My Family

My family has been so great to me! I am so happy I am going to live with them for a year. The family is very big. I made a family tree the first day I got here. It helped me to quickly learn everyone’s name. So here is my family:

My Dad= Mustapha B. Kanneh. He is a staff member of the NGO and we work very closely together. We often work late into the night at the house after we leave the office. He is also teaching me the Mende and Krio languages. He also taught some ex-combatants how to do carpentry and masonry. He has a workshop behind the house that he lets some former students use to build things.

My Mom (second wife) =Wata

Wata and Mustapha have had 3 children:

Memuma (We all call her drai-yai or dry eye, meaning she very bold, not scared of anything ) (4 years old)

Abu (6)

Mustapha (but we call him Dende, meaning big one) (8)

Wata has another son:

My Brother: Shaka (I call him Tupac Shaka, like the late rap artist Tupac Shakur) (10)
All the children are very smart (they say clever here). Mustapha has to pay many school fees for all his children, there are no free schools here. He even has to pay more for Dende and Abu to go to private school. It should be worth it, both of them get very good grades.

Wata has a sister:

My Aunt=Ajah Nenehiye (nay-nay-eye)
Ajah Nenehiye has 3 children:

My cousin= Mohamed

My cousin= Bobor
My cousin= Limin

Ajah Nenehiye has 3 grandchildren:

Mohamed (the second one) (21)
Limin (the second one) (20)
Backarin (3)

Mustapha’s first wife is named Memuma.

Mustapha and Memuna had 1 child who stays with us:

My older brother and good friend= Abdul (35)

Abdul has his fiance Hawa. (22) She takes VERY good care of me, always cooking me delicious food and doing all my laundry, and cleaning me room, etc. She formerly stayed in Guinea during the war and now is receiving the education she was unable to get during those years.

Hawa and Abdul have a daughter:

My granddaughter= Hawa (another Hawa)

Abdul has a sister:

My sister= Makinnie (or Antionette). She stays here while attending school in the town of Bo,

the second city and very close to Kenema.

Abdul has a brother, whose sister stays with us:

My sister-in-law= Rosalie

Rosalie has a son:

My nephew= Abdul (I call him Big Abdul since his is a very big boy, he will be much bigger than

me) (2)

They also adopted 4 children because they not longer have care-givers:

My sister= Amie (9)
My brother= Albert Mustapha (13)
My brother= Lasanah (13)
My brother= Abraham (23)

I am friends with many other of the youth who live around the house, but that is enough names for you now. I hope this gives you a better understanding of my day-to-day life and now if you call and I refer to people you can know who I talking about. My next posting will by about the staff members my NGO, the Centre for Research, Training, and Programme Development (CRTPD)

This family is making sacrifices for me so I can work here. I want everyone to understand that the work that I am doing would not be possible if not for this.
Here is a picture I took this morning of the whole family: