Monday, August 11, 2008

Impressive driving!

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a picture/video, but I did see some very impressive driving last night, imagine a road and let's say it's running north-south. There's 1 lane in either direction, it's a pretty busy road and not really wide enough to do proper manoeuvring without someone getting really annoyed and leaning on their horn for longer than is polite. I'm travelling south. There's a traffic jam in the other direction- for all the traffic heading north. A car travelling north suddenly sees the tail end of the traffic jam- did I mention this all happened at night?- and he wants to avoid the traffic jam. So, instead of trying to turn round, he manoeuvres his car to be on the 'wrong' side of the road (ie where all the traffic's heading south, while he's still facing north) engages reverse and drives at a 'normal' pace reversing in a southerly direction along the road for a long enough distance to make it pretty impressive before reversing into a side street and turning around properly so he's able to join the traffic heading south with the car facing the normal direction and heads off to try and find a back-route round the traffic jam that he'd managed to avoid in his journey north. It's just a pity I wasn't able to take a video of it because it was all very impressively done and not something I've ever seen really tried in the UK.

The rains are back, although they do seem to time themselves fairly well (or not)- sun during the week and then puring rain at the weekend- ah well, I won't be ending up my time here with much of a sun tan!

NPA- the national power authority has really impressed me- we had power from at least 8:30pm on Friday evening until 7:30am this morning- a whole weekend with power!!! This is (as far as I can remember) the first time that we have had constand power for so long- which is absolutely astonishing. I wasn't at home the entire time, but whenever I was at the house, we had power- I really hope that this is a sign of things to come in SL as it makes life here so much easier and nicer- especially when it's raining so hard you just don't want to go outside. This may not seem a big thing to most people in most countries, but when power is as sporadic as I've been used to here, it's really quite wonderful to have electricity on in the middle of the day.

We did a new walk this Saturday- through the middle of the town. Most people stayed at home (enjoying the electricity!) but it was a good chance to go at a slower pace than you normally would through some parts of the town (ie foot rather than car). I don't think it's going to be a walk we do a lot of the time- walking down Wilkinson road with all the pollution from the traffic is probably not as good for your lungs as wandering through the forest/jungle on the mountains, but it was good fun for a different experience and it was flat, which given the lack of exercise I've done recently was much appreciated by my legs!

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Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Back in Sweet Salone

So far there’s been no real rain since I arrived, although I’m told there was a bit of rain in Freetown just before we landed at Lungi (as evidenced by the large pools of water).

I had a full compliment of choices on how to get to Freetown from Lungi last night- hovercraft, helicopter or ferry. I still haven’t used the hovercraft, although I’m told it’s a pretty decent journey and before I leave I do intend to do so, but I was tempted by the swiftness of the helicopter (even waiting around in the heliport for a bit didn’t delay us much) and so I was home by 9:30pm, where awaited another pleasant surprise- NPA was on. Not only was NPA on, it stayed on until at least 8:10am this morning, when I left for work! I’m hoping that this will be characteristic of my last few months in Sierra Leone, but I’ll try not to get my hopes up too much. However, considering that I wasn’t particularly excited about coming back to the dysfunctional lifestyle that has characterised much of my time here, a swift journey home from the airport as well as power on the whole evening, it was something that definitely cheered me up a bit!

The big news here at the moment is the landing of a cocaine plane, which landed on the apparently unlit runway of Lungi airport and then taxied to a corner of the airport far away from the terminal, a Landrover then rushed to the plane and picked up the people on board and fled. Lots of people were arrested in connection with this and the Minister of Transport and Aviation has now been relieved of his position, from what I’ve heard, it’s suspected (by the Freetown rumour-mill) that he and or his brother were closely involved in this saga. The President has sworn to bring to justice all those responsible for this, although critics are expecting him to try and protect the former Minister. All told, it will probably continue for a long time as each piece of the puzzle is carefully picked over, I hope that if heads high up were involved that they are rolled as this may eventually bring people to have more faith and confidence in the SL legal system as one where justice is done to all.

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