Nenya.net

The weather report

2008-10-03T15:33:00.003Z

I totally forgot to add this in to the previous post- hitting the publish button can do wonders for your memory!! ah well, instead of editing it, I'll add this post as well- I will not quickly forget, but I'm not sure whether I'll miss or not the weather and traffic reports on the radio- as far as I can tell, it's identical every day. In the evenings everyone is always 'heading home after a hard day's work' and traffic is moving slowly in the same places all the time- it would be a surprise if traffic was free flowing given the number of vehicles on the roads at the moment!

The other light amusement from the radio is the weather report; at the end of the rainy season (ie now), in the evenings the weather report for 'overnight and into the morning' usually mentions the possibility of scattered showers and a 60% chance of rain- even when it's actually raining at the time of the report. Although last night I did hear a slight change- there was a 90% chance of rain and it really did rain- the rainy season was back with a vengeance, despite the fact that we're currently trying to enter the thunder and lightening season (I'm not sure if there's a formal name for it), but it's apparentely one of the reasons for the name Sierra Leone (Lion Mountains) is beacuse the loud rumbles of thunder in the mountain sounded like lions roaring at each other.

Anywaym that's enough of a postscript for now, am sure will think of more to add soon!

Looking Back, Tying Up

2008-10-03T15:14:00.002Z

I’ve been in SL for 2 years and my time here is coming to an end. I need to sit back and reflect think on all the things that I’ve learnt, realised and begun to understand during me time here, once I’ve done that I’ll try to do a final update to my blog, but until that’s done, I’ve been thinking of things that I will (and won’t) miss when I leave here and I’ve thrown them in together- the only order is the one in which I wrote them down:

- The fantastic traffic safety sign- I’m lacking pictures, since I’m normally driving when I go past, but the captions are great (admittedly some of them are on one of the roads with more precarious edges than you’d generally find in Europe):
o Hug Children at home, Belt them in the car
o No Safety, Know Injury, Know Safety, No Injury
o Drive Safely…Today Heaven can wait
- Driving home over the hills in the evening and having a beautiful view down to the sea and being able to watch the sun set into the sea in a myriad of beautiful colours- one time recently, when I’d just finished playing squash, I walked out towards the beach and the sea looked as if it were made of molten gold/bronze
- The potholes in the major roads and the totally potholed other roads
- The totally crazy taxi drivers-including the ones that drive around at night with no headlights on in order to save fuel, or only have one headlight that works, so use that on full beam, or have decided to have the ‘coolest’ car on the road, full blinged out with loads of lights and stickers and toys and ski racks (yes- even tho’ I don’t think SL has ever experienced snow)
- Being able to buy fresh bread from the car window (as well as fruit, sweets, toiletries, DVD’s, school books, fried plantain, new windscreen wipers and other car accessories/essentials, boards games and probably anything else you can think of). I was recently offered two cows horns while I was driving by- with bits of the brains still attached in the middle, I wasn’t keen, which prompted one of the wits who I was driving to question why didn’t I want to buy the ‘bloody’ cows horns?  I wonder…perhaps it was the anticipated smell, the likelihood of not being able to get it through customs and the fact that it really wasn’t something I had a hankering to put on a mantle piece…?
- The amazing beaches- beautiful, generally very clean, the water warm and clear and being able to eat freshly caught and BBQ’d fish with locally cooked rice and sauce after having enjoyed a swim in the sea.
- Being overcharged for anything because my nose is the wrong shape (or perhaps it’s something to do with the colour of my skin?) and then trying to barter prices down to something a bit more reasonable… well, sometimes!
- Having to buy cooking gas from the side of the road and hoping that it has been filled up enough such that it’s worth what you paid for it
- The highly erratic electricity and the ‘fun’ of depending on small generators for everything most of the time
- The friendliness of everyone here, especially when you need help or assistance
- The crazy rain, which totally soaks you if you get caught out in it for even a couple of seconds- my umbrella decided that it had had enough by the end of yesterday and now barely works- I’m hoping that the rain stays away long enough that I won’t have to get a new one before I leave! It turns roads into rivers/car parks and has caused some people to die due to the ferocity of the water as it heads down to the sea, sometimes catching people and washing them out to sea
- Coming home to a clean house several times a week, where even the ironing has been done- wow that’s brilliant and not something I can expect to happen for many years, if ever again
- Beach bars where you can sit and watch the sun go down over the sea in the early evening
- The interesting work ethic- some people work really hard and are very good at what they do, some just drift by waiting on handouts from others (ok- this could be any society in the world), but when you see young guys just sitting around during the day on the side of the road, just passing the time with each other, scepticism creeps in about whether they really want to work. It’s also interesting to see in offices how many people aren’t being that productive and also the extent to which friends and family ‘drop-in’ for a chat and sometimes with a request for assistance in the middle of the working day. Also if there’s no power in the offices, work can be difficult- e.g. computers won’t work and neither will a/c or fans and in the middle of the dry season it can get very hot and tiring just being
- The general harmony between people of different religions
- The general rancour between people of different political affiliations
- The huge amount of respect shown to parents- especially to fathers e.g. a friend of mine was told by his father that he had married a woman from a certain tribe who’d turned out not be exactly what he wanted / a ‘bad’ wife and so he wouldn’t allow his son to marry a woman from the same tribe. But this father would apparently have no problem with the son marrying a white woman who he didn’t know
- The huge amounts of chilli that is included in food here
- The 3 genders in development- man, woman and white-woman, with ‘white-woman’ being more or less on an equal footing with man, but with ‘woman’ being a lot lower down the scale. Women definitely have a much harder time of life here than men- they are expected to do a lot of the work in the fields, as well as caring for the family, any cooking and cleaning that needs to be done. I know some of the men work very hard as well, but it seems that it is always the women here upon whom the ultimate burden falls. Women are expected to be utterly faithful to their husbands, whereas not only does Islam allow men up to 4 wives, culturally it seems acceptable for a man to have other girlfriends as well as his wives/wife. Oh and women are expected to bear lots of children- especially boys. Girls tend to get less education, tho’ this is slowly changing, but even if they are educated, some are taken out of school in their mid-teens in order to be married off.
- There’s a huge disparity between rich and poor in SL- a recent article in the economist put the gini coefficient for SL (a measure of inequality) at above 0.60- according to the data they had collected this meant that SL was one of the most unequal countries in the world. This picture came from the Economist website

- Handling dirty money the whole time…perhaps I should rephrase that- handling cash where the notes have varying levels of dirt and germs on and having the constant desire to clean your hands after handling money here. Mind you, since a lot of the money is often kept hidden somewhere within various pieces of clothing, it’s hardly surprising that it isn’t especially clean
- The newspapers and their sometimes unique versions of English grammar and syntax
- The fact that almost everything in SL is sponsored by one of the mobile phone companies
- When the weather gets too cold (below 25 degrees centigrade), Sierra Leoneans will don thick jackets and woolly bobble hats, despite the fact that in the UK as soon as the temperature hits the 20’s, everyone starts wearing shorts and summer dresses
- That almost all buildings and compounds employ guards
- That you can measure how wealthy someone is by the type of wall they have round their compound and the thief deterrents placed in the top of the wall- ranging from bits of broken glass to electrified fences
- When something happens e.g. a car touches another car, people are having an argument, everyone comes and stands around shouting at the tops of their voices and joining in
- Shouting is used as a normal method of communication
- The difficulties of just living when you don’t have money
- The large amount of long complicated words that are used in documents so that the author can sound educated- so far as I’m aware, the ‘Campaign for Plain English’ obviously hasn’t put up offices in SL just yet
- The generosity of mind and spirit of so many people here, which is so lovely

Okay, that’s enough for now- I'm sure there's more I should include, but that's enough for a start. Overall, I’ve loved my time in SL, tho’ it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster-especially emotionally- and I know there’s still loads for me to learn about the country and people etc. I think living in any country that you don't know well/haven't been brought up in can bring difficulties, confusions and emotional highs and lows, I'm sure it's not just in SL that you can go from being pretty depressed to very happy within the space of half and hour, even when the reasons for each emotion are entirely different. Maybe it's just that I've been taking more time to examine how I react to situations, but I think it's also the effect of Africa and for me in particular, from living in Sweet Salone.

I’ve also really enjoyed travelling around the country, both for business and pleasure. In my time here I managed to visit all the districts, including Bonthe island and the Turtle Islands just off the coast and I definitely agree with people who say that Freetown is definitely not fully representative of Sierra Leone as a whole and that although you can get an idea of SL from being in Freetown, to really know what it's like you need to go upline and meet people there and know and understnad more about their lives. It has been an incredible experience and I can’t quite believe that it’s coming to an end. However, I’ve still got two weeks to enjoy being here, so it’s not quite over yet……

Very bad economist joke

2008-09-12T14:22:00.002Z

When your neighbour loses his job, it is called an economic slowdown. When you lose your job, it is a recession. But when an economist loses his job, it becomes a depression.

Otherwise, not much happening here- tho' the weather last night decided that the rainy season hadn't ended yet (despite there being enough sun for a lovely trip to the beach last weekend)and so decided to bucket it down, causing many roads to turn into rivers (as per usual in the rainy season).

The Meatrix

2008-09-04T16:36:00.003Z

Since I sent out a newsletter today, this is going to be really brief- I receive emails from a network of personnel in the agriculture sector in SL designed to enhance agricultural production and productivity etc. Sometimes there's a lot of very serious agronomics on the system, sometimes something slightly more light-hearted is sent round... today's light hearted banter was: http://www.themeatrix1.com/

Otherwise, all I have to say is that it's great being properly back online and as was pointed out by a very good friend of mine, I am finally beginning to recover from a serious bout of discomgoogolation.

Impressive driving!

2008-08-11T10:53:00.003Z

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!

Back in Sweet Salone

2008-08-05T13:08:00.001Z

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.

Blundering in the dark

2008-06-16T15:14:00.001Z

Last week, we had some truly terrific thunderstorms for those of you who like watching them (N.B. they can get a bit boring after the while but the light shows are still pretty spectacular), so much so in fact that it was still very heavily overcast when I got up in the morning, reminding me of the middle of winter in the UK when I much prefer to hide beneath my duvet than face the cold of a new day. Anyway, it was still warm, so that wasn’t an issue, but the potential problem was the darkness- when there’s no NPA in the mornings (quite possible/probable) and the clouds are keeping the sun from shining, it can be a real pain to get washed and dressed and ready for the day- at least here I rarely wear socks so am unlikely to get to the office and realise I’ve got odd socks on. So of course, the main way to get around a lack of light is to light a candle. Now perhaps you’re one of those people who gets up in the morning, is totally awake and fully functioning from the moment yours eyes are awake/the alarm goes off, I’m not! It usually takes 2 alarms to get me out of bed and even then my sense of awakeness is probably questionable, so trying to light a candle without dropping the match, burning a hole in my mosquito net or anything else that’s likely to happen while in a semi-cognisant state is a bit of a trial. Ah well, I’ll just have to hope that on the mornings when there’s not light that there is NPA (or that I remember where I put my torch) J

Saturday was great fun- after a most relaxed morning (slightly more relaxed than planned due to closing my eyes for a 5 min doze and waking up 3 hours later) and contemplation of the fact that I really should do some exercise and even making the arrangements to do so, I received a call from a friend, who had a spare ticket to the football match between Sierra Leone and South Africa that was happening that afternoon at the National Stadium and she asked if I wanted to go. Well, I wasn’t sure (it was raining at the time) but after having been told that it was in the covered stands (about ¾’s of the stands are uncovered), which would give protection from sun or rain, I agreed. The match itself was a bit scrappy- at times it seemed the ball never changed teams except through a foul or a mad kick from one end of the pitch to the other. Having been shown the football stats, which seemed to indicate that South Africa was the better team, my limited knowledge of football seemed to suggest that SL were actually playing the better game, tho’ neither side seemed to be able to actually get the ball into the goal. Sierra Leone scored from a penalty, which helped the atmosphere get a bit livelier and then fraught with tension as the match came into the last 20minutes and people realised that they only had to hold on for a bit longer in order to win, which eventually they did and led to a huge outpouring of emotion from all the Sierra Leoneans in the stadium (and outside it as well).

Some of the main advertisers in SL are the mobile phone companies, who are also happy to sponsor events/ places, as long as their colours/ logos are brightly emblazoned thereon. At the national stadium, the light towers (have never seen them working but the metal work’s in place) and the exits are in bright red and yellow-sponsored by celtel (one mobile company) and the seats/blocks of concrete (so that they can’t be stolen/easily broken) are sponsored by Comium- 3-tone blues (another mobile company). SL’s national stadium doesn’t have the flashy signs and automatically changing ad-boards that you generally see in the football matches of western teams- there just isn’t the money for it!

Lobster at Franco’s was Sunday’s highlight and it was delicious; we also shared a crab between the party, which was more fun than food. One person in our group asked for ‘Crab Venus’, which is crab in white wine sauce and therefore a slight variation on what several of the rest of the party were having, which was lobster in white wine sauce. We were told that grilled (or even steamed) crab was possible, the lobster in sauce was possible, but crab in sauce was not possible. One of our group tried to make the waitress see that since both the crab and the sauce were available, surely it wouldn’t be difficult to put them together…? But it didn’t happen, so we just shared a grilled crab between us and enjoyed trying to pull it apart with (and in some cases without) the nutcrackers that we had been given. The crab was v tasty, but certainly not the dish you should have if you’re hungry as there’s quite a bit of work to be done to coax the meat out of the crustacean!

Food, fuel and tourism

2008-05-23T15:59:00.002Z

I took a week off recently to be a tourist in Sierra Leone (it helped that I had a friend from school coming over to visit too). SL is beautiful- look at any pictures that you can and a beautiful country to be a tourist in. We spent time at the beaches, lazing at a couple of pools, tramping through the bush, visiting the Chimpanzees, and going to Banana islands just off the tip of the peninsula. We also went to the National Museum and spent time ‘discussing’ prices in the craft markets.

The infrastructure in Sierra Leone isn’t really set up to receive tourists, from the airport itself (which has improved markedly while I’ve been here), the chaos of getting out of the airport, picking up luggage and getting over to Freetown itself are probably worthy of a short story. Despite making arrangements for my friend to be met at the airport, booking them onto a bus that would bring them to my door; it took as long to get from the airport to my house as the flight from Heathrow to Lungi took! Arriving at 2:30am in the morning (after having gotten to Sierra Leone in the early evening) is not a way to encourage people to come and visit a second time and may make some travellers prefer to turn round and go back home). The situation has eased slightly since my friend arrived; the hovercraft has begun operations again, which saves a bit of time getting over from the airport, but still means it’s a bit of a hassle.

