
Tuesday, February 3, 1976, 11:00 pm - Day 7
We had 6 hours of Krio lessons today. At the time I didn't really think I was learning that much in the lessons, but when I would listen in on a conversation among the people, I found that I could understand most of what was going on. All today my head felt like it wanted to burst, because I was trying to take in so much so fast. I am beginning to feel confident when I meet people on the street and ask them, "Adu-o, sa? Aw debodi?" I am still having a lot of trouble in trying to answer questions or to comment about something.
Today we all went down to Freetown to the US Embassy to meet the #2 man - Dan Sullivan. The best part about his talk was about the self-help grants that are available to help finance community projects in Sierra Leone. He said that it was Peace Corps Volunteers that supplied most of the projects that the grants went for and that these projects were all ones that the PCV did in his spare time.
One of the Peace Corps directors and his wife (Craig and Jill) have been coming to the language lessons with us. They have been in Sierra Leone for 6 months but they were not required to learn the language. At the moment they are at about the same level as us, but I think that they will very quickly fall behind because where as we are still staying with village families, they have theur own house and are therefore isolated a lot more from hearing Krio spoken.
Wednesday, February 4, 1976, 10:00 pm - Day 8
Today we took 2 field trips. The first was to visit some feeder roads and to see what type of road we would be building. The second field trip was to visit the Guma Valley water treatment plant. It looked about normal compared to those here in the US, but for Sierra Leone it was a very big step forward. It supplies good water to Freetown and also to most of the villages neighboring Freetown.
I don't think that I improved at all today concerning the learning of Krio. There are many factors that might have caused this feeling. The first one would be that I was riding in the car to and from the different places and there is something about the way that we drive through the streets that gets me down. The second would be that with the field trips our lesson time was cut down.
Now, back to this point about how we drive through the streets. In Sierra Leone a car is a luxury. There are no horses, very few bikes, and lots of little open-back trucks called lorries. Most of the people walk. The roads are narrow. No more than 2 lanes but more often just one lane. the main roads are paved but they are full of chuck holes. there is no shoulder. People walk facing on-coming traffic and are either on the edge of the road or just off the edge. If a truck breaks down, then the driver will just park it right in the traffic klane to work on it. There is a speed limit but no one follows it. Drivers use the horn all of the time here. Even with all of these obstructions, they drive as fast as they can (often 50 or 60 mph), and luckily the people all seemed to be trained to jump or step out of the way when a car is passing. The drivers also have a tendancy to cut corners when going around a bend and they seem to be used to very close calls all of the time. I can guarentee you that I won't be driving that fast. The worst part about driving on the streets is the feeling that by driving like that we are presenting a bad image to the local people.
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