Saturday, April 10, 1976, 9:00 am - Day 74

I received a letter from home and also one from the Christys. Louella Christy sure lays it on thick about how great I am and how proud everyone is of me and how much they all miss me. Reading that letter can sure make me feel homesick. The one from home contained only a small letter and lots and lots of newspaper clippings - none of which were very interesting. They were all about what the city council did that day and also what the state legislature did, and they didn't do anything. But I guess that that is what I asked for.

Monday, April 12, 1976, 9:00 pm - Day 76

Today, Dave (one of the VSO's) went to decide on the route for the Biawala-Mobai Road, which we will be starting in about a week. There is this one stretch of road which is very rocky and looks like bedrock is sticking through all over. We were trying to figure out all kinds of ways to go around it because we didn't think that the machines could cut through the rock. The villagers kept telling us that it was "dead rock" and that it was very soft but we didn't believe them because we saw the rock and it looked like very hard granite. Finally, after we had looked at all of our alternate routes, we went back to the rocky road and took a pick to the rock, just to see how hard it was. To our surprise, the rock would just crumble like a very soft sandstone even though it looked like hard granite. I guess that we should listen to the villagers more than we do because they usually know what they are talking about.

Wednesday, April 14, 1976, 12:00 noon - Day 78

Today we are supposed to have a meeting of all of the engineers and our boss in CARE. I thought it was supposed to be at 10:00 am, so that I stayed around the house until then. During that time I took empty coke bottles and stood them upside-down in holes with just the bottoms showing. The holes were along the lines on the volleyball court and the buried bottles are to mark the line. Right now I have 27 bottles buried and they are spaced about 5 feet apart. I would like to put other bottles inbetween them, so if I put in 28 more bottles then the spacing would be cut down to about 2.5 feet , which would be close enough to tell if a ball landed in or out of bounds.

At 10:00 I went over to the other housewhere the meeting is to be, and I found it is to be at 2:00. I decided to use this extra time to go to the bank in Segbwema. I have a savings account there and I needed some money because I am planning to go to Freetown for this Easter holiday (the workers get 5 days off). I deposited my Peace Corps monthly allowance check (still Le173) and withdrew Le80, which left me with about Le208 in my account. That gives me Le110 on hand, which I should use most of on my trip to Freetown. I plan to eat good and buy plenty of imported junk foods like ice cream and cake and cookies, and i also plan to buy a hammer, saw, bed sheets, maps, and cinnimum if I can find it. Chocolate chips would also be nice because I could then try to make cookies if i could borrow an oven.

We finally got a puppy. It came from some volunteers on up the road and is light brown and about 10 inchges long and 6 inches high at the moment. There seems to be only one breed of dog in Sierra Leone, and that is the kind that he is. He hasn't barked yet but he has whined last night and he isn't house trained yet, either. He doesn't have a name yet but Skip was calling him Chump yesterday so maybe that will stick.

Wednesday, April 14, 1976, 12:00 midnight - Day 78

There was one point at the meeting which got me so emotional that I couldn't talk any longer, and I was lucky that I finished saying what I wanted to say before I got too choked up. I have a hard time arguing because when I really feel strongly about something and try to explain my position calmly and logically, I hardly ever succeed because I get choked up and everything comes out wrong or not at all.

The point of this discussion which affected me this way was that the head people in CARE Feeder Roads project are surveying some of the future roads which we are to do, and then they work out all of the details on paper in terms of road alignment, depths of cut and fill, culvert size and location, and anything else that we might need to know. These plans will then be given to us and we would be expected to construct the road as planned and would not be free to make any changes without their okay. This might be good for them in being able to better predict costs on a road before the road is built. My problem with it is that I feel that I won't work a road if I had to follow a set of plans drawn up by someone else, and was not free to make changes where I saw fit. I wouldn't mind having detailed plans to work from if I had a part in coming up with those plans. I feel that for me to feel satisfied of my work here on this project, that I would have to be free to do things as I think best, even if they turn out to be wrong.

When I had explained all of this to Les, he replied with something about "they hire people to do it, and I wouldn't have time to do it, and they need the predicted costs to show the government", and he finished with "If you don't like it, you can lump it." It was at this point that I became too emotional and too choked up to say anything, and it was probably just as well because my stay in Sierra Leone could have ended right there. He is my boss and I am supposed to do what he says, but I can tell you right now that if he has a road that has been planned out by someone else, then he can find someone else to build it, because I won't touch it. I wouldn't mind surveying and planning a road, in fact it would be a good engineering experience, and I feel it should be part of my job. Les says that I wouldn't have the time, but that isn't true because these roads can be surveyed and planned during the rainy season when we have alot of free time on our hands already.

At the moment the roads that we are doing are mostly constructed by eye-balling it in, and we hardly ever do a calculation and the only ones we do are figuring cut and fill amounts after they have already happened. I could see that they could use some planning, but the major problem is that I feel that the road engineer for constructing that road should also have done the planning on that road, whereas Les doesn't seem to think that it makes any difference. Enough said, I think I shall go to bed.

Friday, April 16, 1976, 2:00 pm - Day 80

This week in Bo they are having the Bo Show. The Bo Show is like a county fair back home but without all of the rides and games which we have. Stalls are set up at Coronation Field (which is by where I stayed during training) and there are exhibits from the different schools and churches and businesses. Most of the stalls were filled with different restaurants and bars and it seemed that anyone that owned a few chairs and a kerosene frig had a booth set up.

There was plenty of music and even a few devil dancers around, which were exciting to watch. You are not allowed to take pictures of most devils but I think these would have been okay. There seem to be two types of costumes for the devils. Both are made out of straw. One looks alot like Cousin It from the Adam's family, with no hands and no legs, withstraw going down from the top of its head to the bottom of its feet. It has no neck on its head but it does have a face. The face is carved out of wood and is usually about 2 feet wide. The second type of devil looks more like a scarecrow. It has legs and arma and a head. They are made out of straw with cloth sections combined in. instead of a wooden face, it has a piece of cloth over its face with eyeholes cut in. I don't know what the different devil types symbolize but I am pretty sure that they stand for different things.

I found watermelon for the second time now in Sierra Leone. They were selling it at the Bo Show and it tasted good, even though it was warm. They were selling pieces at 5 cents each which I had, and I also bought a whole one for Le1.20, which was probably about 8 or 9 cents per pound. I would like to eat some of it now but I don't have a knife with me and the CARE house here in Bo is locked up at the moment. That is my biggest problem so far, waiting for someone to come along with the key so that I could unload all of the things off of my motorcycle. A couple of hours at the Bo Show is all that I could take because the crowd starts to get to me, and after awile I just seem to stand around with nothing else that I want to see or do anymore. The problem with the Bo Show and this holiday week in general is that I have some shopping that I want to do but all of the stores are closed.