Stories and Photos Bring Sierra Leone to Montague

Marina Goldman is just back from Sierra Leone, with stories to share and photos to show. We got a chance to see and hear about her trip, and about an organization she supports tonight at a party she had at her house in Montague. She made ground nut soup, and with a full house of neighbors and friends, we learned about some of the frustrations she experienced in a country that was wracked with warfare and civil unrest and is just now coming back to a semblance of normalcy. Many of the people in the photos were missing limbs and legs, victims of the terrible rash of violence that turned kids into killers of neighbors and relatives. Nowadays, there are former soldiers and former rebels, and nobody really knows who was who.

Marina was in the Peace Corps during the ’80s, and a few months ago she returned to the same village of Kabala where she had spent her earlier years. Many of the people she knew were still there, and they congratulated her on the fact that she was no longer skinny…they said she looked well fed and they appreciated that. She showed us photos during the party that illustrated the rough roads, and the lives lived in a country that ranks at the very bottom of nearly every chart.

Female circumcision is still regulary practiced in the village, and the only progress is a movement to use clean razors and some other sanitary measures. Malarial mosquitoes still plague nearly all of the villagers, and long lines outside the clinics are full of patients with this illness. Marina said that people are skeptical about using the newly built hospitals, since transport is so difficult, and most prefer to stay in the villages and use tribal remedies.

The women do most of the work, and the men often have more than one wife, but do little except drive around on motorbikes and drink.There is very little of an economy, so people for instance stash large amounts of cash under their beds, since there are no banks in which to cash checks or exchange money, in the villages.

She wants to go back…because the West Africa Foundation has lots of work to do there. She helped raise money and brought five boxes of medicine and vaccines to a clinic in the remote bush. She took her husband Josh by surprise when she said she wanted to return to Sierra Leone as early as January. But he knows that to his midwife life partner, this is what’s important. So he’ll surely be as supportive as he was during her last long trip to a place so very far away.