I have expounded before about the beauty of SL, its beaches, the mountains, the views etc, so I won’t do so again except to say that it is gorgeous and currently fairly unspoilt by any developments, so now is definitely a good time to come and see it.

The food and fuel price rises that have been going on throughout the world continue to impact Sierra Leone. One of the figures I have seen recently (tho’ I can’t vouch for its accuracy) says that the average monthly wage in Sierra Leone is about 150,000 Leones (just over 26 GBP and 50USD). A large sack of rice (that might feed an average family for a month) costs about 120,000 Leones. This means people having fairly small portions (especially considering the amount of hard labour in a hot climate that people do here). On top of this, most people would also want to purchase salt and chillies (the latter being an integral part of the Sierra Leonean diet) and would have palm oil splashed (less and less liberally) over the top. If you add in a smidgeon or protein (which most people can’t afford), then you’re getting closer to a balanced diet. In order to pad out the rice and make it last longer, many people will add cassava, sweet potatoes and garri to their meals, although the nutritional balance stills needs improvement. But this is just food- so basically, a wage (and many people here are more likely to be casual workers and so may not have a definite wage coming in every month) would cover enough food for the family for the month. The other costs that aren’t met are: rent, clothes, school supplies, any emergency medical treatment, travel, fuel and anything else- I’ve tried to only mention the essentials here. It’s in places like Sierra Leone that the rising food prices push more people back into poverty as they grapple with trying to balance getting enough nutrients with all the other essential expenditures- I haven’t even mentioned the issue of getting clean water here or disposal of waste.

Life at the ground level in SL is tough, really tough. I was chatting to a friend involved in children’s medicine here- they are seeing more and more children who are malnourished and as a result open to many other types of infections. What makes it even more heart rending is that the medical facilities in SL are so needy that some children who in the West would be in high dependency units being treated as outpatients here.

It’s an age-old cycle and breaking it is really hard (ok- I know it's really simplistic, but it shows basically how the cycle can work):

- First, you don't get enough to eat (or a balanced diet with a good nutritional intake) for whatever reason (too many mouths, prices are too high, money needed for treating a family member in hospital etc.)

- Then you become ill (meaning more money needs to be spent on medical treatment if possible)

- Because of the illness you are unable to work/or at the very least your productivity goes down (since in many situations in the developing world your wages depend on how much you produce e.g. breaking stones, carrying headloads, picking/tending agriculture etc)

- You receive lower wages

- You are unable to buy as much food/ have a nutritionally balanced diet

- You don’t get enough to eat,

- You become ill…

And the cycle goes on, as I said, this is a really simplistic version and lots of other factors can play into it. One of the other variants (which can be added into this cycle) is the education of children- you want to educate them so that they have a better chance in the future; but if they don’t have enough food then they can’t concentrate in school, so they don’t do well and not only do they not go up the economic ladder, but people feel it’s a waste to send children to school. Or, due to the need to earn more money for the family to survive now, children are taken out of education so that they don’t have opportunities to learn/improve in the future. It’s a difficult cycle and very hard to break out of, but it is possible, with the right resources in the right places at the right time.

This is already turning out to be pretty long, but I’ll quickly mention about fuel prices. All fuel prices are set by the government at the same level; the cost has gone up about 80 pence per gallon (4500 Leones) since I’ve been in SL and although the fuel prices are much, much lower than in Europe, this is a pretty big increase for everyone here to try and manage. It’s an inconvenience for those who can afford it but a real problem for those who can’t. Small shops that rely on small (and highly inefficient generators) in order to run their businesses when there’s no national power (NPA) are struggling even more than they used to and people who have generators in their homes may now find it difficult to have light at nights when there’s no NPA. This doesn’t so much impact the very poor but does mean those who thought they’d slowly worked their way out of desperate poverty are being pushed back into it. The other area where the fuel prices impact people are the costs of the taxi’s and podapodas (minibuses); these run on (semi-)set routes for a fixed cost, you can go further in the podapodas but you can usually get the taxi’s to deviate from their routes to drop you at a specific point. Lots of people in Freetown use both taxis and podapodas to get to and from work each day, but the cost in fuel means the set cost of a journey in a taxi or podapoda has now increased (there’s no meters and if you’re going in a taxi off a set route you need to discuss vigorously about the price). When I arrived it was 800 Leones per journey, it is now 1000Leones per journey, which again isn’t that much from a Western perspective, but is a huge increase for people who rely on this cheap transport to get them around, since there’s no public transport system here so an increase in the cost of travel of 25% in less than 2 years is pretty huge.

All quiet on the Western Seaboard

2008-04-22T10:25:00.002Z

Sierra Leone

is a net importer of rice and other food stuffs, it is also among the poorest and least developed nations in the world (it was last in the UN’s 2007 Human Development Index).

Sierra Leone

is split into 4 regions; North, South, East and West. Geographically, the Western area is the smallest; it is also the area in which Freetown is based. It's on the top end of the Western Area on the map below.

After a sustained effort under the previous government the country is getting closer to food self-sufficiency. In fact, according to one report I heard last year, all regions except the Western area were food self-sufficient. This is mainly because there is a very high concentration of the population in the Western Area. One of the problems is getting food from the regions to the city, which always makes prices here much higher than they are up country. The previous government- under the SLPP focused on food security, one of its main pledges in the 2002 was that no Sierra Leonean would go to bed hungry and as such the government subsidised the price of rice. Now, I’m not sure if this worked and given how tough life is here for the majority of the population, it’s possible that no Sierra Leonean ever went to bed hungry but I take leave to doubt that. When the APC administration came into power in September, they announced a change in their focus; they would try to improve the situation regarding power and electricity, as well as other infrastructural issues and so they got rid of the rice subsidy.

The international situation is causing these prices to go even higher, but there’s (as yet and as far as I’m aware) no likelihood or threat of rioting or protests about the higher food prices. I was confused, since the prices have increased dramatically for basic food stuffs and spoke to some friends about this and the reason for the lack of discontent is politics. The ‘Youth’ in Freetown (anyone aged 18-35) who are the majority of the unemployed and therefore/also those most likely to riot, voted in overwhelming numbers for the APC in the elections last year and therefore are much less likely to riot under this government than they were under the previous government due to the issues of political allegiances and loyalties and the need for the party that ‘they’ put into power not to lose face by having to deal with rioting youth. They may make their concerns known when the local elections occur in July/August this year, but since the President does seem to have delivered on his promise to bring power to Freetown (even if the method used does not consider the long term fiscal impacts that this will have), so the people are more likely to consider him as a man to keep his promises and that he will be doing all he can to sort out the current problem with the food prices.

Tyre bursting records and other travels

2008-04-04T12:09:00.002Z

What with trying to develop a new PRSP (the poverty reduction strategy paper, which will be the guiding force behind the development plans of the government for the next 3-5 years), as well as various other projects that I’m involved with, I really haven’t had much time to sit down and write recently.

I managed to escape from Freetown over the Easter weekend (longer than normal due to a Muslim holiday being on the Thursday as well!). A group of us were trying to go and see the dam at Bumbuna- a large edifice which has been about 40years in the planning and construction (depending on who you speak to) and will eventually provide power for Freetown- it being a hydroelectric power plant. As far as I’m aware, it’s currently empty and they’re finishing off the final points that need to be constructed with the hope that this rainy season (or possibly the one after that) will fill the dam and they can start using it to produce much cheaper power for the capital. On the subject of power, NPA has been much better recently. We’ve had power most evenings in the house- which given the fact that we’re now in the warmest part of the year is very useful as it means I can use a fan all through the night which helps me sleep a lot better.

However, we didn’t manage to go to Bumbuna- there was no room at the inn/holiday resort/construction site, so we decided to head up into the north east of the country to Kabala in the Koinadugu district. The roads are tarmac the whole way (a few holes but probably fewer than Freetown has), with the road to Makeni being very good and the road from Makeni to Kabala being pretty decent. Having said that, when we set out on Good Friday, we didn’t manage to get very far with the journey. We got to one of the first main junctions after the peninsula and just as we’d got about 2 villages beyond that there was a rumbling sound- which didn’t stop. We pulled over and realised that our back left tyre was totally gone- so much so that the rim of the tyre was close to being on the road. Then all the usual fun of sorting out the jack (the alan key was missing, so we went and borrowed a jack-meant for a taxi rather than a Defender- from the next village along). All was going well with the process until the driver decided to take a look at the other tyres- since the road was good and it was strange for the tyre to have suddenly burst. Unfortunately, it was noticed that the front left tyre seemed to have sustained some damage, with a hole exuding air in the wall of the tyre. We only had one spare with us and this was going on the back left, which was really in dire straits.

Half the group were left with the vehicle and the other half walked back to town- fortunately it wasn’t the predicted 2hour trek, since it was now getting close to 11am and therefore heating up a bit. Once we arrived in the town, we found some helpful police who took us to a mechanic’s and I got a good opportunity to explain the situation using my Krio (we’d left one Krio speaker with the car while I went into town to practice mine there). We then took Okada’s back to the car (much quicker than walking, tho’ not my most favourite experience), along with two mechanics- having organised where we could get 2 tyres in town from. As we returned to the spot where the car had been, we found it was no longer there! The two people we’d left with the car (one non driver and one who only drives automatics), had managed to roll it down the hill and off the road a bit more- so fortunately we soon spotted it again! This might be a suitable time to mention the way that Sierra Leoneans mark out that a vehicle has broken down- they/ we take handfuls of grass and earth from the side of the road and lay out 5-6 pieces at suitable intervals leading up to the vehicle. This means anyone coming along the road will know that a vehicle has stopped/broken down just ahead and therefore will be more likely to slow down and keep a wary eye out. However, this green method doesn’t always work as people just leave the organic warning system on the road when they drive off- well it is biodegradable! This can mean people have slowed down for other ‘bits of vegetation’ before for no reason and therefore aren’t always as bothered about slowing down for the ‘real thing’.

The rear tyre had been replaced by the spare and the car was quickly jacked up again and the front left tyre removed. The mechanics carefully balanced the two burst tyres on the backs of 2 of the Okada’s and those of us who had previously gone into town then got back on the other Okada and heading back to Masiaka Junction. Once there, it was decided that the front tyre could just be patched up. They proceeded to do this, using spit, earth and super glue- and possibly a small piece of rubber. The other tyre was properly burst- so much so that there were two huge cracks in the wall of the tyre (oh and a pretty massive nail had gone through the tyre as well- see pics on facebook). A replacement tyre and inner tube were found and after a lot of sweat (and many other Sierra Leoneans just standing round watching the entertainment), they managed to put the rim from the burst tyre onto the new tyre, filled up the inner tube with air and then we got back on the Okada’s and went back to the car, with one new tyre (which we put on the front left of the car) and one ‘patched’ tyre (which now became our spare).

We decided that we wouldn’t go onto Kabala that day (it was around mid day, so we still had plenty of time) since we wanted to make sure we had a proper spare tyre rather than one that had been patched up and we weren’t too convinced about. We’d passed back through Masiaka when things started feeling strange in the car- the driver noted that the steering wasn’t quite right! So we quickly turned back towards the town. Just when we’d got to the sign post for the edge of the town, the tyre decided to give up- and guess which one- yes, the new one that’d we’d just purchased! The inner tube of the brand new tyre had totally disintegrated in the short distance we had just gone-grr. So, that was the third tyre in one day- pretty much a record as far as we were aware, especially since we were travelling on ‘proper’ roads. So, we walked into the town again- not too far fortunately; we found some more mechanics (there were a lot about, this one we’d been introduced to but he’d decided not to come out to the car earlier on). We then decided to just try using the spare ‘patched’ tyre instead of sorting out a new tyre. After this had been changed, we then slowly made our way back to Freetown, and that night, we went out for a meal. Now the person who had been driving us had brought his car to the meal- with the patched tyre holding up pretty well, although he was worried that the front right tyre wasn’t looking very healthy. By the end of the meal, the front right tyre was looking distinctly unhappy and so he very slowly drove back to his house (with an escort) and by the next morning, his front right tyre was totally flat. So, that was how we managed to have four burst/flat tyres in one day!

We decided to try again on the Saturday and since I had borrowed a vehicle suitable for up country travel, we decided to give it a go. Unfortunately one of our group had to drop out, since they planned to use the bank holiday Monday for work (some people here are very keen) and we were now not planning to be back until later on the Monday afternoon. So, we travelled up to Kabala, smiling sweetly at the police en route- although we did get stopped by the military so that the Vice President could hand over some new tractors from Libya to one of the villages on the road to Makeni. The recipients took great pleasure in racing the gifts up and down the fields (at least that’s what it looked like from the road). It was hot when we stopped and got out to watch the tractor racing- the area was flat and fairly low lying, so lacking in breeze and just sitting there taking in all the heat that the sun offered- the agricultural work here is back-breakingly hard and the heat of the sun does nothing to alleviate the difficulties. Where we stopped there were even no trees for what felt like miles around, so no shade to stop and rest in at any point. These people are really Tough- they’ve been doing this type of work for years and were then interrupted by the cruelties of the civil war and are now back trying to scrape a living from the sun boiled landscape in which they live. Seeing small glimpses of this just makes me so thankful for all the huge opportunities I was given in where I was born and grew up- I am so amazingly blessed.

We did make it to Kabala, with no car problems. We found the guest house without too much trouble and they had kept the rooms that we booked and then had rebooked due to the problems on the road the previous day. After relaxing for a bit and eating our packed lunch- we had a lot of bread and cheese and bananas that we’d brought with us (and two tins of tuna that stayed shut the entire time), we wandered round the town, met one a friend living in Kabala and just enjoyed being away from the business of Freetown. That evening we had couscous and vegetables at the ‘JustInn’ restaurant and bar- delicious and not too spicy! On the Sunday, we went walking up a mountain/hill overlooking Kabala- the views were beautiful, the breeze gently cooling and the company… (well pretty good actually). We chatted about why we celebrate Easter, what actually happened at the first Easter and why that matters for the salvation of our souls.

Our time in Kabala was good for getting away from the Western peninsula, reading, chilling out and just chatting about life, the universe and many other things. It was also much less exciting than out first attempt at a journey to get there and since we were trying to get away from the stress and hubbub of Freetown that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing! Discussions about materialism came up several times- particularly given the state of existence in some of the villages that we’d seen on the roads and these were the villages that had access to ‘easy’ transport to get to the main towns. There are many others living in villages that are much harder to reach (although the National Electoral Commission did manage to reach almost everyone who was eligible to register to vote when it was doing the elections last year).

This is getting to be an extremely long post, so congratulations if you’ve made it all this way! Just to say that we stopped in at Mama beach on the way back to Freetown on Easter Monday, which was fun but the beach isn’t a patch on John Obey or Bureh town beaches. There were also at least two large outings of Sierra Leoneans on the beach, plus sound systems, which made it somewhat noisier than it would otherwise have been.

