If I only saw Lakka Beach in Sierra Leone, I would think this place is paradise. This idyllic fishing village just west of Freetown is magical.



Tony Blair came to visit a few weeks ago to praise Sierra Leone for its economic development in the tourism industry. He opted for one of the UN helicopters (that sometimes fall out of the sky) landing on the sandy more affluent beaches of the west side, rather than take the hour long ferry ride across to the poorer east side of Freetown. He visited Lumely beach, the more popular of the beaches because of its easy access off the highway. It is full of trash, beggars, and tourists. It is easy to get a slanted picture of this country is all you see if tubby Europeans lolling around in the sun drinking star beer.



We opted for the more adventurous trek up the bumpy muddy road past the enormous houses in Aberdeen to Lakka, where we were the only “tourists” there. I’m told the place is livelier on the weekends when all the NGOs take a break from inland, but we came on an overcast Wednesday to visit a one legged boy born in Makeni .

John is 16 years old and living on the beaches of Lakka selling small hand-woven baskets to the tourist for $6.00 a pop. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure if you were to buy one of his baskets at Pottery Barn they would be at least $30.00.



Today he sold one.

John wanted to talk to me because he heard that we are raising funds for junior secondary and senior secondary school scholarships. In Sierra Leone, the government will pay for primary school, but if you want an education past the 5th grade, you have to pay.

After hearing John’s plea for a better life, I asked him to write it down for me so that I can tell others. I think I’ll let him tell you the rest of the story:

My age is 16 years old.
I was born in Makeni

My main purpose writing you this letter is just to tell you my problem. I was going to school in Makeni, but the war makes me leave school for some time now. But I’m looking for people who will help me. I came to Freetown to look for person that will help me. I stop going to school for three years now. My school level is JSS 3 [8th grade]. The war killed my family and cut my leg too, and I was staying with my uncle but I leave him because he was very bad to me and I come to Freetown to live in the street for over two years now with no help and no food. Sometime I get hungry and my freind feeds me, but no one else is caring. To go to school for three years is Le 1,800,000 and you have to buy uniform, books, pens, pencils, and a
shoe.



1,800,000 Leones is around $567 US dollars. I used to make that in a week and complain I was poor.

I would like to say that John’s story is shocking. But it isn’t. Since word has gotten out that I’m raising money for children to go to school, every day people come up to me to tell me they want to qualify for a scholarship. Every mother, father, uncle, schoolteacher, grandparent, shop owner, everyone I run into knows me as the girl who can send a child to school.

I want to send them all.

I would like you to meet A. K. T., asophomore student at the J. S. High School in Mapaki. High School in Sierra Leone cost $25 a year. That’s what most of us spend on dinner out with friends, but to A. K. T. it is his future. Every boy or girl who graduates high school in Sierra Leone is a little boy or girl who will give back to Sierra Leone. It’s such as small cost for a sustainable future.

Let me know if you are interested in providing a high school scholarship this year for the students of the Paki Masabong Chiefdom. Every little you give helps!





Centre for Development and Peace Education
Mayagba
PMB 290
Makeni
Sierra Leone
Cell (804) 338-5111
Skype – indar_chandra
hdavis@cdpeace.com
http://cdpeace.com/

The matchboxes in the bar at the Heathrow Crowne Plaza Hotel warn, “Danger – Fire Kills Children” with a stick figure representing an immolated child. It’s a bit more on the nose than the US version of “don’t play with matches”

I traveled sort of kind of with my father this weekend. I say sort of kind of, because we only shared one flight, and he flew in business whilst I was in economy plus. Papa likes the day flight to London when traveling so that he can adjust to the jet lag. The downside of traveling this way is that it takes freakin forever. My preference is just to get it over with in one fell swoop. Dragging your flights out over two days is torturous. You clear customs twice, check your bags twice, go through security twice, deal with other people flying constantly. Who needs it?

There are moments in your life when you are smacked in the face with the reality that you are not always a good person. That smack typically comes to me during travel. I used to date a boy with dogmatic devotion to what he perceived as the proper way to do things. A major reason why we are no longer together, it’s annoying when I find myself acting the same way. I have an ever-growing list of do’s and don’ts when getting from country A to country B

Go straight to your gate before doing anything else
Don’t leave the airport on a layover less than 24 hours
Never pack more than you can carry yourself
Children under five shouldn’t travel. They don’t enjoy it, we don’t enjoy it. Find a sitter
Don’t cut in line, we all have connecting flights
Don’t walk slow, we all have connecting flights
Don’t joke around with customs officials
Don’t sing or whistle.

I know this last one makes me a curmudgeon. Lookit, I too know what is like to jam out to your iPod. Music is an emotive experience begging for full body immersion. I’m down. I get it. You are still an annoying twatwaffel when you sing aloud. You aren’t as good as you think you are. I don’t want to listen to your off-key, out of synch rendition of Kathleen Turner Overdrive’s Greatest Hits Vol 1: A Nick Hornby Tribute. Do us all a favor and shut the fuck up.

