Freetown becomes especially festive during this time of year.  The streets are often clogged with long wedding processions trying to get through the holiday traffic, and engagement parties are common occurrences.  Now is the time to hold them since extended family are all in country.  This is also the time of year for young single Sierra Leoneans who live and work abroad to meet other eligible Sierra Leoneans who share their lifestyle.  One of my good Sierra Leonean friends—raised throughout Africa and educated in the States—commented a few weeks ago that she was going to camp outside the airport at Lungi (across the bay from Freetown) to meet Sierra Leonean guys as they arrived! 

This past weekend I attended my office's Christmas party at Kashco Bar and Restaurant, a charming outdoor bar past the Congo Cross roundabout and just over the bridge into town. Like most office holiday parties it was well supplied with food (fried rice, fish, skewered meat, infamous Sierra Leonean pepper soup), drink and a DJ. The best part of the evening, though, was getting to see my Sierra Leonean colleagues dancing, eating and having fun, and getting to interact with them in that setting. 

Though I have been in Sierra Leone for close to three months I realized that I do not often spend time with my Sierra Leonean colleagues outside of work, a situation that is common among many expats here. The Sierra Leoneans we do hang out with tend to be young and educated in the UK or the States. This evening, though, with most of my expat colleagues out of the country for the holidays, I find myself gossiping with the women from the administration department, swapping holiday plans with program staff and dancing to the latest Sierra Leonean pop hits with our drivers. It was a fun and refreshing experience.

The night did throw the divide between Sierra Leoneans and expats here into sharp relief. In the last month I have met some wonderful expats--people who devote considerable effort to learning Krio (the primarily languague spoken in Freetown and understood throughout the country) and absorbing Sierra Leonean culture. Others come here and quickly become frustrated with the constant effort of trying to communicate across cultures and languages. This frustration can quickly lead people to withdraw further into the expat community or at worst begin to take out their frustration on Sierra Leoneans by talking down to them or growing unreasonably impatient with your colleagues.

When I you come to a place as poor as Sierra Leone you expect to learn certain "big" lessons. You expect to witness traumatic poverty and hear dramatic stories of survival during the war. Yet the biggest lesson I am learning is one that I assumed was the easiest and most basic--how to treat other people with respect, no matter how difficult the circumstances, no matter how wide the cultural divide. As an expat in Freetown it's very easy to isolate yourself from everyday life--eating in expensive restaurants and driving around in SUVs instead of taxis, for example. I am realizing that it is not enough to come to a place like Sierra Leone and work for an NGO or some sort of social cause. To really make a difference in a place like this you have to start small by really getting to know the people you interact with on an everday basis and treating them with kindness and respect. To that end, here are my new year's resolutions, aimed at helping me integrate more into Sierra Leonean life:

1. Learn to speak Krio

2. Take more taxis and poda podas (mini bus taxis) instead of the duty driver that is available to me as an expat

3. Eat more often at restaurants and bars frequented by Sierra Leoneans

4. Invite my Sierra Leonean colleagues to my apartment for social gatherings

5. Make sure I am treating my drivers and cleaners with respect. Understand that it can be frustrating for them also to try to communicate with me across language and cultural divides.

At the end of November I traveled with members of the Coalition on Women's Rights (an informal group of national and international NGOs and UN Agencies) to Kenema to witness an education workshop for community leaders on the new Gender Acts.  The Acts cover domestic violence, registration of customary marriage and divorce, and women's inheritance rights, and they significantly strengthen women's legal position in the country, at least in theory.  The problem is, of course, that there are many obstacles to implementation.  The new domestic violence bill, for example, makes domestic violence a criminal offense and also allows people to bring civil charges under the law, but the courts are slow and families and community leaders tend to push those bringing the charges to settle outside of court.

The workshop in Kenema that I attended aimed both to educate these community leaders about the provisions of the law and to encourage them to make sure the laws are carried out.  Participants included traditional leaders like paramount chiefs (mostly men but a few women) and Mammy Queens (traditional female leaders); local government representatives and other community members.  One of the more disturbing parts of the event was when some of the men started arguing that they cannot be held responsible for having sex with girls under 18 (the new legal age of consent) because the girls dressed in a provacative manner and behaved like "adults".  After the workshop when I was speaking with one of the members of the Coalition on Women's Rights, however, she mentioned that often the women leader's attitudes are even more worrisome.  She noted that when the team conducted education workshops in Makeni it was the women who actually provided counseling and legal services to survivors of gender based violence who claimed that many of the women were "asking for it" because they dressed or behaved in a certain manner. 

Of course, there are men and women leaders in Sierra Leone who are supportive of the new provisions in the Gender Acts.  In the next few months I am going to be following some of the organizations working on Gender Acts implementation so I hope to share some stories about individual Sierra Leoneans working for change on this issue.