Deep fried ants and other animals

2008-03-03T12:27:00.003Z

One evening last week (since the day I wrote this was the day when the net decided to die so I can’t now use the easier phraseology of ‘yesterday evening’) I decided to cook a very basic tomato sauce for supper. I picked up the frying pan from the pile of (probably) clean utensils and placed it on the hob. After having prepared the sauce in a bowl, I got read to light the hob- not helped by the fact that our gas cylinder seems to have issues in letting too much gas escape into the air, to the extent that a hand, foot (or more usefully the full 5 gallon water butt which hadn’t been opened yet , since all limbs are then free to move around the kitchen doing other activities, unfortunately this took me a couple of mins to work out/organise during which period immobility was becoming increasingly annoying) had to remain on the valve at all times to ensure that the only gas that left the cylinder went to the hob rather than into the air. I’d placed a dribble of oil in the bottom of the pan (not strictly necessary but helps things not to stick) and as I lit the hob, noticed several ants running round the edge of the pan, since at this point in time I hadn’t realised the usefulness of the water butt and was holding the valve in place using my foot, trying to get rid of the unwelcome spectators was unsuccessful. Anyway, the assumption was that the ants would try to get away from the heat in the middle of the pan, unfortunately the heat obviously wasn’t to their liking and instead of taking a running leap onto the hob, they ran round in circles all over the frying pan. Eventually, the oil was hot and very liquid and made and light fizzle-pop sound as it encounter the extra protein that had sacrificed itself in the frying pan. Once having removed the ants from the oil, used the water butt to prevent problems with the gas supply, and cooked supper I very much enjoyed it, but it was a bit of a hassle. However, I know that several people (a few ex pats but many, many locals), would love the option of cooking on a stove in doors, since currently all their cooking must be down outside, so I do remember that a few ants really aren’t that much of a problem and that I do have a very high standard of life compared to so many people here in SL.

Those of you of a squeamish disposition should avoid reading the next paragraph…

When I first arrived here I was encourage to read the book Aminata Forna’s ‘The Devil that Danced on the Water’, which is about her childhood in SL, growing up during Siaka Steven’s era. One of the more familial touches in the book describes how all clothes had to be carefully ironed to get rid of the eggs that flies might have laid upon them and even then, each weekend, their mother would carefully examine all the children to check for spots which might show where the eggs/larvae had hatched and burrowed into the children’s skin. This was then treated using liberal doses of vaseline over the spots, since this would deprive the larvae of oxygen and force them to exit the body, any recalcitrant larvae would then be squeezed out of the body (along with the liquid surrounding them). Unfortunately I (as well as several of my friends here), have now had first hand experience of this and although it’s pretty gross, it’s not as painful as I was first lead to believe it would be.

Anyway, back to other news, we have recently had a sudden downpour of rain. For those not conversant with a dry-season, wet-season lifestyle, this type of thing is pretty rare in the middle of the dry season (where SL is now at). The good side is that it refreshed the air a lot the morning after; it cleaned the streets a bit (ahead of the Saturday clean up- when all citizens of SL are expected to spend the morning cleaning the streets and putting the rubbish in large piles for collection, tho’ often mostly burn it instead) and hopefully add an extra level of water to the reservoirs that supply Freetown with water (much needed since the last rainy season was fairly short-apparently- and F’town’s water supply infrastructure was built to supply a much smaller population than currently lives here now). I know that in May-June 2006, there was rationing of water in Freetown, which made life pretty difficult for everyone for a few weeks and everyone’s hoping that the same thing doesn’t happen again this year; last year the rains arrived in time, but they are becoming gradually more unpredictable as time passes, I hope they do not tarry too much. The possibly negative point about the rains last night is their suddenness and ferocity (when it rains here it really rains- no mist or drizzle, but ‘real’ rain), which (I’m told) caused the deaths of several people in the slum areas when they hit F’town in a previous freak burst about a month ago. The slums/shanty towns are often built round the streams/water runways down to the sea/sewers for Freetown and so when the water rushes down from the hills towards the sea, due to the huge build-up of rubbish in these open sewers, it can mean flooding of these homes (with water, sewage and rubbish), as well as possibly sweeping people away with it, which is heart-breaking. Hopefully people living in areas at risk from these rains will have seen the warning signs in the early evening and were able to prevent this from happening.

On a lighter side, here’s a picture of one of the potholes in one of the roads up country, I found this photo in the archives of the Standard Times Press one of Sierra Leone’s papers. I think we definitely need more investment in decent infrastructure here!

http://standardtimespress.net/cgi-bin/artman/publish/index.shtml (near the bottom of the page)

Travels and Rain

2008-02-13T15:36:00.003Z

Yes- that's right- RAIN!! In the middle of the dry season! Although we did have some last year as well- apparently it's called the 'New Year' rains, which only last for a couple of days and then it's all hot, dry (ok- humid would be a more accurate rendering of the climate here) and sunny until the rainy season (due to start May or June ish). I'd forgotten how loud the rain can be at nights, so the one night that we had a huge thunderstorm, I slept a lot less than I intended.

Anyway, travels- a group of us went upline (upcountry) for the weekend a couple of weeks ago (pics on facebook-if you're not on there, let me know and I'll try to get round to putting some on my blog as well). We went to Sierra Rutile- a concession where rutile is taken out of the flooded ground, cleaned (several times), dried and then sent to somewhere that uses it (I think it's used for pigmentation in paints, but beyond that my knowledge is pretty limited). We were given a tour of the dredger- pulling up rutile plus a who lot of other gunk from the bottom of the lake, the wet plant (first stage of cleaning) and the dry plant (next few stages of cleaning plus drying the rutile and putting it in sacks. One of the people I was travelling with mentioned as an aside that it didn't look much different to wet cement in its soggy state and that they could see much of a difference as a result of the final cleaning processes, although admitted that it felt pretty different when finally dried and in the sacks. I'm sure someone who's a professional and actually understands the processes and the need for the rutile to be dry would be able to see many more differences than we did!

Anyway, that was just the first night and morning of the road trip. The second part involved driving (round in circles to start with) off the concession and towards the edge of Bonthe. From here speed boats picked us up and took us to Sherbro island (I'm still not sure if that is meant to have one 'r' or two, I'm sure someone will let me know if it's really important). This island is also known as Bonthe island because the Bonthe district is divided into two parts- that on the mainland and that on the island. On the island there are two types of accommodation available- the very up market (from 1o0USD per night) and the very basic (12,000Leones per night- that's about 2 GBP or 4USD). Since we were there as part of a celebration of my friend's birthday, we had opted for the more expensive option. It's the Bonthe island holiday resort and is apparently a really big place for 'big fish' anglers and if you go at the right time of the year you can get some pretty amazing catches of big fish such as tarpon. They have a chef from Benin and I think the French influence has ensured he's a very good cook- the food we had was excellent, particularly the fish!

In the afternoon (after a fantastic lunch), we went walking round part of the island for about 3hours, we went through the market, along the main street, past the church commemorating the Amistad and briefly visited the hospital (somewhat bare in terms of facilities). We also took loads of pics, particularly of the kids, who loved having their pictures taken and then seeing them on the backs of the cameras. Since (as far as I'm aware/at least for the part of the island that we were on) Bonthe island is surround by mangroves, there's not much opportunity for swimming, but there was a lot to look at and see. There's several colonial buildings on the island, I think it was quite popular among the first colonisers of the Portuguese, but was eventually eclipsed by the Freetown peninsular (probably due to the natural deep water harbour whereas the part of the island that we were on had too many shallows for the comfort of sailors). As such the mainstay of the economy of Bonthe island is agriculture and artisanal fishing. It lacks the beaches of the Western area to make it a popular tourist destination, but I think it will remain popular with the niche market of tarpon anglers for sometime to come. The accommodation at the holiday resort was excellent- very clean, it felt very fresh and well cared for, it also had hot water showers, so definitely a bit of luxury compared to the compound in Freetown. We spent the evening chilling out on the verandahs surrounding the villas in the resort and savouring the fact that we were a way away from Freetown and the freshness of the air.

On the next morning, after a delicious breakfast, we hired bikes and cycled over to the air field. There's an abandoned plane there, which was interesting to explore. My body reminded me that I hadn't cycled for years and that there would be serious repercussions to this unnatural exercise in the days to come. I also discovered that it's really difficult to cycle on sand- I'm sure most of you know this already, but since I very rarely go on a bike, this was quite a discovery for me! After another delicious lunch of fish, we departed the island along with some local handicrafts- most popular were the semi-reclining seats that several of the group had purchased (for an extortionate 3,000 Leones each!!). It was quite amusing to watch as these were then manhandled into the vehicles we'd brought with us so that they wouldn't fall or cause too much chaos as we headed back to Freetown.

We arrived back on the Western peninsula in time for the guys to watch one of the Cup of Nation's footie matches (might even have been one of the semi-finals) and then proceeded to Freetown and the awaiting showers, since however clean we were on setting off from the resort, a boat ride followed by alighting on a muddy beach, plus a 6 hour drive and a break in the dusty district capital of Moyamba always means you end up covered in red dust and dirt by the time you get back to Freetown.

It was a brilliant time! It also means that I have now visited every district in Sierra Leone (previously I had only been to Bonthe mainland and not to Bonthe island and several people felt that this was 'cheating', so now I can say that I have visited all the districts here. It was great to spend the weekend away with friend exploring new parts of SL.

Liquid toothpaste, a Muslim wedding and other adventures in no. 177

2008-01-18T10:49:00.000Z

Even a warm UK house doesn’t have the same effect on toothpaste as the constant warmth and humidity of Sweet Salone. While back in the UK for a short break, I’d become used to a semi-solid state for my toothpaste- ie it doesn’t seep through the bristles as soon as you put it onto the brush, however, it was a slight surprise to come back to SL, put toothpaste on my brush, spend a very few seconds putting the lid back on the tube and putting it down and by this time my toothpaste had disappeared from view due to its more than usually liquid state-ah well, just one of those little things to get used to again ;-)

I went to a Muslim wedding yesterday- I know, a Thursday, but that was their choice of day. I’d never been to a Muslim wedding before, but from what I’d heard, many parts of it were fairly typical. It took place at a local mosque, with the men sitting in their area and the women in theirs- tho’ since there’s a wall between them and only one doorway (where the bride was sitting), you couldn’t see much. In effect, neither the bride nor the groom didn’t need to be there as the focus was on the joining of the two families. The actual marriage itself was the groom (or the representative of the family) asking the bride’s father if he could marry her 3 times and then the father said yes. This (very short) ceremony was preceded by lots of men giving the new couple good advice on what makes a good marriage and was followed by men telling the bride that the husband was in charge and she should not speak more than him and should not ask him where he has been when he comes back etc- I paraphrase slightly because the PA system wasn’t great and my Krio is even worse. Unlike the Christian weddings that I’m much more used to, there was no singing, there were no flowers, and no group photos; most of the photographs seemed to be fairly informal- people sitting round the mosque during and before the wedding. And of course, it all happened in very Sierra Leonean style- at BMT, with the wedding beginning 1.5hrs after it was meant to. However, that’s nothing compared to the evening event; the invitation asked people to turn up at 6pm, when I asked a colleague, he said that it was 6pm BMT and therefore 8pm GMT, I followed his advice and arrived at 8pm, although then had to wait around another 40mins before anything happened :-P

Since it was a Muslim wedding, there was no alcohol, although a good amount of soft drinks were available (Vimto, Fanta, Sprite, Coke and Sparkling Apple juice- the latter confused a lot of people because it looked as tho’ it was in a champagne bottle- even including the metal and cork top, which I have to admit, I did find it slightly amusing that people weren’t quite certain how to open and led to a couple of ingenious methods). The bridal procession then arrived- the bride had changed out of her white, Western, wedding dress into something that I assume is more Islamic- cream with maroon and gold embroidery (matching the groom’s outfit), although it was still fitted and had a small train. What was very sweet was the mini-bride- a small girl, my guess would be about 5yrs old, but I’m not too good at guessing that sort of thing, who was dressed identically to the bride- both in the white, wedding dress and the Islamic evening dress (inc v. mini train)- she looked v sweet, even if she did spend most of her time at the mosque playing with her veil. Then there were the speeches- first the chairman was introduced, then he said a few words, then about 5 speeches/toast proposals, plus a response from a person representing those who had been toasted and at the very end, there was a vote of thanks (by the bride). In the middle of all the speeches, the bride and groom had a dance, the bridal entourage had a dance and the bride and her father had a dance. Then there was the presentation of the gifts-anyone who had brought a present had to go and stand in line to give it to the bride and groom. Finally, two guys doing stand up comedy then did their piece- tho’ the Krio was a bit fast for me to understand everything. After this food was served, there was some dancing and people drifted away home. I didn’t stay until the end (working the next day), but it was certainly a somewhat different experience to weddings at home.

Well, I guess one other adventure I can quickly mention is that perennial (I haven’t found a specific word for ‘every time you arrive in SL’) trip on the helicopter from the airport to Aberdeen (Western part of Freetown), which is quick and noisy and prayerworthy, but allowed me to arrive safely at the helipad and get back to my house before midnight on the day I arrived. It’s one of the more annoying things about travelling to Sierra Leone; it’s more stressful arriving and working out what you do next than it is actually getting to Sierra Leone’s airport in the first place.

And in case you’re not readers of the UN Human Development Index, Sierra Leone slipped back from second to last, to last in the Human Development Index 2007, so it is now 177 again. Some countries, where data can’t be gathered, are not included in this index- such as Iraq and Afghanistan, which is why there’s more countries that are in the UN (193 plus the Vatican city) than are in this index.

A final piece of good news- we’ve had National Power every night since I arrived back in Freetown, which is really quite exciting and will be even more useful when our wiring is fixed so we don’t have permanent ‘mood lighting’ in the house, which means it’s not particularly easy to read in the evenings, ah well- can’t have everything!

Mood swings

2007-12-06T14:54:00.000Z

I originally sat writing this in the middle of a rain storm, on a computer that had the potential to lose power any second, with no internet connection, with the possibility that rain would again start pouring through the ceiling (slight exaggeration), while smelling the sickly sweet smoke that drifted overhead in several very artistic rings as one of the strip lights decided that it no longer wanted to provide us with light. However, by the time you read this (and now as I am editing to put it online), the sun is shining, work is suitably busy, the generator is working and the internet too, the lights have been fixed and I’m looking forward to heading away for Christmas in the hear future.

