Nenya.net

The weekends just get busier...

Or so it can seem, they can also be somewhat stressful- such as managing to lock myself and my housemate out of our house, we eventually managed to get in again but not without a huge amount of effort and a similar amount of stress and this was before we had our the Krio lesson (which in the event went pretty well).

Power has gone again- there’s a problem with our connection to National Power, but hopefully will manage to get this all sorted soon but can be annoying at times.

Saturday was amazing! We were invited down to Tokeh beach (about and hour and a half’s drive from where we live) to join the 700 marines in their leaving party. By ‘we’ in this instance I mean about 10 girls who I’m friends with. We were very helpfully given a lift there and back by some of the IMATT advisors stationed in Freetown. It was a totally surreal experience and a very crowded beach (compared to the normal deserted nature of the area- see pictures which I hope to put on). There was a dance troupe engaged to perform some local dancing and what I saw was kind of cool but they didn’t do a formal performance as such. There was free drink (the Fanta here is a slightly more fluorescent colour than at home but tastes good and drinking something like that means you’re less likely to get so tired compared to just drinking water which doesn’t have the added sugar,) and free food (I know, I still haven’t kicked student habits yet!) and friendly people to chat to, but the best part of the day was when we took a trip down the beach on the front of a tank type vehicle, to be more accurate it was a BARV- a beach recovery armoured vehicle (there should be some pictures on my blog at some point) also known affectionately as a hippo. The handling was very impressive and it manoeuvres pretty quickly along the sand. It also goes into the water up to the front window (in order to rescue any vehicles that don’t quite make it onto the beach during a beach landing). Since it is/can be used in the water we did get pretty wet but had a brilliant time.

In the late afternoon, when all the marines had headed back to ship, we went down the beach to a house owned by a friend of many of the friends we were with. Here we enjoyed a swim in the rain and I had my first taste of lobster (it’s nice but I’m not sure what all the fuss is about and why it’s quite as expensive as it is in Europe).

Saturday evening/night involved two birthday parties and meant we didn’t get back till 4, so getting up the next morning was more challenging than normal, but I did make it to the service on time. In the afternoon we went back to Tokeh beach for a couple of hours to chill and relax and enjoy the beautiful white sands with a lot fewer people on it. A couple of us also swam out to the helipad in the sea. Sometime ago there was a Club-Med resort on the beach but this is long gone and all that remains is a helipad in the sea (the fairly long bridge out to it was destroyed long since) and a greying, empty building which has had everything stripped from it. But I can so understand why people would pay to come here and enjoy the pristine sands, the warm water and the amazing mountainous (well, largish forested hills at the very least) as a stunning holiday destination.

Labels: beach, electricity, tokeh

posted by Nenya @ 12:30 pm