Project SIerra Study Tour- 2nd day

Reporter- for the Study Tours- Andrea Mills, SI Representative to the UN New York

"The second day of trip is our project visit to Bo. Bo is Sierra Leone's "second city". We headed out for a four hour ride to Bo after a morning information session about Hope and Homes including confidentiality restrictions on photographing children.


We traveled in three SUVs with the third carrying a mechanic. I wondered why the SUV with the mechanic was always last, until our SUV clutch broke down. We coasted for a while until we came to a stop about 15 minutes outside of Bo. Luckily we were able to pile into the other SUVs and head to the project. It was bit crowded, but we all fit in.


As we continued our journey to the project, we were actually stopped by a police roadblock. All I was thinking was we were going to be in trouble with all these people piled into one SUV! We rolled down the window, the police officer looked in and began to laugh hysterically. I don't think it was something he could ever have expected -- a car full of Soroptimists! Thanks to Suba giving her beautiful smile we all avoided jail.


After our long journey, we were greeted by the most wonderful welcome at our Bo project. We had over 40 young women dancing singing and welcoming us in a performance. They even pulled us up to dance. During the dance, one "very rowdy" Soroptimist named June Gabbitas started "shaking her booty". We all tried to keep up with her and so did the young women, but she won out on the "booty" contest. We have the pictures to prove it.


Lois Kamara, Programme Manager -- Kissy and Bo Urban Projects, and Saidu Thoronka, Bo Project Manager, gave us an overview of the program. They are doing wonderful things with women. We were also treated to a wonderful lunch and tour of the project.


After that, Hawa our tour guide from Hanci, took us all around the city to meet women that were learing job skills with local businesses. We visited several businesses in Bo. One is interning at a hotel and others are becoming seamstresses. I am most impressed with how the local community is helping to give the teenage mothers the opportunity to be interns with some staying on full time after they graduate from the program.


After our tour, we took a short journey to our hotel where we found out that three of us would have the opportunity to be interviewed live on Bo's Kiss 104.5 radio program to talk about Soroptimist's partnership with Hope and Homes and Hanci. Suba Partiban, Alison Sutherland and "little me" jumped at the chance. It was wonderful. We ended a very long day talking live to the citizens of Bo about all the wonderful work we were doing with the young women of Sierra Leone and around the world.


We knew that we had a big audience because Kiss 104.5 in Bo is the most popular and listened to station in the area. Radio is the most frequently used form of communicating news and information due to the high illeteracy problems in Sierra Leone.


Quite an eventful day! And the adventure continues....


Best regards,
Alison