An update from my (fairly) recent trip up country is probably in order- we returned in the pouring (unseasonal) rain, although the rest of the trip was warm, dry (except for high humidity) and sunny. I was even privileged to stay in a room that had air conditioning and power from dawn to dusk. There was a lot of travelling around, but otherwise the supervising role we had for the meetings was pretty routine-oh, except for the money issues- as the civil servant in the Incredibles would say, while shaking his head sadly, it’s ‘money, money, money, money, money, always the money.’ Which in a country as poor as Salone is very true and it does overshadow everyone and everything, particularly when it is lacking (or just not as much as people expected they would receive). SL has now slipped back down to 177^th out of 177 in the human development index (Afghanistan and Iraq aren’t included due to a lack of indicators)- probably partially due to the fact that- despite the calm quiet of the elections- the country basically stopped operating for the five (optimistic assessment) months leading up to the elections. Things still happened, but no one invested, the government went quiet, very little money was entering the country and everyone held their breath until it was seen that the new administration was calmly elected with a peaceful handover of power. The newspapers still scream wonderful headlines everyday- either of a witch hunt going on through the civil service, or a power struggle in the opposition leadership, or (as ever) at the donors (for various things they have or haven’t done).

Life here is a totally set of contrasts, particularly as an ex pat; everything can seem to be going to pieces one moment and then suddenly you find yourself mixing with people and going to events that would seem as distant as the stars when at home- all somewhat confusing. A friend of mine had a particularly stark experience as she spent the afternoon working with children on the floor of a mud hut and ending up with maggots in her hair and then drinking cooled white wine and G&T’s with high flying members of the diplomatic set in the evening- definite extremes.

No desserts

2007-12-05T08:56:00.000Z

Sierra Leoneans make fantastic food- particularly in my opinion when they don’t throw in hundreds of very small ‘pepe’ (read chillies in English). My main experience of Sierra Leonean food has been when I’ve eaten out at African restaurants; this has been fine, but due to the huge numbers of chillies that are thrown liberally into the dishes, I wasn’t a particular fan. This was until I went up-line (up country) most recently; we stopped in Moyamba for a night and a couple of meals and we went to one of my companion’s friends houses. The first meal-cassava or potato leaf stew was ok, but very fiery. We’d had plenty of discussions about food as we travelled and about how Sierra Leoneans like their food very hot (and I don’t) and so, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the second meal was groundnut soup (with no chillies!!!) and was delicious- lots of flavours and tastes to enjoy, without burning my mouth in the process, so as a result, I’ve decided that Sierra Leonean food is really nice, so long as they leave out the chillies.

Back to the title of this article; very rarely does anyone eat dessert in Sierra Leone. It just isn’t the done thing, even at more Western style restaurants, desserts are seen as something to tag on the menu, even if they are rarely actually ‘in stock’. However, on very rare occasions, such as a dinner party there might well be dessert available, this was the case last week when people of all nationalities were invited to celebrate American thanksgiving (there was even a turkey) and were asked to bring side dishes and desserts. There was a totally amazing chocolate cake with gorgeously gooey icing-mmm- not just dessert, but delicious ones too. Admittedly in the heat, few people feel like making dessert and some of the ingredients can be difficult to get hold of, but it’s certainly brilliant to have as something a bit different every now and again.

One of the things mentioned in the handover notes is that it in order to get all the foods that we want in order to make something (such as a cake, or to hold a dinner party), we’d need to go to several different supermarkets to get everything we need. This still holds true and for some things it’s just impossible to get ingredients- blueberry muffins for example require milk (hmmm- uht or powdered??) and blueberries- well, there might be some in a tin somewhere, but you’re not going to get fresh ones here and frozen ones are pretty far off the radar as well. However, something like banana cake- well, bananas are in plentiful supply and the basic ingredients of flour, sugar, eggs and margarine aren’t hard either. I was speaking to someone who used to live here in the 70’s- her father worked out here then and she was saying how some things have got better- i.e. there are supermarkets here that stock a variety of foods and other goods, whereas before the choice was rice & fish, or rice & plantain, or rice & cassava leaf stew, which isn’t much if you’re here for sometime. In some ways, things have got a lot worse- mainly the infrastructure; the roads (I won’t go on about this too much, but…), for example the road which used to got to where her family lived was once tarmac, but now (despite being a main thoroughfare) is earth, also power- some villages up country have power lines and poles, but definitely no actual power running through them today- well, currently there’s a plan to get Freetown sorted with power, but the rest of the country is going to be waiting quite a lot longer- except Bo, where the district and town councils have managed to get a decent infrastructure system together such that most people in the town have grid power each evening.

Anyway, that’s a long was from desserts, but just to close by saying that however unhealthy desserts are (and most that aren’t fruit probably aren’t particularly healthy for you) when you haven’t had them for ages, are a delicious way to round off a meal.

Traffic, roads and speed-bumps

2007-11-06T15:48:00.000Z

Well, life has been a bit busier recently, but that’s not what I’m going to write about today (well, not much at any rate).

Infrastructure is big on the agenda at the moment- and it really needs to be. First of all, power- I know I’ve griped about this before, but it remains an issue. What is brilliant is actually having light in my bathroom (but only on the generator because usually the NPA current as we now get it is too weak to turn on a fluorescent strip light). The generator at work seems to be having issues as well, so no air con on in the office, which makes it really uncomfortable to work in as we don’t have fans to keep the air moving, so it’s somewhat stifling.

The roads- these are getting continually busier and there’s probably several reasons for this- firstly, the roads and many cars remain in a bad state of repair- most of the repairs done to our (few) tarmac roads involve filling in the holes with stones and earth- a good temporary solution, but not good over the longer term. One of the major arteries from the West to the centre of the city- Spur Road- has 5 sets of double speed bumps, 4 single speed bumps and 1 dip (helps drainage across the road in the rainy seasons); now this certainly helps slow the traffic down, it also seems to have managed to cripple 3 vehicles in 3 weeks, one of which was left half way over one of the double sets of speed bumps for about 4 days. All of them had broken an axle and (as far as can be said for cars), looked extremely ‘uncomfortable’. Spur Road is busy enough daily anyway, particularly since the VP and President are currently not living at their official residences- I’ve heard it’s due to the redecoration that’s being undertaken- this means they drive in convey with a police escort up this hill/road every morning. Now most people can understand that the VP or President, as representatives of the people of SL, should have priority over the traffic, however, there’s a great deal of annoyance over the taxi drivers and other cars that ‘join’ the convoy in order to jump up the and past most of the other traffic- I’ve seen it lead to several near misses and given that the health system isn’t wonderful and you need to send money for fuel for the ambulance before an ambulance can come to pick you up, it’s best to avoid travelling up Spur Road when a cavalcade is likely to sweep past.

Right, second reason is that a lot of people have come back after the elections- now everything’s happened quietly and calmly and there’s been a transfer of power, those who were able to afford to leave the country over the election period are now back and driving again. Related to this is the third point, that now there has been a successful election with no real problems, people are slightly happier about investing in new vehicles, or bringing more/newer vehicles into the country, so there’s more cars about that be can and therefore are, being driven.

On a slightly lighter, but still traffic related note, the taxis…., well there’s a lot I could and won’t say about the taxi’s (and their drivers) here, although at only 800 leones (40cents, 18pence) per journey it’s a fairly cheap way of getting around. Normally, unlike in London, the cabs are recognisable by having red letters on their number plates (denoting it’s a commercial vehicle) and having a yellow stripe down the side of the vehicle, making it easy to distinguish it from private vehicles. Also (though this next method isn’t 100% accurate), if the vehicle approaching you is a car and is not a Mercedes or a 4x4 (BMW’s, small sports cars and Lexuses- or are they Lexi?- are extremely rare here, tho’ there are a few about, none of which of course are taxis), it’s 9 times of out 10 going to be a taxi. Admittedly there are a few diplomatic vehicles (thought very few) that are ‘normal’ cars, but these have special diplomatic number plates, so it’s fairly obvious that they aren’t taxis. Anyway, someone has been importing London taxi cabs and there are now 4 London cabs driving round Freetown and are being used as taxi’s here- was a strange sight to see one here- and in deference to the local law of the yellow stripe, none of them are fully black.

One year on

2007-10-16T17:21:00.000Z

Well, I’ve been here a year and have certainly slacked off in terms of updating my blog regularly. In some ways, this is because there’s lots going on but as yet no certainties yet and in some ways, it’s because it feels as tho’ there’s not actually much going on at all.

I had meant this to be fairly reflective, in a fair sort of way, but it looks as tho’ it’s going to be a grumble about the fact that so many things just don’t work here, or are inefficient/ineffective. Anyway, there’s a new broom at the top, who is currently nominating the new ministers for his government and (according to rumour and hearsay- the main method by which most Sierra Leoneans get their news) seems to be doing a good job so far in beginning to sort things out and refresh the face of politics- not penalising/ persecuting the previous government, but encouraging ministers and high ranking civil servants to stay on in order to ensure a smooth and effective handover.

- The roads are madness, I think this fairly common to most developing countries- you take your life in your hands by stepping out your front door. But at least you know when you’re going to be hit as the most essential part of a car (taxis especially) is generally kept in good working order- the horn. The condition of the roads has deteriorated somewhat since I arrived- this is generally put down to the degradations of the rainy season, but isn’t helped by the use of rocks and earth to patch up the roads, rather than something more permanent. This isn’t helped by the fact that during ‘rush hour’, various roads are closed at certain times during the morning in order to allow presidential motorcades to pass through (the offices/living quarters for the President etc have not yet been updated/refurnished so they continue to live just outside of town).

- Electricity- the problem of power, or rather the lack of it. NPA- the National Power Authority, has many problems, which I have noted here before, not least a decrepit system for transmitting electricity from the power station to offices/homes, the delays on the hydroelectric plant, the lack of effective management, the (apparent) constant pilfering of supplies, the fact that electricity costs so much to produce but the per unit tariffs do not cover the costs of production of a unit of electricity. Beyond this, the machines are old, often breakdown and getting spare parts is difficult. When NPA has been available, it manages to surge up to 350V and so blows most electrical equipment that is left plugged in. Under the new President, NPA is apparently going to be under control of the new VP and getting a good electricity system up and working is one of the main things the President is pushing for at the moment.

- Water- well, many houses have their own bowsers, since this is probably the most effective way to store enough water. Unfortunately, there are various stories of water being stolen out of the bowsers and sold on. The death of an official who complained that the another government dept/agency was selling water that had already been bought by another client is an example of this. The city of Freetown has grown tremendously compared to the infrastructure that was built for it- a recent visitor exclaimed at the small size of the main water pipe bringing water into the city for use in the town. Something along the lines of “that’s it- for the whole city!!!!”

- Politics- well, we’ve had elections, but unfortunately this has meant the entire civil service (except for the Ministry of Health), has frozen up for far too long (in my opinion) around the elections, which certainly won’t help us win any prizes for efficiency and effectiveness. Having worked in a developed country over an election, at a time when work never actually stopped- there was always so much to be done, even without a minister, I was surprised when the then ‘upcoming’ elections caused everything to stop and grind to a halt. However, there are positive signs for the future. The incoming government is looking at which departments and agencies ca be combined/ need to be created in order to make bureaucracy better.

These (as well as the lack of opportunities for employment and the high price of rice) are probably the main areas that anyone in Sierra Leone would point out as needing reform. In fact, many people I’ve questioned will just speak about the first two as needing reform- “once we have good roads and power, we will develop quickly as a nation” is the common theme. Corruption/inefficiencies and the like are seen as unending trials that will never quite be done away with and must therefore be worked around. The fact that most public employees do not receive a liveable wage probably doesn’t help the situation at all.

But that’s enough on the negative, SL is an amazing country, with a huge amount of potential for the future- there are people who have a vision and a desire to see the country move forward. People are worried about being exploited (by anyone, whether Westerner, other Africans, or the elites within the country), but they are generally willing to work hard and do what they can for their country.

I spent the Saturday of my 1 year anniversary in the same way that I spent my first Saturday in SL- down at Bureh town beach (tho’ I still can spell the name), which remains beautiful and delightful: green hills as a backdrop to golden sands and blue sea, in some ways I’m glad that tourists haven’t discovered this yet- it makes it much more remote and relaxing, but I guess I can sacrifice a small amount of peace and quiet for the development of this country ;-)

It’s easy to slip into a routine here- as I’m sure some of my blog entries show, but when you stop and look around, there’s great beauty to be seen here and enjoyed- even if one of the bumpiest routes to the beach is plagued by mini road blocks as some of the children/youth seek to get money from passing cars (apparently they’re fixing the roads, but rarely actually seem to be doing any work- except moving earth from one hole to another, so the road never improves, but they always try to ‘look busy’). It’s a country with great potential, but lacking a way to tap into that potential. However, it can be done, but it might just take more time than is currently hoped by people, politicians, the international community and me.

The opposition win

2007-09-17T13:20:00.000Z

The APC have won the elections in SL- there were huge cheers in town as the results were announced- I had it in stereo as I could hear the cheers on the radio, as well as ‘live’. The APC supporters have been celebrating since then in the streets, tho’ a seasonal downpour has ensured the celebrations aren’t as lively as could’ve been possible.

In a recent interview with Reuters, Koroma stated he would focus on bringing development to Sierra Leone, particularly focusing on agriculture and tourism. The first of these I believe is absolutely essential to the economy, since SL’s environment means it should be able to really produce all that is needed for its population. The problem is then getting it to the people who need it at a price they can afford- it’s all very well for the north of the country to have excess production in rice, but when it’s those in the south that don’t have food, the infrastructure in the country needs a lot of improvement before such imbalances can benefit the whole of the country. On the tourism front, SL has a lot of beautiful scenery to offer- great for hiking or relaxing on a pristine beach, but not much else. If the development of tourist facilities means a focus on infrastructure in general- so that the people of SL have good power supply (instead of about 5% of the time), roads which are in a decent state of repair (currently not even the capitals of each of the districts have paved roads linking them), water that is suitable for people to drink and an education policy that encourages people not to just throw their rubbish away anywhere, but to be aware of their surroundings and the importance of SL being seen as a clean and beautiful country rather than as an overflowing rubbish tip, then there is a chance for tourism to be highly beneficial to the country. Unfortunately it would be competing with other countries further up the development ladder that already have resorts and infrastructure in place to look after visitors and that have entertainment other than natural surroundings to offer tourists, but there is no reason why SL shouldn’t at some point in the future be able to entice the numbers of people who came here before the war to enjoy the atmosphere here.

Koroma is a Christian, but comes from the mainly Muslim north of the country. In SL, people don’t vote on religious lines and from a human development perspective, the ability of Muslims and Christians to live peacefully side by side, voting for each other in elections, is something that Sierra Leoneans really are able to teach the rest of the world. There is a fair amount of nominalism here and it seems as tho’ lots of people are ‘Sunday-Christians’ or ‘Friday-Muslims’, but religion seems to be a uniting rather than dividing factor here and it’s only if you express an agnostic/atheistic viewpoint that you are looked upon askance.

