Next Stop Sierra Leone

In October, 2007, when I saw Dan Kelly for the first time in three years, we had a lot of catching up to do. I had worked in China for two years, first as a teacher then a travel guide. I decided to apply to medical school and moved to San Francisco to pursue that goal. Dan had finished 3 of 4 medical school years and started a non-profit organization to fight extreme poverty. He had spent six months in Sierra Leone putting two projects in motion.

We started where any old friends would start: pints of beer. Questions, stories, insights poured forth for hours. The conversation continued over the next month, as Dan completed his internal medicine sub-internship in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, I finished up my own medical school applications and considered the timing of a spring trip to Sierra Leone. In fact, ideas about Africa had taken seed almost a year ago when, in an email, Dan casually suggested I come out to help with the projects. Dan doesn’t say anything casually, though.

While Dan was in San Francisco, I asked question after question until I realized that there were a lot of details that I wouldn’t grasp until I went. Just before Thanksgiving, Dan returned to the Bronx to complete his medical school work. I booked a plane ticket to Sierra Leone with a January 11th departure date.

Now, that date is a few days out. My parents’ raised eyebrows and lack of comments on my trip has turned to enthusiastic support as they have learned more about the projects I’ll be working on. I’ve enlightened many United Airlines ticketing agents about the location and pronunciation of the small West African country, population 6 million. And I’ve learned much about the people, culture, and history of a nation that ranks last on the United Nations Best Countries To Live In list, published in November, 2007.

Next week, these conversations and articles will fade into the shadows of reality. Sierra Leoneans face a host of development, health, and reconstruction issues following the recent civil conflict that ended in 2002 with thorough disarmament by a UN team. I will be working in the Kono District to turn four cinderblock walls with a roof into a community clinic, with clinical and public health programs for farmers and their families in the area.

All my experiences are shaped first by my own nationality and culture, but second, and more prominent in my mind, my experiences in China. I’ve done endless comparing in my mind between the place I know and how I imagine Sierra Leone might be. I imagine I’ll gain even more perspectives on development issues in China by having a new example for comparison. The two countries are so different, yet face similar problems: disease, infrastructure issues, corruption, lack of venue for change, widening gulf between rich and poor. In short, both countries face problems of development, and I hope to gain radically new perspectives on poverty and development in Sierra Leone.

I’m also nervous about my personal health and safety. I deeply want to help others, but I also have a healthy sense of self-preservation. I will be exposed to a host of diseases. Will my malaria drugs do their duty? Will my face mask and gloves protect me from tuberculosis or typhoid? If I’m sick, can I get help? Everyday life will pose a challenge as well. Www.weather.com rated the daily UV index as 10+/extreme. My pale skin says ouch. Vegetables are difficult to come by. There are about 600 miles of paved roads in the whole country. All the while, these hardships are likely to be trivial compared to those faced by the people who live there. I expect perspective to be powerful.

As far as safety goes, the media doesn’t bring much good news back from Africa to the United States: genocide, election riots, AIDS, mobilizing warlords, famine, and the winter 2006 Leo DiCaprio flick, “Blood Diamonds.” Currently, Sierra Leone is touted by Lonely Planet as one of the safest places in West Africa, though that can’t be a tough title to claim with the Ivory Coast and Liberia for competition. I’m packing copies of my passport, bringing what little street smarts I have, and kicking the confidence I had in China to explore remote nooks and crannies of the country--at least until I get my bearings.

I also have high expectations for this experience from a different perspective. Whether I’ve been exploring careers, lacking direction, indecisive, whatever it’s called, I’m not anymore. I believe I will be able to unite my varied interests, and that my range of experiences will be an asset to the projects we work on. Furthermore, I hope that I will gain motivation and clarity that will shape my medical education, which begins next fall.

Those are personal expectations. But what about project expectations? I want to alleviate the suffering of individual people. As a teacher, I want to empower people to help and sustain themselves. I want to make a difference. I want to leave in April with a sense that the clinic operation is sustainable. As Jeffrey Sachs notes in his book, “The End of Poverty,” there is a latter of development, and many countries in Africa can’t even get a foot on the bottom rung. For three months, I’m going to join the ranks of others working like crazy to get Sierra Leone’s first foot off the ground.



References in this post:
www.go-act.org
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N26420967.htm
Lonely Planet, West Africa
Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty