Many of you wrote back after my last email (“Vanessa Without Borders, now 33% bigger!”) something along the lines of the following:

“Anyhoo, um, i don't think you can just write an email to the entire free world saying that you're no longer with the NGO you started out with and you're now there independently. WE NEED MORE DETAILS!!! what will you be doing there, and what will you do for money, etc? how come you left the other org? how did you find the house? please tell me more.”

And I think that’s a very natural and decent line of questioning, so I’ll try to explain:

I left the organization I came to Sierra Leone with mainly because the funding for my particular part of the project (to design and implement an HIV/AIDS media campaign using sport and play etc) was held up indefinitely in a USAID/ Non-Governmental Organization bureaucratic black hole. What this meant for me was that I was doing a lot of nothing, a lot of data entry, and a lot of work intended to keep me busy until the funding came through.

The truth is that I was terribly bored, and this country is too phenomenal and holds the potential for far too many amazing experiences to spend one’s time here being bored. It’s just seemed wrong. Sacrilegious, to put it dramatically.

And what will I do here now? How will I make money? Very good question. I have had a bit of thought on that topic when I’m not too busy being scared shitless about what’s next.

I’m thinking something along the lines of: become a freelance reporter/correspondent, spend a few years traveling to some incredibly surreal places, write some devastating articles that change the course of the world for the better, meet characters that you wouldn’t be able to find in even the most twisted films, eventually pen a screenplay based on my experiences and direct a movie that is a critical success and maybe makes some money, too. I may even star in it.

In lieu of that, and more importantly, because there are really fascinating things happening here in Sierra Leone, especially in conjunction with justice and truth and the war, i.e. the Special Court (http://www.sc-sl.org/) that is trying some of the people thought to be most responsible for the atrocities committed during the war, I’d like to stay on and work there. I’ll give an update on that front when I know more, and if I’m allowed to write anything about it.

I’m moving again, as well, and once I figure out how to describe my new house’s location, I’ll let you all know. All I know so far is that it is located in the New England section of town, which seems quite fitting given that I’ve spent much of my childhood in an eponymous stateside location.

Visitors who show up on my doorstep will not be turned away.