The Mokanji Life

Really I am enjoying it. The people are friendly and Sierra Leone is a very social culture of greeting everybody and just sitting around and talking. Since there are only 6 North Americans in Mokanji and we are the newest transplants and the only ones with kids we seem to get our fair share of visitors, although most of our visitors are kids. They eagerly wait for the kids to come out and play with them and during the afternoon while the kids are taking their afternoon quiet time/nap, they will hang around our porch and just watch Jeneson and I read or be on the computer. When they aren’t being social they are working. They have to work to get water from a hand pumped well every day, they have to gather wood to cook over a 3 stone fire or use coal in a coal pot, they do their laundry by hand; almost every task that Americans use a machine or appliance to do, the people in Mokanji do it the ‘old fashioned way’, by hand.

We are only about 150 yards away from one of the two hand pumped wells in the village, so during the day we get to hear a lot of talking, a lot of hand clapping and singing as the girls wait their turn in line, and the occasional fight. We also get the frequent visitors of ladies and kids selling various food stuffs out of buckets precariously balanced in their heads. There is even this sweet girl who walks from the next village over to sell me woven baskets that her Daddy weaves. These are great, quality baskets and she sells them for 1000 Leones ($1 ~ 4300 Leones). I usually give her 2000 Leones and don’t ask for change in addition to giving her a cup of water and a muffin if I have one around.

Less than 300 yards from our house is the Old Skool Nite Klub (yes, that is how it is spelled!). There may be no village electricity in Mokanji, but at least 3 or 4 times a week we hear the generator get fired up at about 8pm and instead of hearing native African drumming in the distance, we get to hear the latest in popular music in Sierra Leone.

Our evenings, after the kids are in bed, are often spent out on our front porch enjoying the cool, breezy Mokanji evening. Here we can process any events of the day, evaluate how we are adjusting, or just enjoy each other’s company. I usually get my chocolate fix in the evenings with a nice cup of hot chocolate.

Our first week

     Not quite sure how to sum this all up in one blog post that doesn't go on and on. We arrived safely in Freetown on Friday, Feb 24th and spent the next several days gathering supplies and getting some paperwork stuff done. We stayed at a family resort that was right on the beach, had free internet, free breakfast, and free laundry. While this was a little more than we planned on spending, it did allow us to get quite a bit accomplished since we didn't have to worry about those things. We were very thankful for our Sunday day of rest and the kids enjoyed playing at the little playground and splashing in the pool.

     Tuesday morning we set out for the drive to Mokanji. Thankfully it is the dry season and some of the local mining companies had graded the roads, so what was a 7 hour drive in September was now a 5 hour drive.

     Our house looks beautiful! It is roomy enough for all of us and quite functional. We are lacking in some furniture/shelving so unpacking was basically  reorganizing into specific suitcases. We are waiting on getting some shelves/bookcases built so that we can get a little more settled. Our furniture now consists of a nice table and 6 chairs, a bed frame and mattress for Jeneson and I, a bed frame and mattress for Josiah and a mattress on the floor for Sofia. Hopefully by the end of the month we will have steel bunk beds made for Josiah and Lydia and some shelving put up. Right now all of Josiah's clothes are in one suitcase, my clothes in another, etc...

     My pressure cooker from Freetown is my new best friend and I hope to be start blogging about some of the meals that we are eating. Right now it is quite basic, but nutritious and filling. Even Lydia, my picky eater, says "Mommy this is sooooo good" at almost every meal. I think that she realizes that her options are limited.

     I do laundry by hand every morning; clothes one morning, diapers the next and hand them to dry on our porch. The kids are always out playing and there is usually no shortage of playmates.

     Jeneson and I have been able to see a few patients in an unofficial capacity and have, unfortunately, witnessed the cold, hard, reality of the poor health statistics in Sierra Leone and Mokanji.

     There is a short-term team arriving tomorrow that includes 2 pediatricians that we will be able to work with. We are also hoping to meet with the District Medical Officer, the President and Director of Development for Global (they are coming with the team), and the local Community Health Officer to discuss the start of our medical services and how that is going to look. Please pray for these meetings, that all will go well with them.

Goodbyes and the start of our adventure

     With conflicting feelings we said goodbye to many friends and family on Feb 23^rd as we departed for Sierra Leone. While we were sad to leave our family and friends, we were excited to start on this journey that God had started us on 2 ½ years ago. I know that my parents and sister were sad to see us (OK, mostly the kids) go off to a country far, far away with staggeringly poor health statistics and a history of violence and atrocities during the civil war that ended almost 10 years ago. Our friends and church family were sad to see us go, yet proud to be sending off their friends as missionaries. We were blessed with the prayers of many and felt them covering and protecting us as we embarked on our journey.

     You already read about my packing struggles in the previous post. We encountered some misunderstanding regarding our luggage at the airport that succeeded in frustrating us and wasting a bit of time, but eventually got beyond the ticket agent, through security and boarded our first flight. We first flew to Newark. Considering our previous flights to India, this 2 ½ hour flight was a breeze. Once in Newark we quickly found our gate and did not have to wait too long before boarding our second flight. We flew from Newark to London and since this one did not depart until 10pm, once the meal was served and lights turned out on the plane we all fell asleep. Thank God for non-full flights as we were able to spread out a bit and get some rest. Heathrow is a lovely airport, but fortunately we did not have to spend too much time there, just enough to stretch our legs and get ready for our third and final flight. While not any longer than the previous flight, this one seemed a bit longer because the kids did not sleep as much during this flight, but we arrived in Freetown without trouble.

     We travelled much heavier than we have ever had in the past. Previously we tried to limit our carry ons to just a few and our checked baggage to less than our allowance. It was very different this time; we had 5 carry ons (2 rolling suitcases and 3 backpacks) in addition to 2 car seats for the airplane and a gate checked car seat. I knew from my trip to Sierra Leone in the fall that the kids would need car seats once outside of Freetown and this was the best way to get them there. My Dad and I jerry rigged a way that we could hook the two airplane car seats to our rolling suitcases and get through the airports easier. We still had to unhook them to get through security and get onto the plane (too wide for the aisles), but it certainly made transporting them easier. We also took our maximum amount of check baggage plus two more bags.

     Miracle of miracles, all 12 checked bags made it to Freetown. I have not unpacked them yet, so not sure if all the contents made it, but at least the bags did. That was a major worry with travelling with 2 different airlines, 3 flights, through 4 airports. We arrived safely in Freetown and with the help of Pastor Joseph made it safely and smoothly through the airport and to our hotel for our first night’s sleep as a family in Sierra Leone.

Packing for Africa

    Packing to move your family of 5 (soon to be 6) to Africa for at least 2 years was an endeavor that, I readily admit, I was not fully prepared for. I thought that all my previous travel experience, including our 5 month stay in India as a family of 4, gave me significant background for this task.

     Boy was I wrong!

     I thought I could condense our life into 10 checked suitcases. This included some pots and pans and silverware, homeschooling books and supplies for J & L, some medical equipment (including a microscope), and medical books (those suckers are heavy!) for Jeneson and I, enough clothes for 3 girls (our baby due in July will be girl #3!) ranging from newborn to some 5T and a growing boy, a portable crib for S and then the new baby, cloth diapers, toys and activities for the kids, rain boots and sandals for everybody, clothes for Jeneson and I (including maternity and non-maternity clothes for me), and miscellaneous odds and ends (those certainly add up!). Needless to say I was wholly unsuccessful; we ended up taking 2 additional bags and leaving lots behind that I had wanted to take.

     Having this sense of failure at the start of this kind of journey is not a good way to start. The whole time while preparing to pack, packing, and repacking I had this relentless internal struggle: try to make things comfortable for my family and provide for their actual, perceived, and anticipated needs in a remote part of Sierra Leone vs the knowledge that the vast majority of people in Sierra Leone, and certainly in Mokanji do without many of the items that I was packing.

Countdown to Feb 23rd

We have a departure date!! We leave O'Hare International Airport in Chicago to Fly to Freetown, Sierra Leone the evening of February 23rd!

It is all every exciting, yet scary at the same time and very surreal that something that we have been praying, planning, and support raising for for almost 2 1/2 years now is finally becoming reality.

Now for the packing adventure. Needless to say since I have been down for the count with a nasty upper respiratory infection since Jan 27th (the day after we landed back home from India) I really have not done ANY packing. This week will be my turn around week. I have so many plans and visions of what I want to do this week in terms of preparing to pack and actual packing that my head is spinning. I must realize that God has provided thus far, and pray that he just miraculously multiplies the hours in my days. And all this while Jeneson is working his last week of work and taking care of three children!

People often ask us if we are going to ship anything over. It really is quite costly to ship items overseas between the actual shipping cost and then port and custom/duty fees once it arrives in country. You also have to take into account that it takes about 50 days and it would only go as far as Freetown and we are about a 7 hour drive outside of Freetown.

We will limit ourselves to what we are allowed to pack in suitcases on the plane, which may not sound like a lot, but when you have 5 ticketed passengers on an international flight can really add up. We will be allowed to take 200kg worth of luggage (that's 440 pounds!); that is A LOT of luggage. We plan on getting much of our household supplies in Freetown so the biggest weight component of our luggage will be books, both our medical books and homeschooling books for the kids.

How do you pack to move overseas for a couple of years with three children? I'll try to keep you updated as much as I can during these next 17 days (YIKES!!!!!!).

Mumbai, a city of contrasts

To put it simply, Mumbai is a crowded metropolis, and like many large cities there is large economic variability. I think of the Chicago that I am familiar with, from the South Side to the Gold Coast, and the differences in population of these two areas. However, I think the size of Mumbai and the growing economic prosperity of the 'upper' and 'middle' classes here provide a stark contrast to the hard reality of poverty that millions in Mumbai live in.

Previously, there was a smaller subset of Mumbai that lived in the money, mainly the Bollywood elite and business moguls. Now with the burgeoning middle class that has more disposable income the look of Mumbai is changing. Nowhere is this more evident than my in-laws own little neighborhood. Mumbai is divided into neighborhoods similar to the way Chicago is, but then these neighborhoods are divided even further.

My in-laws live in Ghatkopar West, a run of the mill area of Mumbai; nothing special or outstanding about Ghatkopar until a few years ago. You walk out of their building and you have roadside stall selling everything from vegetables to underwear. There are also several small stores selling everything from milk and dry goods to jewelry along with some store front doctors offices. The beginning of 2009 brought big change to Ghatkopar and really put it on the Mumbai map, R City Mall opened up. R City is now the biggest mall in India with four floors of stores including a large food court (KFC, Subway, Dominos, and more), a 9 screen movie theater, an indoor 'ice rink' (actually some sort of tile that you can skate on), and an arcade that has a 6 lane bowling alley. This is a mere 5 minute rickshaw ride from my in-laws.

However, just outside kids are begging, people are living in shanty houses, and others live in a pile of garbage and 'pick' what they can use or resell.

Like I said, a city of contrasts.

Mumbai traffic

This, my friends is a TYPICAL street in Mumbai (Bombay). THIS is why I will never drive here and I think those that do (including my beloved FIL) are crazy. The basic rule is if the vehicle/person fits, that's the way they go. Now granted, there are some roads that have actual center dividers and some sort of order to them, but those are the main roads, not the millions of miles of side roads in the city. The average speed is SLOW. If my FIL happens to be driving and gets the car above 30 km/hr (18mph) she is pleading for him to slow down that he is going too fast.

I will admit that when I first started visiting here, the disorder and congestion of the traffic would drive me crazy and leave me with a sore jaw. You see, I did not want to appear to be visibly stressed and have a death grip on that little handle thing above the door, so I resorted to constantly moving my right foot (imaginary break) and clenching my back teeth. Over the years I have learned to relax and could even fall asleep in the back of the rickshaw if tired enough.

Regardless if you drive a Honda Hero (popular motorcycle here) or a BEST bus (city bus) one thing you have to be aware of is every last inch of your mode of transportation and just how close you can get to the next guy (usually within 6 inches) without hitting him. Rickshaws are a very cool mode of transportation as they are cheap, you can usually find one to take you where you want to go, and they are small enough to maneuver through traffic/people. Despite their small size, we can easily fit our family of 5 in the back of one. However, my real respect and admiration goes to the BEST bus drivers who drive all over the city on streets large and small. You could not pay me enough to drive a bus in Mumbai!