PC Blog 5: Flight of the Troublesome Suitcases

Note: This blog entry was first posted on Friday, October 7. The names of those involved have been changed unless permission was given to use their actual names.

After almost a week of daily sessions at the Lungi Airport Hotel, where we learned to always take our Malaria meds and to always say 'No!' to okadas (motorcycles), on the following Saturday we left for our permanent training site up in Kambia, where we'd be spending the next two months. To get us there, the Peace Corps bus was plenty comfortable (AC!!) and spacious enough for all of us, but apparently in the intervening week since we arrived, the box truck that they had used to haul all our bags from the airport had broken down, and they now had only a much smaller truck to attempt the same task. Accordingly, we were introduced to the time honored tradition of strapping most of our bags to the top of both the van and the bus in order to get everything to fit. The results were… less than ideal… as we'll soon see.

Final snap of us all at the hotel. Yes, that's our Training Manager lying luxiourously in front. Photo courtesy of Peace Corps Sierra Leone.

After leaving the hotel, only about fifteen or twenty minutes into our journey, one of the other trainees suddenly yelled, “Stop! Stop! We lost one of the bags!” And as it turned out, one of the bags had indeed just fallen off the roof. Sorry, Jenny! We stopped so the driver could go out and retrieve Jenny's escaped suitcase, and then spent the next fifteen minutes or so on the side of the road as he and a few others tried their best to better secure the roof cargo. One of the other trainees got out while this was going on to see what the situation was like and returned with a look of extreme skepticism. I offered that we could take several of the bags off the roof and into the bus because we still had some room, especially if we used the aisles, but they insisted to continue on as is, so that’s what we did.

So, after that brief pause, we were smooth sailing once again. This was our first real look at Salone and at least to me, it was amazing to see everything flying past our windows. We had already been in Salone for a week and had been starting to feel like we were getting to know the country and its people through our sessions and time talking with Saloneans at the hotel, but now that we were finally out of the hotel quarantine bubble (though still masked, of course), it really hit us for the first time that we were really here, in the middle of Sierra Leone, West Africa. The vegetation as we drove past was incredible. It was quite tropical, as you would expect, but what made it interesting to me at least, is that it was quite simi- “Stop! I think we lost another one!” the same trainee suddenly yelled. *sigh*

It had only been about ten minutes since we lost the first one. As it was being retrieved, someone said, “It looked like Jenny’s other bag.” Whoops… As it happened, Jenny was the only trainee who wasn’t with us on the bus at the time, so maybe her bags just didn’t want to leave without her? Whatever the case may have been, we were still determined to actually arrive with the same number of bags that we had started with, so we waited for awhile longer this time as things were reconfigured on the roof, with much bumping and scraping going on above our heads. After a bit, I decided to go out this time to see that situtuation for myself and see if I could offer any help and… well… I could see why the bags were so eager to escape. There was one or two short ropes to help, but most of the heavy lifting was performed by a large blue tarp that was wrapped over top of everything and directly tied to the roof rack. Now, I’m certainly no expert at hauling, but this didn’t seem to be a likely winning strategy to me. I offered again that there was room for at least half the bags inside the bus if we squeezed in, but they didn’t seem to think it would help much. I disagreed… but it wasn't my decision to make.

I didn't get a picture of our bus loaded up with all our bags, but this is a better picture of what it looked like unencumbered of both people and their belongings.

As the minutes ticked by and I continued to stand by the side of the road with a look of extreme skepticism on my face, we started to attract attention. As with pretty much any country with a very young population, there are a lot of children (or pikins) around… everywhere… in Sierra Leone. And being as curious as all children always are, they came over to see the strange people milling about the strange bus on the side of the road near their houses. Though we had started learning a few words of the local language, Krio (more about this in a future Salone Blog post), we hadn’t really started learning in earnest yet, so our Safety and Security Officer, who had been overseeing the re-tying of the tarp, started talking with the kids and translating a little for those of us waiting outside in the heat.

After a lot of retying of the tarp, with much tugging, pulling, and shifting things around, we eventually set off once again. This time, the main strategy seemed to be to drive more slowly and stop every 20-30 minutes to retighten everything. I was still skeptical that we would arrive to our destination before dark at the rate we had been going, but to the driver's credit, with only a few 5 minute stops and one longer stop at a gas station for those of us not willing or capable of peeing on the side of the road, we did eventually make it all the way up to Kambia without another bag falling off (and we never actually ended up losing one either!).

Since we were a few hours late, once we arrived in Kambia, we went directly to meet with the local chiefs and other important people of the area who played a big part in the Peace Corps selecting Kambia as the new training site. Following this meeting, we were whisked away to our training site for a quick lunch (which was very hot, both in spicey-ness and in temperature), after which we had our “adoption” ceremony, in which we would meet our host families for the first time. Before this, however, several people, including from both the Peace Corps and important members of the local community, had to give several speeches first. As these things often tend to, these started to go quite long, and owing to the large amount of water I had just had at lunch (both due to the heat of the day and of the food), my bladder was beginning to grow quite full. But not wanting to appear disrespectful to any of the speakers by getting up in the middle of an enthusiastic speech welcoming our arrival into the community (especially since our seats were at the front, in full view of everyone), I continued to patiently wait. As more and more speakers came and went and we still were not done, my initial slight discomfort began to grow more and more in equal concert with my swelling bladder.

Again, no picture of the Adoption Ceremony at the Training Center, but here's what it looked like a week later during one of our first sessions. Photo courtesy of Peace Corps Sierra Leone.

As the Paramount Chief finally took the stage, I was already firmly crossing my legs to physically help dam the impending deluge building inside me for as long as possible. After more than fifteen minutes more with no sign of the Chief letting up soon, I decided I could no longer wait and still maintain both my dignity and dry trousers, so as quickly as I could, I got up and quickly moved to the back of the room where the Western-style flush toilets were located, hoping that my leaving wasn’t seen as being too disrespectful to literally the most powerful person in the area. What followed next can only be described as sweet release.

After I had finished easing myself several minutes later (I'd had a LOT of water), I made my way back to my seat, now much better able to enjoy and actually listen to the remainder of the Chief’s speech (which as it turned out, was still only about halfway finished). However, the breaking of my own personal floodgates seemed to have broken the metaphorical floodgates of the crowd, because after I left and returned, several others were now occasionally following my lead and getting up to leave one-by-one for a short time.

Me and my host papa and mama. This photo was taken towards the end of training, so just picture us with two months fewer wrinkles.

Eventually (or should I say, finally), all of the speeches were concluded and it was now our turn to call out the names of our new host parents who were in attendance, which had been given to us on little slips of paper. I will of course talk much more about my host family in later posts, but today there wasn’t much time to meet with them other than introducing ourselves and sharing a small meal provided by the Peace Corps for us all.

After our long and arduous day of mostly sitting (which can be very tiring depending on the circumstances), we were finally taken back to our new hotel, where we’d be staying for the remainder of our time in Kambia (again, this is much different from pre-COVID times, when all trainees would actually stay with their host families for the entirety of training). Thankfully, all my bags had made the journey unscathed (with only one missing water bottle), so I settled into my new room in expectation of a much needed rest.

Most of our rooms were in these cute little huts, but more about our hotel in the next post.

For the next post, I’ll share a general overview of what life was like for us during our pre-service training in Kambia over the next two months.