When I turned 24, the dry season was just starting in Sierra Leone. It was a welcome transition for those of us from milder climes after months of the hothouse steam bath that is the rainy season. But locals would complain that the eerily dry Harmattan winds blowing south from the Sahara would parch their lips and crack their skin. Old women with calloused palms would smear bright orange palm oil on their sinewy limbs, a prophylactic measure that lent a dusky glow to their movements and an insinuating scent that cooking was a never-ending part of their daily lives. Men might take an extra swig of that sweet morning palm wine to fortify themselves against the dusty, dehydrating haze that would blow throughout the day. The mango season having ended, children deprived of free snacks would rein in their wandering and make sure to be at home when the one meal of the day was served.
But these were observations from the previous year when I had lived upcountry, prior to moving to the capital to teach at Fourah Bay College. "The Athens of West Africa" was what they used to call Freetown pre-independence, and Fourah Bay, as the only university in the region, was the reason. Students from other British colonies would flock to it, vying to get a leg up in the limited career tracks that were available to the colonized. Located high atop Mt. Aureol, those international elites-in-training literally looked down in daylight on the plebeians living in the crowded neighborhoods below, descending at night to enjoy the thriving nightlife, dancing the maringa to Ebenezer Calender's Krio stylings while nursing a warm Guinness.
By the time I was there, the long, slow fall from grace was nearly complete, with the country hitting the bottom of the UN's development rankings, the years of kleptocratic rot taking its inevitable toll. Or so I thought—the protracted civil war would break out just three years later, plunging the nation into a horrific morass of diamond-fueled blood letting. At the time, only a half-hearted coup attempt marred the Freetown Bicentenary proceedings, while the military checkpoints that popped up everywhere as a result lacked menace, as we all knew that soldiers were not given live ammunition to save the government money. Resignation leavened by an existential sense of humor, supplemented by creative small-time hustling, was the order of the day, and I never imagined that soon the city would be overrun by drugged-up children being forced to hack off residents' limbs by competing warlords.
No, the Freetown I knew was a peaceful place. Regressing and decaying, but civil and decorous. Fourah Bay tried to stave off its decline by clinging to proper British etiquette, such as serving tea and biscuits to the proctors during exams (a tradition that I liked!). Students dressed neatly for class and addressed the lecturer politely. And some still trekked from far-away lands to seek learning. I became friendly with a man from Malawi, who came on a fellowship as FBC was one of the few African universities offering a graduate program in his field. He discovered upon arrival, however, that the program had been cancelled due to lack of funding. Having insufficient money of his own to go home to his wife and children, he was stranded at FBC for the academic year with no classes to attend. He made the best of the situation, though, by taking up with a "local wife."
Teaching at the college was challenging. Textbooks were not available and it was too expensive to provide photocopies, so much of class time was spent simply transferring information from blackboard to notebooks. I taught courses in electromagnetics and numerical analysis methods, the latter requiring computer programming. Fortunately, the department had its own generator, so despite the part-time nature of the power grid, it was possible to have regularly scheduled lab time. Unfortunately, the PCs—of British make, donated by some charity—lacked any form of non-volatile memory or data storage, not even floppy disks, so code could only be written and exercised during the two-hour lab period, after which everything written would be lost.
As the capital, Freetown was the only city in the country that could credibly be called modern. It was a "one place" kind of place. That is, there was only one place where you could get ice cream, one place for Chinese food, and one food cart offering Scotch eggs. Needless to say, you could not find any of these things outside Freetown. International chains were entirely absent. As for the ice cream, it was soft serve made from powdered milk, but it was nevertheless ice cream. It was a bit of a trek to descend from campus to downtown where the Lebanese-run shop dished out banana splits in pale blue plastic boats, but it was a nice occasional indulgence.
I had a girlfriend, a fellow PCV who was stationed in a remote village near the Guinean border. She would ride into town on her Peace-Corps-issued motorcycle (unannounced, as domestic telephone service was entirely defunct), covered head-to-toe in red laterite dust, and proceed to take a bath in my flat, a big treat since she neither had running nor heated water. We would ride out to one of the lovely beaches on the peninsula—Lumley or River No. 2—getting jostled roughly by the roads that had long ago lost their pavement. In the evening, we would visit one of the handful of restaurants in town that served non-Sierra Leonean food. Although we both loved the local cuisine, it was good to take a break once in a while.
There's something about being expatriates together in an intensely foreign environment that can draw people together tightly very quickly. C. was enamored of small village life, and talked about the possibility of getting pregnant and having the baby in her hut with the help of local women. Incredibly, in retrospect, I listened to her seriously and considered how things might play out. She spoke of staying on after her Peace Corps stint and raising her child in that village. Impractical, romanticized thinking, but at the time it seemed like a legitimate life choice.
At 24, I had no strong direction in life and was open to divergent scenarios. In the end, I decided to apply to one graduate school (it was very difficult to complete the application process from Sierra Leone!), and if I got in I would go. I was accepted, and so I went back to school. If I had been rejected...who knows what I would have done? It's possible that I might have become a professional expatriate like your twin aunts. In fact, I found out years later during my thesis defense party that my application had been very close to being tossed—only an effusive recommendation letter from a legend in the field for whom I had worked saved it.
As I've said to you before, I'm not a believer in the best-of-all-possible-worlds paradigm. At 54, I am perfectly content and happy about how things turned out, but other parallel lives may have been excellent as well. Any way you go there is good and bad, so savor the good while it lasts.
Love,
J.
January 2018