My flights were as expected: gut wrenching fear until we clear the clouds, followed by butt numbing boredom, and then right around the time my legs atrophy, another dose of gut wrenching fear as we head back into the clouds. You would think by now I would be past the whole fear of heights thing, but it’s called an irrational fear for a reason.

This time the cab driver was blasting Debbie Gibson on the stereo. What is it with Austrian cab drivers and their shitty female pop stars? For me speaking German is like staring at a Jackson Pollack painting, after a while I abandon all hope and stop. Because I’m not that bright, I keep trying do both over and over again, thinking this time it’ll be better. Despite my crappy language skills, I got the hotel.

Once in my room I discovered that my Dr Bonner’s Magical Soap busted lose from its plastic bag during the flight. Now 50% of my stuff is cover is minty goo. I was able to rinse out most of the stuff and lay it out on the bathroom floor with no damage to anything electrical. Now I have to buy more soap, but that’s not the end of the world. I can do it in London next weekend before my flight to Freetown. Still, three days in a row with less than five hours of sleep is not how I like to roll.

Well, at least I’m here. Let the games begin.

Okee-dokee, folks. My flight is at 930 tomorrow. I'll be in Austria for a week with regular access to internet, and then I'm off. I don't know how often I will be online, but I'll try to keep ya'll updated with pics and stories when I can.

For all my worry about packing, it came down to just two bags to check, two bags to carry on, and my guitar. Enjoy the running water and TV, kiddies.

I'm moving to Africa.

We are in the final count down. The Richmond gang is coming up for the weekend, and I'm going camping the weekend after that. Ask me if I feel like I'm moving? The answer is no. Despite the fact that my regular consumer life has been drastically scaled down. You can live without a lot of stuff. Two more weeks...

I need to take a shower and get ready for the day. I feel oddly blank. Its as though everything in my life is in a holding pattern, waiting to see if it's really going to happen.

If the airport is any indication, the Danes have a great sense of style. I feel like I’m in an EQ3 catalogue. We arrived over an ocean so clear you can see straight to the bottom. It was like looking through the looking glass at an alternate reality… with fish. Part of me hoped we could keep circling in the air so could stare at the boats and ocean, but my ass is really happy we landed.

Last week on my way to work, I got a call that one of my colleagues died. Sadly, I’ve know the dude for several years and he was tasked with setting up our spring conference this April. Out of the blue a blood vessel burst in his head and he died. So I had to scramble to get a flight and settle the last few details. I wanted to come up to Austria anyway because I’m a control freak. We were having some communications issues and I wanted to be physically present to deal with the outstanding issue. Some people just don’t answer their emails, and that’s cool. Those people don’t work for me.

I wasn’t planning on going with less than a week’s notice and drop everything to get up here. I booked an afternoon flight from Dulles to Vienna via JFK but the wind had a little something to say about my flight plans, and as the flight was delayed half an hour by half an hour, it seemed increasingly likely I was going to miss my connecting flight. While in the lounge I befriended a young NASA analyst on her way to the UN. She was looking for internet access to pay her credit card bill, and I obliged. She sat in front of me on the way to JFK and we were supposed to be on the same flight to Vienna. So naturally when we missed the flight I apparently took on the responsibility of seeing that she get to Vienna safely as well.

I’m not a mother, but I always tend to collect little broken birds who need mending. It’s kind of a drag. United gets a us a later flight to Vienna via Frankfurt. Yea two layovers!

At long last I arrive in Austria and hop in cab driven by your stereo typical cab driver both blasting Dionne Warwick and the heat. I had no problem with the heat; Austria is not warm in February. I’m filled with this weird feeling of being home and not. There is something so comforting and absolutely true about Austria. The unselfconscious way they float through life completely free of irony. At a café I see an old geezer with a full white beard dressed head to toe in vibrant red. Does he think he looks like Father Christmas? Hell, no. Red just looks good on him. The stereo type of the teutonic man candy is also true. But, you see so many good looking men that it is like working in a ice cream store. After about a day you just roll your eyes, “Great! Another handsome man. Ho-hum.”

My meeting is originally at 10am, but with a delayed flight, I don’t arrive until 2pm. I ask her if we can postpone until tomorrow because I’ve been up over 36 hours and my brain doesn’t function. She tells me she doesn’t work on the weekend. Yeah? Me either, but here I am anyway. Have a freaking heart lady! But I don’t say that, and she doesn’t. Therefore, we meet until 6:30 and my brain slowly slips out my ear.

The rest is as you would expect, just another weekend in a foreign country. They are boarding my flight now, and I’m crossing my fingers my sister is standing at international arrivals when my plane lands. Somehow in the last 5 years, but my life has become very… strange.

I'm stealing this from Dave. Later, I will bitch about being in Vienna, but first have some pretty:

Did you guys know I'm a lefty? Who knew!

My Political Views
I am a left moderate social libertarian
Left: 3.78, Libertarian: 2.92


My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -3.47


My Culture War Stance
Score: -6.09

Political Spectrum Quiz

My daily dose of corporate caffeine is this place called Caribou. They are my anti-starbucks. The coffee isn’t burnt and you don’t need an insulin shot with your latte. More importantly, they have fair trade coffee and dang it’s good! Yummy caffeine and liberal guilt, custom built for me! Yeah!

Most corporations right now are giving to some charity. You can buy coupons at the grocery store to donate food or a book at the bookstore for shelters. Between November 1st and January 6th, it is almost impossible to find a store that isn’t giving to charity. The list of causes that will take your money is long and never-ending.

Give to the arts, schools, a conflict/disaster zone, support gay rights, animal rights, ethnic rights, worker rights, find a cure for AIDS, lupus, multiple sclerosis, increase adult literacy in prisons, stop George Bush from speaking in public, and take more public transportation. For every cause there is a non-profit with a website, magazine, and another non-profit vehemently opposed to their beliefs. They all want your money and time. Pick a cause ladies and gentleman, tis the season for tax deductions.

On this bandwagon, Caribou is raising money for, wait for it… our troops.

Really?

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m positive on the military. Unlike many of my colleagues, I have a kind of willful naïveté that can be only be found in my little heart and 1970s porn. Despite their many attempts to prove me wrong, I still look at these kids in uniform and believe they are the good guys. But even I am not so foolish as to think they might need a little charity.

Our military is rolling in the dough! The budget for 2009 is around 600 billion. That is a number so large it doesn’t even have meaning any more. That is almost what every other country will spend on the military combined. Now we far and away outpace the rest of the world in general when it comes to spending, and the DoD budget is only about 20% of the pie. It’s still six hundred billion fucking dollars! If you put 600 billion of something end to end you have a lot of somethings going someplace for a very long time.

Of all the places Caribou could have given assistance, of all the places and people that need help, they choose “the troops”? What the fuck, dude? You care enough about fair trade coffee, how come you’re phoning it in for season of giving?

I always lose the first day of the year to vitamins and bottled water. For me the new year starts on January 2nd. The first is for recovery.

Anyway... happy new year

I’m sitting in my apartment waiting.

It occurs to me that much of my life right now is waiting. Everything I do, that isn’t for CDPeace seems like a waste. I’m at the gym 2 hours a day, I’m bugging every person who has ever traveled to anyplace ever, I’m reading every book I can get my hands on, I’m surfing the internet like a fiend to find any information. I’m an addict looking for my next fix. I’m an information junkie.

I’m on countdown. It’s 15 weeks until, 14 weeks, 13 weeks…, and I have no game plan after that.

I’ve always had a game plan. I’ve always known what the next few years will look like, even when I’m horribly wrong. If life throws me a curve, I adjust and plan again. But I can’t see past April 2009. I have no idea what my life will look like after that. I know in theory I will be there for a year and that in theory I will come back and go back to school. But I don’t really know. I’m hurtling towards this thing that I may or may not be ready for, and I’m having this odd flash of a stupid TV show.

There is an episode of the West Wing where Josh explains to Donna why that working for him can’t be a life transformation and she asks “Why Not?” Well, right now I feel a bit like Donna Moss, except, I’m not fictional, I’m not blonde, and I don’t… no, I do have alabaster skin. (so SPF is something I need to add to my packing list)

I don’t know what happens to me after this. It’s a bit like falling in love. Sheer elation and abject fear. I’m about to go on a blind date with the love of my life.

No Pressure.

I’ve spent the day in limbo between big kid and little kid. A persistent flu-like bug has infiltrated my immune system, and is in the process of shredding my lungs, zapping me of all energy. Despite being exhausted, I’m incapable of sleeping for more than an hour, and even that sleep is fitful. Wanna see my impression of a zombie?

I wanted to go gym, but that didn’t happen. I hate it when nature fucks with my schedule. I hate missing a day at the gym.

We had a conference call today with the program committee, and as per usual technology bumfuzzled my squad of mental giants and we had to reschedule. Between the egos stroking and the dropped calls we managed to get two or three things accomplished. I think I may be getting better at herding these cats. At least they are all stumbling in the same direction, even if it’s not quite the right direction.

I have in my possession a letter to the ambassador of Sierra Leone requesting my visa. It’s a very complimentary letter that makes me sound like a cross between Mother Theresa and Buckminster Fuller. Which I guess makes sense. What use would the letter be if it said I was a functionally retarded sociopath, please let me live in your country?

...buckminster fuller is a fun name to say. I should give this name to future child or pet.

Most of you who know me, know that I’m science girl. I’m not romantic crystal wearing loon worried about cleansing my aura or some such nonsense. That said…

I’ve had the strangest feeling lately. It’s a face I can quite remember, like music from another room, you catch a few bars and then it’s gone. A smell in a crowd that reminds you of something from childhood but is gone too quickly to place. It’s like déjà vu before the vu. I am missing something that was never mine.

It’s probably just symptoms from the flu.

What the hell is wrong with this twatwaffel!

For his next trick, lord douchebag will vanish by closing his eyes.