Sierra Leone, Peace Corps ... and Neyveli, "Anantha Vikatan" ...?

A student wrapping up her studies will, along with her husband, soon head out to Sierra Leone as a Peace Corps Volunteer couple.  What a wonderful experience that will be!

As I was driving home back from work, I kept thinking about it.

I was a kid, perhaps not even ten years old, when I first heard about a country named "Sierra Leone."

In the early and late 1970s,  a number of Indian professionals headed to various African countries that were newly independent and beginning to put together their own plans for economic development.  One day, dad said that he was seriously considering an opportunity in Sierra Leone.  I bet I was only eight or nine then and had no idea about this country.  In a rather primitive atlas, I located Sierra Leone and ... I think this was the beginning of what has become a life long fascination to understand different places on the planet, and to also learn about them by visiting them.

For various reasons, dad didn't follow-up on that.  Those were also the years, I recall, that Manian wrote about his travels in African countries in the Anantha Vikatan.  It was exciting for me as a kid to realize that there was one huge world outside the small little town where I lived.  A couple of years later, a student joined our class--Belliappa had some interesting stories about Kenya thanks to the couple of years of living there because of his dad's job.  Hmmm... I wonder where Belliappa is now.  Anyway, it was in Manian's travelogues that I read that he got a certificate from the airline for having gone to the other side of the equator.  Travel to far away places was such a rarity then, I suppose.

After all those exciting childhood years, and a few more in the US, I had in one of my classes, when I taught in Bakersfield. a student from Sierra Leone.  Crispin was one good looking guy.  How good looking?  One day Crispin came to my office to plan out his academic schedule. Less than a minute after he left, the department secretary rushed in to my office.  This good humored middle aged White woman said something like this: "Sriram, I noticed all these days that every girl who comes to meet you is beautiful.  But, I didn't know you had extremely handsome male students too" and pretended to fan herself!

Crispin was more than merely good looking.  Well built, with ample hair on his head, he had an intensity about him and a deep voice to go with that.  And, in the classroom, a very quiet and no-nonsense guy.

It was a class where I had quite a few foreign students, which was rather a unique experience.  From Russia, Jamaica, and a few more that I don't recall now.  Given that there were so many foreigners, I invited them to talk about their countries to the class.

The girls came all prepared with their Powerpoint files full of photos and information.  Of course!  Crispin was the only male student.  He slowly and confidently walked up to the front and had the students all attentive simply through his presence and his voice.

He said he didn't have any photos, but wanted to talk to the class, particularly the females, about diamonds.  And then he briefed them about "conflict diamonds" and the chaos in Sierra Leone.  As he started talking, his eyes became redder and redder, and tears started rolling down his cheeks.  Here was this guy, tall and well chiseled, with a voice to match as well, and in tears over the mad conflict and the destruction of lives and property.  One of the very few emotional moments that I have experienced in the classroom.

Not too long after that, I relocated to where I am now.  All these years later, I now run into a student who will soon leave for Sierra Leone--a country that was quite a catalyst in my life.  Very dramatic is this long running connection with a country that I hope to visit some day.