Fresh Footsteps Across Old Education Boundaries

My name is Jasmine Dingley and I am seventeen years old. I was recently given the opportunity to visit Sierra Leone with my Nan, as she wanted to visit friends and the school she sponsors. I attend a Steiner school, which is an alternative method of education which focuses on educating the whole child, not just the mind. The references within my reflection to ‘main lesson’ and ‘middles,’ are in relation to my experience of school. As a Society and Culture student, I believed that the experience would give me depth to my studies and an appreciation for other cultures, but what I actually gained was much more; I came back having truly gained insight and life experience. The following text is a reflection on my time in Sierra Leone.

I stepped out of the airport into a wave of dry heat. All around, bodies pressed in on me, smiling, laughing and talking in a language I didn’t understand. The lack of regard for personal space, so unlike the norms of western culture, unnerved me and I had to remind myself to refrain from judging a culture on my own values and beliefs. The feeling of truly being a minority, a lone white face in a sea of black, was alien. Over the next ten days, as I began to put aside the cultural mores and norms that form the basis of my understanding of the world, I gained insight into and appreciation for a culture that is so vastly different to anything I have experienced.

The Sierra Leoneans ability to be content and happy with what little they have is something that touched me, and something that I feel has long been lost in western culture. Consumerism and materialism are values so entrenched in our modern day society that the words ‘wealth’ and ‘status’ are essentially the same thing. The happiness that was evident in the face of so much poverty was truly shocking, I couldn’t comprehend that people could be content with so little.

This became all the more evident on our visit to Goderich Waldorf school in Rokel. The first Waldorf school in West Africa, it is little more than three tarpaulin classrooms held up by sticks and rope. With just over ninety students and three teachers, the school is located in a tiny village where the main trades are fishing and stone breaking. As I stood at the main entrance and looked at the tiny structure that supposedly housed almost a hundred children, I couldn’t help comparing it to my idea of a Steiner school, beautiful buildings, open land and shady trees. This became my main learning curve over the course of my trip, to fully understand that everything is relative to the culture in which it is located. To judge another society on the values and norms of your own is not right, although we subconsciously do it. You have to consciously think about it and make the decision to view everything with unbiased eyes, difficult though this may be. So I looked again, and this time saw the children’s faces, how happy and grateful they were to be there at all, how the lack of classrooms, of proper equipment didn’t matter to them, all that did was that they were there and learning. The teachers were happy to be there and to be working, though they received an incredibly low salary by our standards. Amongst all the vast differences I found many similarities. The days were structured in all too familiar ways, main lesson beginning the morning. The children enjoyed morning tea, and then began middles. This little oasis in the centre of poverty amazed me, and truly changed the way I view the world.

It is hard to describe the feeling of entering a completely different culture with little previous knowledge of the place, to be thrown straight in the deep end so to speak. The capabilities Sierra Leoneans must possess in order to live and survive in such a harsh social climate are hard to believe. Little or no water reaches most residential places, and electricity is temperamental at best. These conditions produce a different race of people, not just in nationality but in their incredible outlook on life. The incredible experience I underwent enabled me to get a glimpse of a culture so vastly different to my own. It truly did change the way I view my own culture. It was an amazing journey and I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to take it.

Women and Children First - by Deidre Homer

Each time I travel, there is something new to learn about a place and the people, so even though I had heard quite a lot about Sierra Leone, to see and experience it had a great impact.

To have some an insight into some of the work that is been done through the Methodist Church in Sierra Leone and other NGOs was a privilege. I was shocked to hear that about half of the GNP of Sierra Leone comes externally from NGOs and other countries.

I visited 3 health related projects whilst staying with Janice and Peter, as well as seeing 5 out of the 6 churches in the Wilberforce circuit, to which they have recently been attached. The contrast between resources and personnel in Salone and the UK was very evident in the health projects, which is not surprising given the huge health needs of Sierra Leone country. In Salone, a woman has a 1 in 21 lifetime chance of dying due to pregnancy or childbirth compared to 1 in 4700 in the UK (Unicef 2008), and the maternal mortality ratio is 970 per 100,000 births compared to 12 per 100,000 in the UK.

The Aberdeen Womens’ Centre is situated in Aberdeen, an area fairly close to the beach. This charity is supported by Freedom from Fistula Foundation. It provides healthcare for pregnant women, runs a daily children’s clinic for the local community, and is a centre for the correction of vesicovaginal fistulae. This is a condition caused by prolonged labour that results in a connection between the vagina and bladder or bowel, causing faecal and urinary incontinence, and thereby isolation, rejection and stigmatisation of those women who are affected. Women stay at the clinic for a number of weeks whilst being prepared for the surgery and being nursed afterwards, are offered basic literacy instruction and health promotion, as well as opportunities to share fellowship and stories with other women . For more information see http://www.freedomfromfistula.org.uk/fistula_clinic.html .

