ALLISON CROSS

*This post was published on Brave New Traveler, where I'll be blogging while I'm in Sierra Leone. The title is courtesy of the ever-talented editor and my former co-worker Ian MacKenzie:

“Do you have a husband?” It’s a question I get asked every day, sometimes two or three times.

It’s usually as I ride on the back of a motorbike on my way into town from my house, which is out in the country. Clutching tight to the small handle on the back of the bike, doing my best not to fall off, I’ll lean forward to try and hear the driver as he talks to me from inside his bulky helmet.

“Are you married?” he’ll ask, again.

In the beginning, I was mostly honest. I’d say I wasn’t married, but I’d fib a little and say I had a serious boyfriend back in Canada.

As more and more men asked for my phone number, asked to see me every day and asked to be my Sierra Leonean boyfriend, I upgraded the serious boyfriend to a fiancé. But I soon discovered this didn’t dissuade the constant winks and offers for love, marriage or sex.

The men in Sierra Leone are aggressive. They whistle and hiss at women as they walk the streets and I’m told I get the brunt of the public attention because I’m a foreigner. Some days it’s easy to ignore the calls, but other days a knot will form in my stomach, my cheeks will burn and I’ll long to turn around and release stream of expletives in their direction. But I’ve never done that. Instead I’ll keep my eyes forward and keep walking.

And it isn’t just men who see me on the street. Boys as young as ten lick their lips and call me “baby” as they try to sell me fruit. Men I meet while out working with local journalists will lean very close to me as we talk – too close – and let their hand fall from my shoulder and trail down my back.

Others won’t look me in the eye as we talk, instead letting their eyes roam up and down my body.

Speaking to veteran journalists before I came to Sierra Leone, they warned about the male behaviour, and how it might shock a Canadian like me so accustomed to political correctness. But they counseled me to use the attention to my advantage, and seek out interviews male foreigners would never be able to attain.

Speaking to a local female journalist for advice on how to avoid so much attention, she recommended I placate the men who sought me out, and tell them that although I’d love to spend time with them, I’m committed to my fiancé and to my work.

I was encouraged to laugh about it and throw some humour on the whole situation. I didn’t want to burn any bridges with these men, she told me. I didn’t like this advice. I didn’t like the idea that I had to appease men in order to stop them from harassing me and touching me without my permission.

Some men take disturbing liberties with the bodies and freedoms of women in Sierra Leone. The West African country has extremely high rates of rape, forced and underage marriage, teenage pregnancy and female genital mutilation.

Widows regularly lose their property when their husbands die, after his brothers or children from previous marriages claim it as their own. Sexual violence was used widely as a weapon of war during Sierra Leone’s brutal 11-year civil conflict. But speaking up against abuse hasn’t been a part of the female culture in Sierra Leone. Three laws enacted by parliament in 2007 made domestic abuse and child marriage illegal, but many rural women are still unaware of what their rights are.

Speaking up about abuse can mean women are ostracized by their husbands and exiled from their communities.

None of this is to say many women haven’t successfully entered aspects of public and political life in Sierra Leone. But the liberties men continue to take with women’s bodies are unacceptable to me.

Living abroad requires finding that tricky balance between holding on to your own ideals and adapting to the ideals of your host country. For me, it’s eight months of uncomfortable but generally harmless advances by men. Whether I stand up or not only matters to me and whether I feel offended or unsafe in a certain situation. But there’s much more at stake for a woman in Sierra Leone.

I’m left wondering if it’s better to try and take a stand, to set an example, or to let their fight for equal rights and respect run its own course.

Most journalists know a face-to-face interview is better than one conducted over the phone. The quotes you get are meatier, more detailed. You’re better able to describe what the interviewee is wearing and and how the emotion shows on their face. When working in radio or television, in-person interviews are almost always necessary. I’ve worked mostly in newspaper journalism and have seen how laziness and a lack of resources can keep a journalist behind their desk instead of out in the field. These stories often fail to capture readers. It’s easier and less expensive to do interviews over the phone.

At my radio station in Bo, we have no choice but to conduct our interviews in person. On a purely practical level, everyone here uses a cell phone. Landlines are a rarity. The cell phone reception is atrocious and it’s nearly impossible to have an extended conversation that doesn’t end with the other person hanging up on you. So, doing an interview over the phone would be tricky, never mind the fact that they just don’t have the equipment to tape cell phone conversations. Lugging massive tape recorders that use cassettes (remember those?) the reporters and I set off in the morning in search of stories.

But we don’t hop in a car. We just start walking. Occasionally we’ll grab a motorbike if we’re going far, but the reporters almost always prefer to walk, because it’s cheaper. I’ll ask if it’s a long walk, looking up warily at the sun, and they’ll chuckle and say no. Thirty minutes later, we’ll have arrived at the Bo district council office, and I’ll be drenched in sweat. I quickly learned to bring three survival items: sunscreen, a litre of water and toilet paper, for peeing behind bushes.

I taught them the expression, “Hit the pavement.” They laughed and said it would be more accurate to say, “Hit the dirt road.”

