water snakes and condoms

Sarah

So the rainy season has kicked in good and proper now, and for the first time we are feeling cold! Having been soaked through on our way back from school, we've ended up in the only internet cafe in Freetown with air-conditioning (and working internet).

It's been a wet week...on Saturday we took a trip out to 'the provinces' to visit one of the Planting Promise farms, where rice is being grown and where Eddie is hoping to plant the first crop of 'Teff' in Sierra Leone. (It's a cereal, like millet, which Planting Promise are hoping can eventually be exported to the UK market. Currently, the profits from the rice and cassava grown in the farms in the provinces are used to fund the Planting Promise schools, like the one that we are teaching in.) The trip began with grey drizzle, so that the beautiful countryside was obscured with cloud and we could only just make out the shadows of palm forests and silvery rivers snaking towards the sea.

At the farm, we went for a walk through lush green jungle, alongside the field intended for Teff and then towards the rice plantation. Reaching it involved wading through a stream where the heavy rains had flooded it to about bum-level..but atleast the water was kind of warm and I hadn't even thought about the possibility of snakes until Jessie mentioned it afterwards!  The rice crop takes three months to mature and this was quite a young one, so it was initially a little difficult to distinguish the bright green grass-like shoots from the other weeds and plants growing on the hillside. African farming clearly doesn't follow the same idea of ruler-straight lines of rice like in the terraces of Asia...

Eddie and Siray discovered from the lady owner of the farm that they've been having some trouble with the farm workers- casual labourers who are paid 5000Le (about 85pence) per day and have been knocking off at about 2pm, instead of working until 4 or 5 as required. As a result, some of the rice plantation hasn't been planted and fertile ground is going to waste. We discussed the idea of employing workers for a whole season, and paying them a regular salary rather than a casual daily rate, which would hopefully provide more stability for both the farms and the workers and their families.

On the way home from our trip, the heavens opened. The water was running in mud-red rivers down either side of the road, hurtling onto the road from impromptu waterfalls over road-side cliffs and swilling over the road almost bumper-deep in places. Wet wet wet.

Jessie

Teaching in the Planting Promise school has been one of them most rewarding, but also one of the most frustrating things I have ever done. An example of one our less successful lessons, Class one today:

Me: The cat sat on the mat
Boy: The cat sat on the mat
Me: Cat sounds like mat
Boy: Cat sounds like mat
Me: What does cat sound like?
Boy: Cat.

One the other hand I have to admit I was slightly dreading our lesson on contraception with the adult education group, but Sarah and I got on just fine with our mini cucumber. We bought so many condoms that the man in the pharmacy probably thought we were off to have an orgy rivalling in size and ecstatic noise with the Sunday congregation of the Flaming Church down the road from where we live. As we began the lesson, the old man who is responsible for the security of the school peered curiously over the wall as Sarah demonstrated her (frighteningly quick but brutal) condom-donning expertise. Soon we were happily dealing out condoms to eager hands.The teacher even bought in a couple of female condoms for us show the class.
 the following day.

lots of love from your frizzy-haired dirty-footed carb-filled Jessie and Sarah xxxxxxxxxxx