In the children’s clinic , which I sat in on, there was one doctor, a team of assistants, and over 40 children to be seen that morning. Basic measurements such as height , weight and temperature were taken before each child saw a doctor, and patients were triaged with the most unwell being seen first. At least a couple of children were referred on to a nearby hospital for inpatient treatment and x rays if needed. Tests such as a full blood count and a rapid test for malaria was available at the centre and results were returned as the doctor saw more patients. I left at 13.30 and the doctor still had at least 10 patients left to be seen. The WHO recommended guidelines were used, which included everyone with a fever being tested for malaria. If a child wasn’t too unwell with malaria then a test dose of oral medication would be given at the clinic and then after observation, he or she would continue the treatment at home.

The next project visit was fortuitous as Peter developed a dental problem and the nearest dentist, other the Mercy Ship’s dental clinic, was in the UK next year. Fortunately he was able to access some temporary treatment at the clinic, which had been set up in a compound near to the docks. This again was highly organised, with patients being registered and then waiting to be seen in a large waiting room. As they waited for treatment, mostly dental extractions, and after singing some choruses , 2 staff members spoke of how to look after your teeth. In Sierra Leone there are only 2 dentists per million of the population, compared to 6000 per million in the USA.

The Mercy Ship is staffed by volunteer medical staff drawn from many countries, who spend several weeks working both on the boat and on land. This is the 5^th time that the boat has visited Sierra Leone and it will be there for 10 months until November 2011. It is working in partnership with the Aberdeen Women’s Centre. As well as providing free healthcare, it also offers training to local staff to improve long-term health care and build capacity. The ship has 6 operating theatres and 78 beds, as well as land -based eye and dental clinics. Potential patients who might benefit from treatment such as cleft palate repair and removal of cataracts are scouted out ahead of the arrival of the Mercy Ship by clinics set up beforehand. Here is a link to read more of their work in Sierra Leone.http://www.prweb.com/releases/Mercy/Ships/prweb8152864.htm and see also http://www.mercyships.org.uk/ .

On Good Friday I was very pleased to renew my acquaintance with Lillian Lahai, who I met at the last World Assembly of the World Federation of Methodist and Uniting Church Women held in South Korea 5 years ago. Lillian runs a small clinic funded by the Methodist Church, which offers care for pregnant women. It can accommodate up to 6 inpatients as well as seeing outpatients for antenatal care and common ailments. Unfortunately the need for antenatal care and care during and after labour is great in Sierra Leone. With poor maternal health and high infant mortality, the government has gone some way in trying to improve this situation and since April 2010 free medical care for pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and children under 5 years old has been made available. However, when the government announced this plan they forgot to include or liaise with faith based organizations, who provide a fair proportion of health services. Lillian was delighted that finally, a year later, her clinic will get government funding to provide trained midwives (she is the only trained midwife presently), and funding so that those entitled to free care will no longer be charged, and medication and emergency drugs will be provided. I sat in with Lillian at an antenatal clinic, which began with an education and health promotion session , before the women were seen individually. I especially enjoyed the simile of a woman’s womb being like an overused handbag, that is in danger of splitting open if too many babies have been delivered from it.

The reality of MDG 5 came home to me as we saw a woman with massive swelling of her legs and abdomen. She had been for a scan, but there was so much fluid that we couldn’t hear the baby’s heart beat. Lillian sought advice on management of this patient from medical staff at a local hospital. I was saddened to hear that for whatever reasons, less than 2 weeks later, first the baby and then the mother had died. In the UK both mother and baby would almost certainly be alive now. The reasons why so many mothers die are complex but I only hope that provision of free maternal care will lead to better uptake of antenatal monitoring and hopefully prevent some deaths. However in a country where most folk live in poverty, on less than a dollar a day, problems such as lack of food, difficult access to clean water and the risk of malaria inevitably will continue to affect the health of the nation.

All of the projects visited seek in different ways to empower people to live positively and to make the best of their situation. I was humbled to see how medical staff, often in difficult circumstances, were doing their very best to help their patients, and I greatly admire their ability to keep on going, whatever happens.

I’m very glad to have had the opportunity to visit Sierra Leone and will hold the country and people in my prayers, as they move forward from their celebration of 50 years of independence.