Trading in New Zealand’s easy lifestyle for daily power outages and a social life that revolves around a petrol station takes determination and good humour – something Annisha Vasutavan has plenty of.
The 27-year-old has been living in impoverished Sierra Leone for two years working for a developmental NGO.
She started off living in rural Kenema, but now lives in Freetown, working as a programme officer for the NGO GOAL, supporting their country programmes in water and sanitation, health and children's empowerment.
Annisha Vasutavan at a school she has worked with in Kenema. Photo: Supplied
You've had an interesting career to date – how did you end up in Sierra Leone?
I always wanted to come to Sierra Leone, having learnt about it in geography and knowing about the impact of the war on the community and conflict resolution.
This opportunity came up to work with this local community-based organisation. I applied and it worked out. I moved out three weeks after coming back to Christchurch from London. I had considered staying home for a while, but I got this.
It's a big step going from major global capitals New York and London, to impoverished, war-torn Sierra Leone. How are you finding the difference?
The biggest difference was when I was living in Kenama. I arrived and we were in the middle of the dry season, so there was no national power and in the house I was living we didn't have running water. All the water we had came from the well across the road, so we had to store it in containers.
Culturally, living in Kenema was a lot different. It's a much smaller town and it's more rural than Freetown ... There was one main street and one hangout spot so everyone, whether you were a local or an expat, would hang out at the one petrol station.
It's a bit bizarre but that's where you go if you want to have a drink: there's the one club next door, so you hang out at the petrol station first and have a few drinks then go to the club next door. It’s all a bit weird but it's a funny story to tell people that's what you do on a Friday or Saturday night.
In terms of day-to-day living it's very basic. There's no stove so you use a charcoal stove outside. Cooking two-minute noodles doesn’t take two minutes, it takes one hour, just because I'm rubbish at starting a fire, and it takes forever to boil. When you finally get your two-minute noodles, you end up savouring them.
Like any Westerner who has travelled to Africa, you probably stand out wherever you go. How do locals react to seeing you?
They know you are a foreigner right away. People aren't staring in a mean way; they come ask where you're from, and they tell me now I look like one of the other tribal groups who have Indian heritage as well, so that starts a conversation about where I'm from. They are curious because they don’t see that many different types of foreigners coming in.
They see an Indian person working in the NGO sector, and they are a bit confused because there's a small Indian community in Kenema, who deal with the brewery and distillery production of alcohol, so they assume I'm the wife of one of the guys, which is quite hilarious.
And what about visits back to Western culture – do you get a sense of reverse culture shock?
There's the whole thing about the power and TV. I had gotten used to not having power all the time or not watching TV, then suddenly there it is! I wasn't quite sure what to do with it.
For us here, in Sierra Leone, when you have power you charge everything you can charge; when I have it all the time in New Zealand, I'm not quite sure what to do. When I went home for Christmas last year, I was sitting at home thinking I could watch TV but it didn't seem natural any more.
And what's next in your exciting life?
My contract is until June next year, so I will see what happens at the end of that, or what interesting adventures might come up. I'm keen to stay on here. It’s a very interesting place – no two days are the same.
I wake up in the morning not sure what to expect. I like living like that.
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