Oh Salone

Oh Salone….


You have no idea how weird it feels to know that Friday I will be getting on a plane and possibly never coming back here. I’ve never left a place thinking I might not return. Sierra Leone has been the most interesting, most frustrating place I have ever been. So how do I feel leaving? Strange and slightly confused. It feels like a long dream and I am sure, when I find myself sitting in the local Starbucks back home I will feel like the past 6 months never actually happened. But the thing is…you can’t possible leave an experience like this behind. I have no idea how this journey will affect my life from here on in, but I am certain that it will…in many ways.

I was feeling really sad about leaving until I woke up the other morning to a swollen face (allergic reaction to something/everything perhaps), not being able to see out of my left eye, no water in the whole house, 40 degree heat, covered in mosquito bites (one got in my bug net and devoured me!), and sick from the African dish I “cooked” the night before! (I really should learn to leave cooking to people who know what they are doing!). Only to make it downstairs and be informed by a male staff member that I had tucked my skirt into my underwear and was exposing the whitest part of my body to the entire office! AWESOME! It was at this moment that I thought to myself… “Yup!...I’m done here!”  No…but really…is it Friday yet?!

In all seriousness….I’m really going to have a tough time saying goodbye. The relationships that you form over 6 months are always going to make it difficult to leave, no matter where you are!

I had coffee yesterday with a guy my age who was born and raised here, who just received full scholarship to go and study in Ottawa. After hearing about how his brothers were killed by rebels, how he had to flee from three different cities to survive, how he was captured in Freetown in ’99 only to be released because one of the RUF members was a childhood friend of his, I realised something… I have absolutely NO IDEA what it is to live here, to cope with the adversities and barriers and frustrations! I will never know what it is like, because even while I am still here, I am still way too far removed!

“Nothing comes easy you know!” he said to me….the thing is…for me…things have. I don’t know the first thing about adversity, pain, and suffering…That is the biggest lesson I have learned in 6 months.

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