The more we walk together, the more the reporters open up. One reporter told me last week the staff hadn’t been paid in three months, which is disturbingly common here. He told me he hadn’t wanted to tell me, because it was an embarrassment. Another reporter told me what it was like to work as a journalist during Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war.

Earlier this week, one of the reporters, Easmann, took me to the village of Nyagolihun, on the outskirts of Bo. He was there to follow up on a story he’d been following for about two months. Two Chinese companies were blasting nearby for different construction projects and the force of the explosions are damaging homes in the village. With a trail of children in tow, men from the village toured us around, showing us the cracks in their homes and their mosque, which was only recently built. They said pregnant women and the elderly have left the village, because they fear the explosions will make them sick. Easmann did several interviews with people from the village (although he didn’t interview women as well as men as I had suggested). It was clear how upset the people were - upset that their houses were crumbling and that no one was doing anything about it.

We ran into two UN workers who were in the village to investigate the complaints about the blasting. The UN is easy to spot in Sierra Leone. They drive around in shiny white SUVs and wear laminated nametags. They offered us a ride back to town and we happily accepted. I felt a little guilty watching the landscape whisk by, thinking of my slower pace from the morning, as I trudged along under the hot sun. But I didn’t have to worry. I was out again the next day, walking 45 minutes to attend a church service masquerading as a press conference.

The documentary on electronic waste I helped produce aired earlier this week on the show PBS Frontline/World and has received some amazing feedback. Unfortunately I've only seen the first half of it because my Internet here is so painfully slow. But for those who have high-speed broadband Internet, you can stream the documentary here. I promise to post something more substantial on here too. It's been a busy week.

God is everywhere in Sierra Leone. Sometimes he’s Jesus and sometimes he’s Allah, but words praising his existence are plastered all over NGOs, schools, hair salons, stores, restaurants and vehicles. Gospel music blasts from massive, low-quality speakers on the streets. Muslim calls to prayer ring out five times a day. The subject of God tends to surface when people exchange pleasantries. Someone will ask: How-di-body? (Which is Krio for: “How are you?”) The respondent will almost always say, “Body fine. Thank God.” (Body fine means: I’m doing well/fine). There aren’t many ex-patriots living in Bo, and the first ones I met in my first few weeks here were Mormon and Jehovah’s Witness missionaries. When the staircase collapsed at my old apartment, my landlord kept throwing her hands together and praising Allah, claiming it was the work of God that kept me from getting hurt. I think we were just gosh-darn lucky.

Joseph, the news editor at Chris’ radio station (which happens to be a Christian station) has nicknamed me “Wondrous Cross,” which apparently is the name of a hymn. People love my last name here. I say, “Cross – as in cross the street.” And they say, “Cross – as in Jesus on the cross.”

My first night in Freetown, one of our drivers, a loud and joyful man named Lamin, asked me if I was a Christian. I told him that technically I was, as I had been baptized in the Anglican Church. I told him I didn’t practice any religion and that in Canada, people subscribe to many religions but that many subscribe to nothing at all. He leaned towards me, a sober look on his face.

“Muslim. Christian. It doesn’t matter what you are,” he said. “But you have to pick one.”

Most Sierra Leoneans are either Muslim or Christian, while some practice traditional tribal religions. The two religions live fairly peacefully with one another in this country, although there is some pronounced resentment between the two. Occasionally people will remark to me slyly that there is a Muslim “problem” in Sierra Leone. Muslims actually outnumber Christians, but the former aren’t as concerned with recruitment as the latter. I’ve been invited to church on many occasions, and despite being very curious about the services, I’ve always declined. The polite Canadian in me wants to say yes, but I know if I give in to one Sunday service, the invitations will only increase. I have difficulty explaining the fact that I don’t go to church. No reason I give seems to satisfy the people perplexed by the fact that I spend my Sundays at home. I sometimes explain that I wasn’t raised going to church. If I’m feeling brave, I’ll say I don’t agree with the teachings of the Bible. Most people don’t like this, and will launch into a diatribe about how I need God in my life. I’ll explain that I have incredible admiration for the devout and for their willingness to help people and to support each other when they need it. But I try to explain that this respect doesn’t mean I am willing to join them in their faith.

It’s a precarious position to be in, one I’m sure is experienced by people living in their own countries and by people living abroad: to attempt to respect the beliefs of those around you, while firmly holding on to your own.

The TV story my international reporting class produced this year will air next Tuesday, June 23 at 9 p.m. on the PBS show Frontline World. A preview of the story can be seen here. Check your local listings for the availability of PBS in Canada.

The topic is electronic waste. We took a look at what happens to your old computers after you throw them out or recycle them, and tracked actual containers full of "e-waste" all the way from Vancouver to Hong Kong. Our class of ten students and three instructors split into three groups and flew to Ghana, China and India. My team went to Hong Kong and China and we had an incredible, exhausting experience. Most of the e-waste ends up in developing countries, where workers pick apart the toxic machinery, which damages their health and the environment.

Please watch the story for me - as I don't have TV here in Sierra Leone. Feedback on the story is welcome.