Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2019-044
Christine "Christie" Pearson Musa served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sierra Leone from 1981 to 1983 in an inland fisheries program. Musa trained for 10 weeks in a self-directed program, learning fish farming in Oklahoma. Training continued in-country near Makeni where she worked on local fish cultivation, studied cultural characteristics, and learned the Krio language. She was assigned to Yarya, a village in Sando Chiefdom in the northeastern Kono district of Sierra Leone, where she introduced fish farming. She convinced the locals to let her help dig ponds by supplying so many shovels that they ran out of people. She learned how to navigate the basics from nearby Peace Corps Volunteer Evelyn Higa. When Musa fetched the closest medical professional, a pharmacist, to save the life of a village woman, she had no idea that he would eventually become her husband. At the time of this interview, Musa was president of the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of New Jersey. Interviewed and recorded by Patricia A. Wand, November 5, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).