New Beginnings

Appi Nu Yia we no die oh! Tell God tenki   fo we lif O¹. So it is January 1, 2015, the start of a fresh new year. There are lots of resolutions flying right, left and centre. Some of these resolutions will die by January 7^th , other’s by July 1^st and they very luck one’s will live to see December 31^st 2015. Regardless I say go for it my people, go for it!

 Hi, Kushe, Buwa, Seke ²! My name is Baindu and one of my new year’s resolution is to start blogging.  I have been making this specific resolution since 2011, but every year I make up excuses and never get to it. Actually sometime in 2012, I did start a blog that I never published (side eyes myself).  So here I am in 2015, four years later with my first blog post on the first day of the year. Better late than never, I say.

Looking back through 2014, I have to say it was one of the toughest years for me. It started off with a bang. I was off to my Mother land, Sierra Leone (proud salone titi for life) for an all-expense paid four months internship with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation. It was an exciting, challenging and great learning experience for me, in a way it was one of the most fulfilling things I have yet to do (watch out for a full post about this experience).  The first quarter of 2014 was great, I got to see my family, hung out with old friends, made new friends, network with people in my field and made a lot of great memories.

The second and third quarter of 2014 was when wahala³ began. An Ebola epidemic broke out in Sierra Leone a couple of weeks after I returned to Canada to finish up my MPH degree. Shortly after I lost a very close loved one and that is how hell broke loose for me personally and for my county as a whole.  The next couple of months saw me at my lowest and darkest time. I battled with depression, anxiety, stress and panic attacks. You see, as a born and raise Salone⁴ girl who had lived through a civil war and personally know people who had experienced and survived those hellish times without any counselling, therapy, shrink sessions or whatever name you call it; I had always thought things like depression and anxiety and the need to seek therapy were first world problems (oh to be young and naive).  For this reason I was reluctant to seek help and instead chose to withdraw and isolate myself from everyone and everything around me. When I really had to interact with people, I put on a normal front and acted like everything was okay. I kept telling myself, that I will snap out of the funk I was experiencing because that was what strong African people do. Oh how wrong I was, because it only got worst.  This negatively affected my physical, mental and emotional health, as well as my spiritual life, my finances, my academics and my life as whole.

I sought professional help in the last quarter of 2014 and started a weekly therapy session. My first session was super awkward. There I was your “typical” African girl, very skeptical about therapy and naturally not very open with expressing personal feelings to a stranger,   sitting across from a middle aged white man who wanted me to share and talk to him about my feelings. A knife could cut through our awkwardness but guess what?  Yes you guessed it… We made it through and I eventually got to open up and he was able to help me in so many ways. With the help, support, prayers and guidance from my mother and the rest of my family back in Sierra Leone along with , my  Canadian family,   my church family,  friends  and  my very supportive supervisor, I am doing  much  better now than I was several months ago.

Even through the dark and tough times, 2014 made me realize how lucky I am to have such an amazing support system. I learnt that there is no shame in acknowledging and seeking help for mental disorders such as anxiety, depression, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder etc., because these thing can affect anyone regardless of race, age, gender and ethnicity. I also learnt that seeking help and opening up to others is not a sign of weakness and that sometimes even the strongest  people need others to cope through tough times.  Most of all I learnt to love and appreciate family, friends and loved ones every day because you never know what tomorrow brings.  As we venture into the new year, Ebola still continues to ravage Sierra Leone and  I am still battling with many of 2014's trials but I remain hopeful that 2015 will be better than 2014.

Cheers to a better 2015 and to many more blog posts. It is going to get real up in here, watch out.

Tata for now,

Lady B

1 -      Popular Sierra Leonean  Krio song, sang on New year’s day

2 -      Saying Hi in several Sierra Leonean languages

3 -      Troubles/ difficulties

4 -       Colloquial name for Sierra Leone