Will update with more info on how things are going here and what’s happening to life here as soon as I can.

A few provisional results so far in the elections

2007-09-12T09:39:00.001Z

In Freetown the elections went off fairly peacefully, I was involved in the election monitoring, which was pretty dull and very quiet, which is good and how it should be, but having to get to the polling station for a 5am start wasn't the nicest (stations didn't open till 7am, but apparently some people monitoring the first round of elections- who were given a 6am arrival time- didn't get to the stations till about 7am, but which time all the setting up needed to have been done) but all worked out fine in the end.

There were various accounts of ballot box stuffing and some places where officials from one party or the other weren't allowed in, but overall it seems to have been a very quiet day, with most of the polling stations having free, fair and democratic elections. Admittedly there were some rather clumsy attempts at ballot rigging, which have been struck off by NEC (National Electoral Commission); they've disqualified any stations where there are more votes than registered voters. Which would seem reasonable.

Official count so far is up to 37.7 percent yesterday, with some results reported from every district (12 districts plus the Western Area in total in SL). The APC are on 60 percent of the vote so far and the SLPP on 40, with the projected results narrowing this slightly to 58-42 final estimation. This trend is likely to continue in the coming days as more rural results are posted so the margin will likely tighten as it did in the first round, but it is hard at the moment to see the SLPP (current governing party) coming back to take the lead.

Notable results yesterday include nearly 40 percent of votes so far in Bonthe (in the south-west of the country, a traditional SLPP stronghold) going to APC, and 24 percent of Kailahun (south- east and also a traditional SLPP/ PMDC hotspot) votes despite allegations that the SLPP has rigged the voting. Koinadugu (APC traditional stronghold) is the only northern district where the SLPP have made significant inroads so far.

Anyway, I will write more when there are more results to be had, tho' it looks as though there could be a change in the governing party, which could well lead to several changes in policies over the next few months and years.

The results are in... colour

2007-08-24T10:59:00.000Z

On 11^th August, Sierra Leone held its first locally run presidential and parliamentary election since the end of the war (the UN organised and ran the 2002 election). The elections passed very peacefully (despite the number of journalists who came to SL to follow the proceedings) and now the provisional first round count is complete. The three main parties are the SLPP (Green), the APC (Red) and the PMDC (Orange). The SLPP has been governing the country for the past 10 years and has its power base in the south and east of the country. The APC (main opposition party) held power a great deal between independence and the civil war and have their power base in the north of SL. The PMDC (about 15 months old) are a break-away group from the SLPP; some people say that the leader (Charles Margai) wanted to develop a new party, without the stagnation and corruption that some feel has crept into the SLPP ranks after a decade in power and felt that there needs to be change. Others say that he was peeved about not getting the presidential candidacy for the SLPP (it went to the current Vice President Solomon Berewa) and so set up a rival party that would decrease the number of people voting for Berewa/the SLPP as revenge on the SLPP for not giving Margai the presidential candidacy. Anyway, whichever reasons were behind the formation of the PMDC, they have done remarkably well for a party that is so young and there is potential that they could change the anticipated outcome of the second round of elections.

So, the results will be officially announced tomorrow and will give a Koroma-Berewa (APC-SLPP) run-off on Saturday September 8th, with the final results likely in the following week. Ernest Bai Koroma (APC/Red) ended up with 44.3% of the vote, Charles Margai (PMDC/Orange) with 13.9% and Solomon Berewa (SLPP/Green) with 38.3%.

Margai (PMDC/Orange) has declared his desire for change in government and therefore his support for Koroma (APC/Red) and so it’s a big ask for the SLPP to come back from this, especially with Koroma and Margai campaigning together and at least some southern PMDC leaders indicating they are going to stick with their leader and back change. The result will probably hang on whether Margai’s supporters from the first round stick with his intention of backing the APC (which traditionally they oppose since the political parties are roughly based on tribal groupings), or return to their original party and support the SLPP. This has been a huge wake-up call for the SLPP (some would even say it’s their eviction notice), the governing party had predicted another easy victory (as in 2002, when outgoing President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah won the election easily with 70% of the votes) but it under-estimated the level of resentment in Sierra Leone over a perceived lack of development since the end of the war and high levels of corruption.

The parliamentary results are also out and the APC ended up with a majority of 59 seats including all 21 in the Western Area (where Freetown is); the PMDC won 10 seats and the SLPP 43. There are also 12 Paramount Chief MPs yet to be selected, which could lead to a hung parliament. This is a big shift in the balance of power in the country already, even if Berewa (of the SLPP) does become President, so watch this space and we'll see where and how things end up after/during the next round of elections.

Death and burial in Salone

2007-07-11T17:10:00.000Z

Every week and sometimes several times a week, there’s a funeral parade that goes past my office, there’s lots of people marching, a band playing and the likelihood of a feast (provided by the relatives) for the mourners to look forward to at the end.

In West Africa, how you are mourned and buried is important-it shows off the wealth you had in your lifetime, as well as the wealth of your relatives now you’re gone, it’s also looked on as a celebration of your life and all you’ve done and achieved.

The stark reality hit close to home recently- a friend who is soon to depart Salone inherited a caretaker who lived and worked at his compound when he arrived here sometime ago. This caretaker is a very elderly gentleman, with almost nothing to his name, in fact, so little that his only home/shelter was a metal roofed shack (at least one side open to the elements), that the landlord of this property had been persuaded to construct for him to stay in. Recently, the caretaker came down with an illness so severe that he needed to go into hospital. However, the hospital needed various forms filled in and payments for registration before it can accept patients into the hospital, after several attempts to get into hospital, it was finally managed, as the result of the ‘white man’ paying these fees for the caretaker. After this, various other fees are needed to keep someone in hospital- for daily food, water, medicines and cleaning, although these are much lower. Compared to US costs for health care, it’s pretty cheap here (possibly a totally cost of 40-50 GBP or 80-100 USD at current exchange rates to get someone into hospital and then looked after and hopefully healed after a couple of weeks in hospital), but for local (unskilled) wages of 4,000-5,000 Leones per day (that’s about 80pence to 1 GBP) it’s a fortune. Even for a mid ranking civil servant, that’s at least two-thirds of a month’s wages just to get into hospital and be looked after there.

Back to the issue of burial and death, my friend went to try and find the family of the caretaker, who apparently live up country, but because they wouldn’t gain anything through is death, except lots of bills and expenses, so really didn’t want to know/be identified, which is so sad.

An interesting debate/set of comments was sent in to a BBC article on this subject in 2003- whether it’s worth paying for a large funeral for someone:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3246228.stm

What is also sad, is that people are prepared to spend so much more on the death of a relative than on keeping them well while they’re alive. The social pressures for a ‘big’ funeral are huge, in other places in West Africa, keeping the body on ice for a while is done as a status symbol- the longer you can afford to pay the morgue fees to keep the body there, the richer you are. The problem comes when the dead are celebrated at the expense of the living, or people refuse to acknowledge relatives for fear of having to pay the expenses of a funeral, let alone those for health care. It’s true that each culture and each community within a culture has its own traditions to keep up, but I don’t think these traditions for the dead should be undertaken at the expense of the living.

The poverty of Crewe Bay

2007-07-10T10:57:00.000Z

Someone I know was working down in the Crewe Bay area recently, they were involved in a survey of illnesses and difficulties faced by the families there. Crewe Bay is one of the slums in Freetown, with well over 500 households in the community. It is an illegal build, along one of the watercourses that runs from the hills down to the sea. The household sizes vary immensely; some had 29 people (man, 3 wives and 25 children), living in a single room, whereas some were just couples who had come to Freetown in search of a better life. Since at least 70% of people in Sierra Leone live below the US$1 a day poverty line (79% in rural areas, with a lower proportion in Freetown, tho’ it’s much more expensive to live in Freetown than in the rest of the country), it’s understandable, why people look to move somewhere else, but often the difficulties and diseases that they face in the city are at least as bad as in the rest of the country.

The unemployment rate remains very high, despite the government’s drive to increase youth employment (youths are anyone between the ages of 18 and 35). The elections are just round the corner, so there are a lot of attempts at providing short-term jobs (both for political gain and also to try and increase stability by providing an activity other than ‘rallying’ for the youth to be involved with).

Anyway, back to Crewe bay- the ‘streets’ between the houses are so narrow that you cannot stretch out your arms to either side because you will be pushing into/through the walls of people’s homes. There isn’t running water, and electricity-well, take a guess. Very few of the children had clothes on and despite the warmth of this country for most of the year, when the rains are persistent (and don’t drain away), it can does get quite a bit cooler (low 20’s). All of the children have been suffering from respiratory problems- probably due to a mix of coldness and lack of good nutrition. The inhabitants of the Crewe bay slum cannot afford packaging, yet the watercourses are jammed with rubbish- most of it from New England and other communities based further up the hills; they just throw the rubbish into the rivers and wait for the rains to wash it out to sea, but instead it gets jammed up round the Crewe Bay area and causes flooding into the houses people have built there- the waters can come about 4ft high and are a mix of rubbish and sewage, since the drainage systems are overwhelmed by the rains. There are even stories of some people/businesses throwing the rusting shells of old cars (once all useful parts have been removed) into the watercourses and waiting for the rains to wash them out to sea. Instead, it just makes life even more unbearable for people.

The annual rains/floods make life very tough- children’s school books being washed away (in the middle of their exams); make even attempts at self-advancement that bit more difficult. Illnesses ranging from chicken pox (needs to be kept away from adults who could get shingles), to respiratory problems, to leprosy, to the ever present threat of malaria make earning a living harder-there isn’t really such a thing as unemployment benefit here and for many casual jobs, it’s the amount you produce that you get paid for and the work often requires physical exertion, which if you’re ill is difficult- you either end up producing less (and therefore get paid less), or can’t find work, or need to borrow money to pay to medicines (although I haven’t heard much about loan sharks here, I know they exist in other countries’ slums, so assume there’s a similar system in operation here).

So what can be done- well, in some ways very little- the buildings are not precisely legal and anyone who tries to put in place permanent structures will not end up in the government’s good books. However, there are things that can be done- the local youths can be employed to clear the rubbish out of the waterways (the main city dump is less than a mile away), locally made tools and wheelbarrows can help in the rubbish clearing and removal and will also produce a small multiplier effect on the local economy (local being a particularly small geographical area in this case). If the necessary equipment is made available, it has been suggested that the waterways are deepened, since there’s probably been a lot of build up of gunk in the watercourses over the years- if the rains had somewhere to go, they wouldn’t need to flood the alleyways and homes of the Crewe Bay inhabitants, which may make it slightly easier for them to survive.

Tropical torrents

2007-06-20T10:49:00.000Z

The rains continue... in fact they have been so strong that they have swept away half of a sleeping policeman on my road. There are a lot of sleeping policemen on the roads around here (put in to stop the UN troops killing so many children when they were based in Freetown). These cause a lot of traffic jams in the mornings as the taxis (in particular) struggle over them to get up the hill. Anyway, as I have mentioned in the past, the roads have become rivers and several boulders (of varying sizes) have been dislodged, but this is the first time I have seen rains heavy enough to wash away parts of the traffic calming system.
The rains are definitely getting heavier- I went paddling in order to get into a friend's car this weekend- we had been planning to go in search of sunlight but that seemed like a vain hope, so we retired to her house and watched 'The Last King of Scotland' instead- a good, but sometimes violent film about Idi Amin in Uganda and the change that came over him while he was in power there.

Also this weekend, I went on the walk (have been absent from it for various reasons for a few weeks), anyway, it was a nice, easy walk- up whale bay river (no Whales around, no bay and only a bit of a river, tho' am assured that the latter will soon be changed as a result of the rainy seasons). We then enjoyed a pot-luck picnic on the beach (with sun) and the waves were somewhat less violent than the previous weekend :-)

Several people seem to be leaving at the moment (I don't think this is just because it's the rainy season), which means there's a few leaving parties happening. However, it's also the beginning of the research season, when several people come over from various universities to research into various aspects of the social, economic and post-conflict development and structures of the country. I think it's the arrival of so many people coming here for 2-3months that meant when I arrived someone asked how long I was staying for and their response to my reply was 'Ah, well in that case I can be your friend because you're here for at least 6months' (or in my case somewhat longer). There's a lot of comings and goings here, which makes life more interesting but also makes it somewhat unstable and harder to really get to know people properly unless they're here for a decent amount of time.

Rumours in Freetown

2007-06-12T11:58:00.000Z

Well, there are always rumours flying around Freetown, the most recent relates to the possibility of Lungi airport (main international airport in SL) being down-graded from an international airport due to the lack of fire fighting facilities at the airport. This was emphasised when a recent helicopter crash at Lungi very sadly killed 19 people on board:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6715937.stm

This had been a chartered helicopter for the Togolese officials heading back to Togo after the match against Sierra Leone a couple of weeks ago. There is currently an investigation ongoing which will try to determine the reason behind the crash. This has meant that the government has decided to ground all helicopters flying between Freetown and Lungi (except the UN helicopter which has diplomatic immunity- tho' from the Freetown grapevine, I've gathered this helicopted has crashed more times than Paramount). This all means that the only way to get over to Lungi is by speedboat (they're charging more than the cost of the helicopter flight), by boat (have done this and was fine, but takes ages) or driving all the way round (takes forever and given the condition of the roads is probably at least as dangerous as going on a Paramount helicopter).

Anyway, the general hope is that the airport won't lose it's international status, otherwise things could get pretty complicated in terms of people trying to leave (and arrive in SL), but the panic over this seems to have blown over and the general hope/feel is that it won't be downgraded- at least, not yet. Will keep you posted on any other updates on the Freetown rumour-mill (which is probably more accurate than the local papers)!

Sunshine and showers

2007-06-06T13:40:00.000Z

It has been far too long since I've written anything on my blog- I fully admit this, but life has been pretty busy here recently- lots of conferences and work to be done as a result of them and then just getting on with life as normal.

We've also been lacking internet at work since last Friday and I've had to take a few days off sick (tho' am now feeling much better). The walk last Saturday was up Sugarloaf (great views from the top but a bit of a clamber to get up there), which I avoided due to being ill for the previous 2-3 days and instead watched far too much Spooks at a friend's house.

The rainy season has begun in earnest it seems- some pretty huge 'showers' of rain coming down- well, actually huge thunderstorms that can be pretty dramatic to watch but are more annoying when you're trying to catch a few more minutes sleep before having to get up and go to work! In fact, that pretty much describes a lot of how this morning went- I just about managed to avoid getting drenched between the house and the car, but the rain hits the ground so hard that even if you're using an umbrella you're likely to get pretty wet as the rain that misses you on the way down, catches you as it bounces up again. In fact, the only 'benefit' of the rain was that I didn't face quite as many traffic jams as normal on my way into work, although heading up one road did feel like the car was trying to drive up a river as the deep channels at the sides of the road had so much water gushing down them that they were overflowing into the road. One of my colleagues told me of a 30-car pile up near Lumley roundabout this morning on his way into work- there's a short section between two roundabouts where there's no tarmac and the road is just hard earth/mud, well, under torrential rains, this had become impassable for all but the most able vehicles and please remember that however intrepid the taxi drivers here are, I haven't seen a taxi that I would class among the 'most able' of vehicles here.

We also faced a plague (well, one night) of flies, which we've also been told marks the beginning of the rains, as they 'emerge' after the first big rains. This happened last week and the flies were highly attracted to any light sources and even managed to get in through closed windows- metal bars on the window didn't seem to discourage them at all, but we've been told this is a one-off event, so are settling down to wait for the rains to continue. Having said that, looking outside of my office now, there's gorgeous sunlight and bits of blue sky, so it doesn't feel like we're really in the rainy season at the moment! We'll obviously see how many more trips we can make to the beach before there's more rain than sun on the weekends!

Bunce, beach, birthday

2007-05-17T13:41:00.000Z

It’s sometime since I’ve written up here and life carries on. Last weekend, instead of going walking, I went to Bunce Island with some friends. Bunce Island is the site of an 18th century British slave castle about 20miles in the Sierra Leone River. You can only get to it by boat, fortunately we were able to hire a speedboat from some friends, which meant the journey was only 45mins each way.

It’s very much a ruin and the jungle has reclaimed a lot of the fort (fairly successfully). Bunce island is fairly small and there’s a huge amount of history behind it- apparently a lot of people were sent to work in the West Indies, South Carolina and Georgia. Slaves from West Africa were highly prized because of their rice growing skills. Women were also more highly prized (and therefore more expensive) than men because they worked harder and were also able to bear children (which would then become the property of the slave’s master). This was backed up by anecdotal evidence given by an American who was with another group that arrived at the island the same time we did- when the owner of his grandmother and grandfather (both with several ‘greats’ in the front) died, the woman was sold off for 400USD and the man for 280 USD according to the accounts that the family now had.

We were given a guided tour by a local who has been tasked with taking visitors around the island and explaining its history. When understandable, his interpretation of the history of the island did slightly differ from that available elsewhere. But the basic fact that many hundreds of men and women were sold as slaves still remains shocking and chilling. The BBC even has some pics of the island (and a bit more info on the history: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/07/africa_bunce_island/html/1.stm)- they've even managed to take some of the same pics I have !

Archway near the entrance of the fort- looking inwards

The motley crew who I travelled with

Our guide on the island, telling us about the founding and building of the first fort on the site

One of the cannons that has been left on the island for sometime- including the royal cipher of King George III

Two storey building at the centre of the fort- probably where the Chief Agent and senior officers lived

The afternoon was more relaxed- we went to Tokeh beach which was enjoyable and relaxing, although they didn’t have enough crockery and cutlery for us to eat our fish and rice/chips with, which was annoying.

Oh and (going backwards in time), I celebrated becoming another year older last week, which was fun (pics on facebook). Since it wasn’t at the weekend, I had someone else do the cooking and Bliss (new patisserie/café that has recently opened up nearby) provided the cake, was a relaxed and chilled evening. Those of you who know a little bit about me, will probably be somewhat surprised at two of the main dishes in the meal that I had requested- curry!!!! Now, I had asked for the chicken curry be very, very, very mild and it was, which was nice (and very delicious) and I have to admit to not eating any of the vegetable curry because I’d said that could be a bit warmer. In any case, with plenty of fish (2 barracuda), mountains of rice and couscous, plus a delicious salad and fantastic new potatoes, we weren’t going to go hungry. There was ice cream and brownies for dessert (the latter very kindly made by one of my house mates) and then a huge cake from Bliss- chocolate of course and it fed all of us, plus several of my work colleagues and there still remained enough to be enjoyed afterwards. So all in all, a relaxed and fun evening with friends in SL, which was a brilliant way to celebrate turning another year.

At the chimp sanctuary

2007-05-04T15:19:00.000Z

Three chimps in a tree

Chimp posing for the camera

Even better on film- the slow, but well-choreographed walk of three chimps in step ;-)

Feeding time at the ...sanctuary (please note the one who's playing with his food!)

"Can I have some of that? You know you want to give me some"

It is sometime since I last posted- life has been busy and flat during that time and I also think I’ve managed to avoid a full week in work (due to public holidays, Easter and visitors) for the past month. Anyway, I forgotten far too much of what I have done in that period (a problem of not posting regularly).

I will tell you about the Chimpanzee sanctuary that I visited recently, with visitors from the UK. I spoke to a friend afterwards who said that he had only taken 20mins to go round- I’m not sure tho’ because we took at least and hour and a half- maybe we just asked more questions or something.

The visits have to be undertaken at certain times and by appointment only- one of the reasons is that the ‘road’ leading up to the sanctuary isn’t particularly wide and you wouldn’t really want to meet people coming the other way if you could possibly avoid it. Also, the visits are carefully arrange around feeding times, otherwise- due to the large size of the enclosures, you’d be unlikely to see many of the chimps who know when feeding time is due and gather at particular points in the enclosures.

The chimps themselves were brilliant- some were particularly keen on posing and showing off for the camera, whereas others were happier throwing stones at the visitors. The sanctuary itself has been open for about 10years and has been in national and international media for reasons good and bad. The work that is done there is amazing- rescuing chimps that would otherwise be abandoned or badly treated, or possibly served as bush meat, introducing them into family groups and giving them increasing freedom. Despite the ravages inflicted on the centre (food, money and medicines were stolen by the RUF) during the war, the workers stayed on and managed to get food etc for the chimps from locals who had also faced the pillaging of the rebels. One of the most famous chimps was a rare albino, she had white hair and one blue eye and one brown. Unfortunately she died after an accident in the jungle but her picture is still lovingly displayed at the centre.

There was a break-out from the centre in 2006 and the alpha male is still loose, but the rest of the chimps have returned and the group that escaped still flourishes- some of the chimps pull faces and do acrobatics on request.

On other notes, we’ve have rumbles signifying the beginning of the rainy season. Most particularly on the night of the 2^nd May, the rain was so loud it actually woke me up! Our house has a tin roof and so I assume that those in the apartment above us get a lot more noise when it rains and (naturally) I’d never heard the rain on the roof before, there was obviously a lot of rain that night because the sound woke me up. The next morning- driving to work- the view over the city was clearer than I’ve seen it in months, quite spectacular. Anyway, we haven’t had rain since then, so maybe the wet season hasn’t really arrived and that was just a foretaste, but when it rains here, it really rains.

The 27^th April celebrates Sierra Leone’s independence, although very little actually happens on the 27^th itself because (as of last year and possibly pre-war), there’s a large lantern parade through the town. Some friends went to see this, tho’ due to the usual amount of Sierra Leonean punctuality, by 3am they’d only seen one float- I’m told there were more about later on but I was at an independence day party arranged by the Spanish contingent of the ex pat community. Hence Independence Day is usually seen as a time to sleep off the exigencies of the previous night in order to return to work on the 28^th- although this year the 28^th was a Saturday, meaning a wonderfully long weekend!

Water, water everywhere

2007-04-13T15:37:00.000Z

... except where we need it. Well, that's not entirely accurate- we do have water in the house at the moment, tho' this is mainly in large barrels that were recently acquired to ensure we wouldn't have a problem with the drought that is evidently anticipated by several people here. To add to the expected lack of water, one of the main pipes bringing water into the city from the reservoir sprung a leak, hence decreasing the amount of water available in the city. Having said that, some people here definitely haven't heard of showers, or if they have then they don't undertake them particularly regularly ;-(

Another place that would've been useful to have water would've been under our boat last weekend. A group of us went to Turtle Islands (beautiful and definitely desert island type places) to spend Easter there, taking advantage of the long weekend. It was lovely to get away from Freetown to somewhere quiet- no mobile phones ringing and a lovely opportunity to relax on the beach and read. Some people also played cricket- we had so very eager volunteers to help in the fielding, with the local kids vying to be the one who brought the ball back to the bowler. Some of the had impressive throwing abilities too- much better than mine, but I'm just glad I didn't actually manage to throw the ball backwards rather than forwards- yes, my abilities to throw a ball really are that bad! ;-)

Anyway, having water under our boat.... due to various technical difficulties, we arrived at the islands later than anticipated and right at low tide, meaning we had to get out and push the boat off the sandbank and into the deeper channel that led up to Paradise Island (at least that's what I'm told the island we were staying on was called). The accommodation was variable- some people had tents on the sand, some had mattresses in tents and 4 of the girls (because guys really don't like the idea let alone the practice of sharing beds) got to share 2 double beds. In some ways this was good, because guys would not have fit the beds (one of the girls being 5'2" complained about hitting her feet against the end of the bed most of the night) and definitely would not have managed to avoid touching the mosquito nets.

Having arrived on the Friday afternoon, we enjoyed fish and rice (something of a staple) and then chatted round the campfire in the evening and into the night. The breeze kept sandflies and mossies away. On Saturday afternoon (after a slightly different lunch consisting of chicken and chips), I went fishing, well, to be slightly more accurate, I piloted the boat round an old wreck while some of the guys went fishing. We caught Barracuda and Bonita, the latter looks like a small shark and really fought to avoid being caught but in the end it meant we had plenty of fish for supper.

The trip back on Sunday morning/early afternoon was much less eventful, but it was brilliant to go along the coast of the peninsula and watch the gathering storm clouds (apparently the wet season doesn't begin until May but I'm not sure if anyone told the weather that this year). We arrived back in Freetown somewhat more tanned but also with more bites (Saturday night not having favoured us with a breeze and therefore we'd been liberally attacked) having all had a relaxing couple of days in Turtle Islands. Having been assured that there were no longer any turtles in the islands, I was to surprised to actually see a turtle, tho' I think it belong to some of the locals.

Adventures in the Jungle

2007-04-04T13:10:00.001Z

A group of 4 of us went to Outamaba-Kilimi national park last weekend, since we had Monday off as an extra bank holiday (this seems to be a good time of year to get extra days off work- this week is only 3 days long because it's Good Friday at the end of the week). Anyway, we had a few adventures up country that you may (or may not) want to read about- if the latter you can just look at the pics.

A monkey investigating a car in Makeni, where we stopped on the way to and from the national park.

Kids saying hi at the ferry that we used to cross to the area where the national park is based.

So, the O-K (Outamba- Kilimi) national park. We went up on Saturday, arriving at about 3pm (after a 6:30am ish start), it was really hot and humid when we arrived and all we wanted to do was chill and relax (basically that's all we did do). Then one guy cooked up a brilliant thai curry (with very few chillies so was actually really nice for me). We had to use an open fire that we made because the gas canister on the mini stove we brought with us was empty (oops), but apart from getting one frying pan and one saucepan covered in soot etc, was really delicious and absolutely fine. Enjoyed the night around the fire and they turned in to bed fairly early. Up by 6:30 and cooked bacon sarnies for breakfast, then left the camp at about 7:15am to start the trek into the national park, just as we were leaving I remembered that we hadn't picked up any sweets so went back and picked them up, we had about 3 litres of water each. We then went walking through the park, tho' didn't see much wildlife to start with- loads of the forest has been burnt down hence destroying a lot of the habitats for the animals. Was a good walk even tho' our guide didn't seem to be able to find the way to get to the lake, which was annoying since we knew there was a tree house there that you could sit in to watch the animals as they came down to the lake. After a lot of wandering and enjoying the walk we came to a large clump of bamboo, where we took pictures, and one of the guys sat down on a bending piece of bamboo and bent/broke it even further. After moving on and wandering down to the river we decided to give up on the idea of finding the lake and head back to the camp. 3 hours later we found ourselves back at the bamboo again, which was slightly worrying, especially since we'd been told we'd be back at the camp by 2pm in the afternoon and it was already 2pm and the guide didn't really seem to know where he was. This was worrying because we were all getting quite low on water, and then someone remembered that they had packed their iodine tablets in their rucksack- this meant we could drink water, so long as we found our way back to the river (the bamboo was fairly far away from the river). The guide then had some difficulty in finding the river, so using basic navigational techniques such as the sun and a watch (having managed to leave compasses back at the campsite, since we had trusted the guide knew where he was going), we headed south-south west towards where we believed the river to be, deciding not to take our guide's suggestion of taking a possible hunting track to a possible village where he may have had relatives. Anyway, at about 3pm, we found the lake which we had been promised by the guide was 'only 15mins away' about 5 hours earlier. This also meant we found the treehouse overlooking the lake, as well as the river feeding into the lake, where we were able to fill up our waterbottles, add iodine and neutralising tablets and sit down to relax knowing that we weren't going to be dehydrated in the hot afternoon sun.

At 4pm, we decided that we were too tired to head back to the camp that evening- especially if we were to get there before dusk, when the hippos would come out of the river to spend the night on the land, also we weren't 100% trusting that our guide would know the way back to the camp since he'd earlier assured us that he knew where he was going and was adamant that the clump of bamboo we'd found twice was actually two different sets of bamboo- until we showed him the pictures to prove it was the same place. So the guide headed back to camp promising that he would send some of the other guides with a canoe that evening if they were back at the camp (he would probably have been too tired to come back to get us), if not then he would head up to get us first thing in the morning.

The lake from the tree-house after we'd just arrived in the afternoon.

We had plenty of deet, sugar (thanks to the sweets I'd remembered) and water and having had bacon for breakfast was good because it was about the saltiest thing that would could have eaten. So we settled down for the night in a 7x7ft (just wide/long enough for 4 people to lie down 'coffin' position) treehouse/platform with raised edges, safely away from any potential hippo resting places. we saw a chimp come down to the water to drink, also we'd already seen a deer that day, some hornbills and several other birds

Dawn at OK National Park- it occurred a bit to late for us to see if the large animal we'd heard washing/drinking in the lake at 4am in the morning had been an elephant (very rare to see in the park) or a hippo.

We were severely attacked by mossies, despite all the deet and I think I only slept for an hour in total. We spent about 14hours in the treehouse and at 7:30am our guide turned up. We then went down to where he had moored the canoe and got some brilliant photo op's with a bull and his harem of female hippos enjoying the morning waters. After that, we headed back to the camp-up the river and saw a fish eagle? (well something like that), several other birds and chimps in the trees, the river was really calm and serene and we arrived back at the camp at about 9:30am, where we made more bacon and then packed up to leave. The journey down to Makeni went fine and then onto Freetown and a good wash (no showers at the campsite tho 'they did have pit latrines)- we were absolutely filthy from the night spent in the trees and didn’t want to wash in the river because of the risk of Bilhazia! Just to let you know- the iodine tablets worked really well and none of us took ill as a result of drinking river water- a real relief.

The bull hippo watching us on the edge of the river.

So all in all a pretty eventful adventure, but nothing bad happening, just a good story afterwards and some memories of what we really ought to take with us next time we go on a ‘morning hike’!

On a slightly different note, it seems as though the national park is being fairly swiftly destroyed as locals burn down more and more of it. We couldn’t work out the reasons for this because the land wasn’t being used for farming, which would be the normal reason for burning land. It’s a real pity because it’s reducing the habitats for the animals- particularly the water buffalo and chimps that others have seen when they’ve been to the park in the past and although it’s a shame we didn’t get to see more wildlife, it’s more of a pity that such a beautiful area is being senselessly destroyed and the animals that live there either end up as bush meat or have to move on elsewhere.

Last weekend

2007-03-30T16:24:00.001Z

Ok, so this is getting fairly bad- waiting an entire week after an event before posting it on my blog. However, work has been fairly busy this week- we've had a major meeting between government and donors to look at how things have been going on the PRSP, aid harmonisation, and various sector strategies since the CG meeting in November. The DEPAC is only one day long, so not quite as manic as preparing for the CG meeting, but it's still been busy. Also, the DEPAC is meant to happen every quarter (unlikely with elections coming up, but still possible) so that people at the top are kept informed on how things are going to reduce poverty.

Anyway, that was all out of the way by the end of yesterday and today has taken a more relaxed pace, meaning I can write a bit on my blog.

Last weekend was a break from the walking, swimming, beaching of previous posts. we left town on Friday afternoon and went down to the beach, about 7 cars worth, but there were spaces- but in any case there were quite a few of us.

Those who wanted to be prepared to roll into bed at any hour sorted out mosquito nets and hammocks and various other contraptions that they intended to us to catch some sleep. we then chilled and chatted on the beach, ate fish and rice (with fruit for dessert), listened to music and started the campfire going.

Now, this is meant to be the warmest time of year in SL, but I'm not convinced since I felt slightly chilly when wandering away from the fire (there was a very slightly breeze which also decreased the temperature slightly). We consumed a lot of marshmallows and there was a fair amount of alcohol drunk considering the hangovers several people had the next morning. I didn't go for a 3am swim (too cold and not looking forward to the prospect of going to bed cold and wet), in fact, slept very snugly and warmly to wake up just after 7.

Someone who was very well prepared had brought a camping stove (and cafetiere) with them- I love the smell of coffee and even quite like coffee beans covered in chocolate but still don't like the taste of coffee, despite housemates and friends trying to encourage me that it's really quite nice and probably won't poison me after all ;-)

A morning swim was definitely in order and was absolutely brilliant- the water wasn't particularly cold and allowed me to work off energy without disturbing those recovering from the previous evening's undertakings.

The journey back to town was a slight fiasco- two clutches gone (one recovered enough to get back to town and the other had to be towed), so a journey that can be done in an hour took well over 2 hours, but all made it safely back to town again in the end, which was a relief.

In the evening I was at a leaving party- two of the leaders of the walking club are leaving at some point in the near future and so we had a pot luck supper to say goodbye to them. Being highly unimaginative I took along a fruit salad- I'll see what I can do about tray-bakes in the future, but having spent most of the day at or returning from the beach, I didn't really feel like I had the opportunity to try anything more adventurous.

Sunday I went to church and heard a good talk from a guy who works for YFC and then relaxed and caught up on sleep in the afternoon (so pretty boring really).

This weekend- well, if all goes well then I hope to go up country to one of the parks. Being in West Africa, we don't get the big animal safari's common in East Africa, but we'll see what wildlife is willing to be capture on camera. Will let you know sometime soonish, but probably not on Monday- Sierra Leone being a majority Islamic country is having a bank holiday to celebrate their Isalmic prohet's birthday this weekend.

Puncture and Paddy's night

2007-03-20T15:51:00.001Z

So really, my weekends are getting somewhat monotonous-at least for you to read about and I don’t think my week days are getting much more exciting. I’ve started playing squash more regularly, which is fun- tho’ the court is not air conditioned, so it’s kind of warm when we’re playing. I’m slowly getting a bit better, fortunately I’ve found a friend who’s about the same level, so we’re able to ‘share’ winnings rather than just have one person exhausted and the other ‘unexercised’.

Well, in case you hadn’t guessed, I went on the walk this Saturday morning and then went for a swim, the leader of the walk noted that obviously the walk wasn’t tough enough and he needed to make sure we had a faster pace in the future. My response was along the lines of however hard he made the walk, even to the point where I would be collapsing, I’d still swim afterwards (tho’ may have a rest first), because swimming (at least for the amount I do), isn’t particularly tiring unless I’m really trying to exercise and therefore pushing myself to swim faster.

Friday night (lets not do this chronologically), several of us went down to Shanghai restaurant for supper- was v amusing because whenever anyone walked into the restaurant they basically did a walk round all the other tables to say hi to everyone else who they knew and then went over to the table where they were sitting- I did this and so did everyone who came in after me. It’s really amusing to be able to walk into a restaurant and know most of the people in there. This was pointed out to me when I was out eating with a friend who was in SL on a shortish consultancy, he said that it seemed like I knew everyone in the restaurant, it wasn’t quite true, but I did know a lot of people there and as they came into the restaurant they came over and said hi. I guess that shows how small the expat community is here (or how few places there are that people eat out at!)

Anyway, on Friday night (to get back to my original story), I had a puncture (v. common in SL). Now, my guards spotted this just as I was about to leave the compound (it was already quite dark) so I went down to the restaurant with one of my housemates instead. Anyway, I found that I did have all the necessary tools to change a tire in the back of the car, tho’ it take us (me and the guards) sometime to work out how to put the jack down.

Punctures happen fairly regularly in Freetown (and in general in SL), fortunately my mechanic was available on Saturday afternoon and took the (now punctured) tire into town in order to get a new inner tube fitted. I do need new tires as the ones I’ve got work, but could be a lot better than they are.

Saturday was St Patrick’s day, so the Irish community (having been practising Irish dancing all of last week) threw a huge party and invited most of the expat community, plus several locals, to a party on Saturday night. Was good fun- they even got some of the non Irish people attempting to do Irish dancing, wasn’t too hard, tho’ is exhausting after a while and seems to be fairly similar to English country/barn dancing but with three steps for everyone one or two that would be done in barn/country dancing. Was a long night most of my friends got home about 5am and I wasn’t home much before that.

Sunday was definitely a day of rest and in the afternoon I accompanied a friend down to Bureh beach. (I’ve been told that this is the correct way to spell Bureh, although one map that I have spells it without the ‘h’). The beach was deserted (well, there were about 2 other people there, plus those who sell the food) and very pleasant. We had barracuda and rice for lunch, which was delicious. I’ve had oysters there before, which are also very nice.

That’s probably enough babbling from me for the moment, next weekend may be slightly different- perhaps staying overnight at one of the beaches, but nothing’s definite yet.

Ditto

2007-03-12T12:44:00.000Z

Another weekend and this is really getting rather ‘samey’ so I’ll have to think of a way to liven it up a bit- I guess remembering to take my camera so that I can take pics to put on here would be one good way of doing so, but since i forgot to take it with me, I'm afraid it's all just words again here.

Anyway, in case you hadn’t already guessed, I went for a walk on Saturday morning (and really should’ve remembered to take my camera with me- the walk was much flatter than last week, although with the (apparently) 70degree slopes that we clambered up last weekend, I don’t think we could’ve done anything much steeper! This weekend it was almost entirely flat, we walked to a waterfall, called Baptist Falls- very beautiful. Because it’s sometime since the rainy season ended, the river is very low and we were able to walk up the river (unfortunately two people managed to fall in- one just got their feet wet but the other got fairly well drenched). However, the water was very shallow, so no problems, just dampness. At the bottom of the waterfall there was a deep and very clear pool, which was cool enough to refresh and relax after the walk but definitely not too cold to swim in by any means. After a relaxing swim (and the discovery of some mosquito larvae that were managing to survive despite the water flowing down the fall-tho’ admittedly not a gushing torrent), we made our way back to IMATT where I had a ‘proper swim’ ie doing lengths in their v nice pool- has good views too!

On Sunday, we went to the beach in the afternoon, which was very good fun- we went down to the BHC beach (normally very calm because it is in its own small bay) and we enjoyed playing cricket on the beach, chatting in the sun, rice and freshly BBQ’d fish, and playing piggy-in-the-middle in the sea at the end of the afternoon, tho’ it was more like ‘team’ in the middle. So all in all , a very relaxing a fun weekend and much needed after the hectic week I’ve just had!

Ooh, some very exciting news- I have a new work computer, it’s new and shiny and even has vista on it, which looks kind of fun, tho’ as yet I haven’t used it at all- just watched it being set up and it has a bigger screen than I’m used to using, so it’s all quite exciting (especially since it has taken since November for me to get a new work computer- ‘eh bo’, that’s life in Salone).

Photos from walks

2007-03-06T12:30:00.000Z

Well, I admit I haven’t been so good at writing on my blog recently, but life has remained busy (sometimes manic) and I’ll try to share some of it here.

Last weekend I went walking. No, lets start a bit earlier than that, sometime in the week before last I heard of a walking group that met each Saturday morning at 9am and went for a walk, but I was having difficulties in finding out who was organising it, if I needed to sign up and such like. Anyway, a friend I met on that Friday told me she was going on the walk the next day and she would send me on the email and try to get me the contact details of the person in charge of the walk so I could sign up. That didn’t happen- due to meetings and technology failures (I think I might’ve mentioned them before), the email never got sent, so I went out on Friday evening and chilled and chatted with friends, getting in at the not too unearthly hour of 2am on Saturday morning. I was woken suddenly at 7:30am on Saturday morning by my friend ringing me to tell me that another friend of hers had dropped out and there was space to go on the walk if I wanted, so with my eyes just about open I gathered water, long trousers, boots and sunscreen and went off to pick her up (she very kindly made me lunch) and then managed to get to the meeting point just in time as they were organising who should go in which car.

Since it was our first time, we went on the short walk and it was very enjoyable (if getting quite warm by the middle/end of the walk). We walked near Charlotte Falls (not quite close enough to see the falls properly but we could see parts of the top of the falls, which looked nice) and then up through Regent village, past a lot of two storey houses (you don’t normally see very many of those and these ones looked pretty old, so conceivably built by freed slaves in the 19^th century). I didn’t manage to take a pic of the prettier ones, but I’ll try to put up some of the pics. I did go for a swim after the walk (and a shower 1^st), which was really relaxing and then tried to spend the afternoon reading development economics (normally interesting- at least to me), but my body decided that after a busy week, a lack of sleep and enough exercise for the day, that resting my eyes was going to turn into a 2 hour nap (well, I didn’t time it, but I certainly slept for longer than I planned).

(looking down the valley towards a 2 storey house). I think the long walk went up those hills in the background-rather them than me!

Saturday evening involved a hog roast- very tasty, I watched as it was turned over the outside fire for the last bits and it smelt good. We also had delicious garlic bread- could smell it ages before we saw or ate it, as well as fresh fish (which may also have been BBQed), oh and watching England do so badly in the rugby that someone said they were going to go and change their England shirt for a French one! I left early cos I had promised a very special friend that I would chat to them that evening, which was brilliant and much, much enjoyed.

On Sunday (yes- I know, this weekend seemed to have a lot happening, either that or I’ve suddenly become a lot more verbose than normal) I went to the early service, where I actually got to chat to the pastoral team (am sure they have a different name here), but that was nice, since I haven’t really ever had much of an opportunity to chat to them before because they’re always quite busy and the meetings are normally pretty big. Then went down to Kent (not the one near the M25) beach for the afternoon with a couple of people, one is a retired Lebanese friend who always has a lot of very interesting information to give about SL’s history and people and culture and the other, was a friend of mine who’s doing work with an NGO. We had crab and enjoyed the beach and swam in the sea- tho’ I did forget to take any photos, but golden sands and a turquoise ocean under a blue sky basically sums it up.

Ok, so last weekend dealt with, I’ll skip over most of the details of this week, since they mainly involved work, although I did manage to play squash (badly but enjoyably) with someone who’s definitely better than me, but we’re still able to have a good game and she doesn’t have it all her own way!

So the weekend just gone- I planned to go out on Friday evening because several people have just got back from trips abroad/home, however, my body decided that it preferred the idea of sleep, so that’s what happened. It did mean that I was much more fresh faced than I had been the week before and had a lot less difficulty in getting to the start of the walk on time. Now, the (apparently) highest mountain in (either the peninsula, or at least this end of the peninsula) is called Sugarloaf mountain (not sure if it abides by international standards in terms of being the right height for a mountain, but it felt a bit like one). The main walk this week was to go up and down Sugarloaf, now this week I’d actually got a proper rucksack-so I felt a little bit more the part than the shoulder bag I’d used last week, but although I made it to the top and didn’t lag behind or anything, my fitness leaves a whole lot to be desired. I think I probably manage to make it to the top on stubbornness alone because the body really wasn’t willing- and let me know by aching the whole of Sunday. The views were good (at least from 2/3’s of the way up) and from the top, you could see other mountains on the peninsula, which annoyingly looked taller than the one we were standing on, but we just said it was the perspective/angle (hmm-not sure about that). Anyway, was glad I did the walk- much enjoyed and managed not to fall asleep in the afternoon after all. Some of the rock faces were somewhat sheer-hopefully you can see this from the pictures I’ve taken, so in some ways going down was more difficult than going up (tho’ in my opinion, you’ve got gravity working with you rather than against you, so really, going down is much easier- you just need to work how when/how to stop!)

The view from 2/3's of the way up

The clamber to the 2/3's marker- the bit I still had to do but decided to photograph instead. I think it felt steeper than it looks, tho' that could just be my lack of fitness

The bit i'd just walked/clambered up.

the group at the top of sugarloaf mountain

On Sunday afternoon, after a very enjoyable lunch at Country Lodge (good views and you can get there by car instead of walking), I went down to Lumley beach, where I met a friend who’s here working for a couple of weeks and we joined in some volleyball- the first game was really good fun, but then people started getting really serious about it all, so we just chatted and enjoyed relaxing in the evening sun. The beach was sooooo busy- maybe I just don’t really go down to Lumley beach very often, but I didn’t realise how busy it got on Sunday afternoons- I guess we normally go to a beach that you need to drive to and since Lumley is part of Freetown, those without transport go there to enjoy the beach.

So anyway, you’ve heard a lot about the ‘new’ activity for me- going walking on Saturday mornings- long may it last and I hope it will help improve my fitness just a little bit more. Am still trying to swim a bit, tho’ that mainly ends up being at weekends as well and I don’t do enough exercise during the week- will see what I can organise.

Life goes on

2007-02-23T12:10:00.000Z

There's not really a huge amount happening at the moment- that's the main reason why I haven't posted for sometime- tho' I did send a newsletter so at least there's information flowing somehow. work has been pretty busy- lots of things to be organised and information to be gathered (still working on this one) and then reports written up, so enough to keep me out of trouble.

We (meaning about 5 cars worth of people) went to a private beach last weekend- was great fun- it's in a small bay which means it's much calmer than the other beaches and the waves are a lot gentler, which meant a lot of people spent sometime chilling and chatting in the water and then came out more prune-ish than they meant to. There was also a BBQ there, so we had bacon and egg sarnies for lunch- v nice, plus lots of pringles (yep- they've made it out here tho' they're not cheap and I know they're environmentally pretty atrocious) and wafers/biscuits.

We had a birthday party at Mamba Point (Guest House/Restaurant) last weekend as well. The wife of the 'birthday-boy' had made an amazing cake with a gorgeous chocolate sauce (shame about the diet) and the restaurant put mini fireworks on top-mini versions of the fountains that you get around November 5th- tho' it's quite an experience to see them on a cake being carriend towards the table!

Mangoes are in season- this is great and means there's a bit more variety in the fruit available, also- i love mangoes and some of the ones I have had here are totally gorgeous- so sweet and no stringyness at all. We had a false start to the season back in early January, but I think the season is now in full swing. Apparently there are so many mangoes each year that people can't eat all of them and so you end up with a lot of rotting mangoes at the end of the season. I was discussing this problem and the idea of dry mangoes out and exporting came up- the main problem here is that people don't want to invest in something like this- that takes time to put in place and time to make money back on (compared to say the mineral extraction that's happening all over the country, where it's much easiser to make quick money). It's sad because something like this could provide a lot of employment for people but just won't happen due to lack of investment.

Busy week

2007-02-09T15:45:00.000Z

It's been about a week since I last added anything- it's been a busy week- loads to do at work, as well as several things in the evenings. Even had the study group at mine on Weds night, so that kept me busy- particularly when I wasn't sure if we would have enough fuel to last the evening. This meant that I cooked for a friend and we ate by candle-light so that we would have enough fuel for the generator when everyone else came round. In the end i decided that i'd ask one of the guards to get some more fuel- 'just in case' and probably also 'just in time' (sorry- really bad economist joke there- my apologies- it has been a long and busy week).

Last night we were out at Chez Nous- one of the many beach bar/restaurants on Lumley beacg- they have live jazz on Thursday evenings, which was good fun- also saw (and heard) a very nice tenor sax being played live there. Am tempted to bring my own out- tho' I probably wouldn't play it as often as I should (I definitely don't play it as often as I should at the moment!).

The weather (well I do come from the UK)

Last Friday it rained- now I know those of you in more temperate climates will say 'so what'- but here is really is an anomaly- it doesn't rain in the dry season here. Basically the idea is you get 6months of rain and 6months of dry-tho' I think May/June and Sept/Oct are a bit of a mix of wet and dry as the seasons swap over. I have sicne learned that sometimes at the end of the Hamattan (Salone's version of winter) there's some rain. This means that the Harmattan is now well and truly over and we are likely to have increasing heat and humidity until May/June/whenever the rains decide to come this year-last year they were late and this year is unlikley to be very different.

The main problem with the rain coming last Friday was that a group of us were planning to camp out on the beach on Friday night. However, this didn't happen, since no one wanted to sleep out if we were likley to get drenched, plus it would be unlikely that we would find much dry wood in order to make a fire with. Now, the fire would definitely not be for warmth but more for light and something to sit round (not sure if anyone was planning to take a guitar with them or not) :-)

ah well, we'll see what this weekend brings-hopefully sometime down on the beach enjoying the warm weather if all goes well!

Diamonds- the wealth of a nation??

2007-02-02T15:15:00.000Z

Diamond mines inside Kono town- the diamonds are fairly near the surface still, tho' not as much as they once were when you could walk along the streets and apparently find diamonds.

more of the diamond mines- those who've seen blood diamonds will have seen the workers in the water looking for diamonds and that's a fairly accurate portrayal of most diamond mining in Sierra Leone from what i've seen and heard. This photo was taken once most people had already left for home.

not a great photo-but the best I could manage from the car- one of the many diamond offices in the towns near where diamonds are mined. In Bo there seem to be entire streets which only have diamond trading offices (slight exaggeration I know, but that's how it felt).

mobiles are big in Salone- almost everyone has one (especially in the cities and towns). Celtel is the longest established- it came in during the last few years of the war. It has the best coverage, but probably the highest prices compared to the other networks.

While we were in Kabala, the guest house we stayed in didn't provide breakfast, so we walked across the dirt road to this restaurant, where I had spaghetti bolognaise (a nice change from rice and stew) . Koinadogu is a big area for livestock and meat is much cheaper here than elsewhere in Salone.

the war still impacts Salone

2007-02-02T14:45:00.000Z

These first 2 pics are of the same car- part of a graveyard in Kono (or possibly Tonkolili)- over in the East of the country. apparently these cars have been here for 10-15 years-long enough for fast growing trees to grow up through them.
what's really scary is the amount of ambushed cars you still see the skeletons of on the roads in the east- admittedly everything that could be useful has been removed, but it's still a scary reminder of a reality that only 6 years ago was life in Salone.

Some of the buildings around were probably beautiful before the war, but are now just shells of their previous states-this one seems less burnt out than many others, but has still lost everything except the bricks it's built of.
Another building that was once elegant but was destroyed by the rebels in their systematic destruction of towns and villages as they left them.
Hidden in the long grass are many more skeletons of cars that were ambushed during the war. I went for a wander round while there was an attempt made to fix our car while we were travelling- there were more ex-cars than I could easily count, plus sometimes not being able to work out where one car stopped and another began- a very sad and stricking scene.

Pics from travels round SL

2007-02-02T14:12:00.001Z

The main trunk road to Kailahun- without the major potholes going up to the car's windows that we encountered later on this road!

Back to Bonthe and a large mud hut dwelling typical of those in the villages on the 'main roads'. It's nicer than many houses in east and central Freetown to the extent that it is a fairly deceny size and has some land surrounding it, although much of the land is does not look like it's being put to productive use. There's a lot of debate over land issues here- some people say that almost no land is being used productively because it 'belongs' to the paramount chief and/or to all people in the chiefdom ie is communal land and it's too uneconomical to work round or through the system in order to make it productive. However, there's another view that says all land that is productive is used somehow because people are good at finding ways round the system and therefore any land that hasn't been cleared and used is deemed as unproductive. I'm not sure about this and I'm definitely not convinced with the idea that there's so much land in SL that's unproductive, because (and again i'm only commenting on the land closest to the main roads to towns and hence to the major markets) that would be a huge amount of land that's unproductive and given the rainfall and lush greeness of the savannah (for want of a better word), I'm somewhat sceptical about the latter viewpoint.

At the agricultural show in Mattru Jong (Bonthe mainland), this was the most impressive of the corncircles on display.

Palm oil fruits- a big business in the south where there are several palm oil plantations
The main district council office in Mattru Jong- may well be newly built after the war, tho' may also be an oldbuilding that has been rehabilitated.

Some pics from up country

2007-02-02T13:50:00.000Z

After a meeting with one of the district Agricultural Department, we saw all the tractors available for use in that district-assuming they work ok and are looked after suitably by those who are hired to drive them

The main water pump at Kailahun's medical factility- common in most districts, including the district capitals. Since we were traveling on the main 'trunk' roads, we probably saw those villages and towns with the most advance sanitation systems outside of Freetown.

A failry well-to-do family in Bonthe would probably live in this house- it has a metal roof, which is a major sign that a family isn't in absolute poverty. in fact, when people are asked in surveys, what they see as a sign of riches, they don't talk about consumer goods such as radios, TV's, watches and mobile phones (although these are expected to come later as signs of wealth), instead they talk about people having metal roofs on their houses.
The crowd waiting for the VP to come an officially open the ferry that has reopened on this stretch of river- it can take 2 cars and several people across, whereas the canoes that previously served as the main form of transport couldn't really take any vehicles!

There and back again- a trip up country in Salone

2007-01-29T16:34:00.001Z

After two weeks of travel round Sierra Leone, I feel I know the country a bit better- tho’ I did comeback to town last weekend which was appreciated, as it meant I could see friends and go to the beach (harder to do inland). Well, here is a brief resumé of what I have been doing while visiting the provinces up country. There are 13districts, split into three provinces- North, South, East and West, although the Western province is entirely made up of the peninsular that includes Freetown and which is where I have spent most of my time so far, so I won’t say much about that here. We were doing all this travelling to set up Monitoring and Evaluation committees so that we can see to what extent SL is decreasing poverty and to introduce the focal person for doing this in the district to some of the major players.

First stop- Bo (same name for district and district capital), we left Freetown before it was light in order to arrive early enough to hold morning meetings. Bo is the second city in SL- at least that’s what I’ve been told. They’ve been working hard to keep it clean and while we were sitting waiting for the meetings to begin, I saw one group of people come round and sweep the rubbish into piles and then a few moments later another group came round and put it into a cart and take it away. There’s still some way to go, but it felt like a good start. I think attitudes in SL towards rubbish are very different (at least to mine, tho’ I have seen plenty of people throw their rubbish on the ground at home)- there are no (or at least I haven’t seen any) rubbish bins on the streets, so people just throw rubbish into the gutters and roads and paths (anywhere really) and wait for someone else to deal with it. When travelling along roads, people just throw rubbish out of cars as well- I guess it’s to do with the attitude that if I pay taxes then the government ought to keep the streets clean and it doesn’t matter how I behave. Anyway, I didn’t mean to rant about rubbish, so will leave the matter for another time. In Bo there are loads of motorcycles-more than in Freetown, or at least in the ratio between cars and motorcycles. The roads to Bo were graded but not tarmac the whole way there.

In the afternoon we travelled onto Pujehun (town and district name I think), this was a rebel stronghold during the war and they stayed here for some time, as a result, the town and district still show a lot of scars and it was more or less totally destroyed by the war. There was no running water in the main town- hand-wells are the main source of water for many people. Several news buildings have been built since the end of the war but a lot of burnt out shells remain.

We stayed in Bo the first night, the hotel I was in was very nice- even had CNN Europe, so I could catch up on some of the news.

Day 2, (Thursday) we finished our extra meetings in Bo and headed down to Bonthe. Bonthe province is split into 2 parts-the mainland and the island. We didn’t go to the island (the main administrative centre), but went to Mattru, where a lot of the people we needed to meet also have offices. The roads were very poor to get here and due to the Vice President going there on an official visit, to open a ferry (among other engagements) some of our meetings took place at an agricultural fete rather than in the normal office environment. I was informed that it takes 2-3 days sail to reach some of the areas of the province. We met almost no traffic on the roads and it seemed to be very poor.

Day 3, after having spent a second, very comfortable, night in Bo we went onto Kenema- a big diamond area in the east of the country and a therefore an area that the rebels wanted and fought strongly over during the war. It also has a lot of agriculture and is probably the breadbasket of SL. The roads between Bo and Kenema were good (tarmac) and we managed to push up our agenda and make it to Kailahun (in the far east of SL) in time to have meetings at the end of the day. Kailahun was one of the main rebel strongholds and is very poor- tied with Bonthe in terms of poorest district in SL. The roads were very bad- potholes that you had to drive into such that the sides of the roads were as high as the windows of the car. All buildings were destroyed and there’s a big NGO presence in the area. I think there’s also diamonds here and it borders both Guinea and Liberia, making it a ‘good’ area for smuggling during the war. The road to Kailahun was impassable until about 2years ago and I still wouldn’t want to go there in the rainy season at all.

We travelled back to Freetown on the Saturday, and then on Weds 24^th we set off again, this time to visit the north and the rest of the eastern provinces. We held a workshop in Makeni (capital of the Bombali district) which went well. Makeni is a thriving town with really good roads between it and Freetown. The city is fairly well developed, tho’ I didn’t get to see much of it (until Friday but more of that below).

We travelled onto Kabala (the capital of Koinadogu district in the north) in the evening and stayed ay Paygay’s guest house (I think it’s pronounced Peggy’s) which was very nice-had running water, a generator and mosquito nets over the beds. We visited the old residence of the British colonisers- it was fairly high up (I think because they though malaria was caused by ‘bad air’ in the valleys so built at the top of hills up to stop them from catching it) and had good views over the town and is not the President’s residence when he comes to visit the district. In the evening, since I was with some fairly keen Arsenal fans, we went out to watch the London derby against Tottenham- in SL people adore football and all support at least one European (usually UK) football team and avidly watch all matches they can , as well as arguing voraciously with each other about tactics etc. Since we had had a pre-dawn start again and I hadn’t slept in the car, I was exhausted and because I ended up sitting on a very comfortable sofa (near the back of the room), I was falling asleep by the end of the first half, tho’ I did manage to just about see the two goals scored for Tottenham. This discouraging result at half time meant that my companions (who were also quite tired by now) were happy to forgo the second half (where I believe Arsenal equalised) and we went back to Paygays to sleep. The road from Kenema to Kabala was pretty good, but I was told it’s the only good road in the district and friends who’ve gone furher up country from Kabala towards the Guinea border said how it recently took them 7 hours to cover 70 miles because they kept needing to check whether the car would manage to get through the roads!

Koidu (capital of Kono) shows the riches of a major diamond town-at one point, you could apparently walk along the roads and just pick up diamonds as you walked along. There are diamond mines in the middle of the town and it’s a bustling place. This was again an area the rebels held during much of the war. The roads are fairly good to get here-not surprising since you get a lot of mining investors coming here. What was really sad was the stark poverty and riches so close to each other- the Koidu Holdings area was well lit (looking like a small town at home, with an orange glow from the street lights) and the surrounding areas in total darkness at night. It was more expensive to eat here than in any of the other districts- due to the riches from the mining. The roads to get here were littered with skeletons of cars that had been ambushed during the war.

Our car broke down (well, something split on the back axle and needed to be soldered back together), so we spent a bit of time in Makeni on our way to Kambia in the far north of the country. This meant I saw a bit more of the town and managed to buy some Africana fabric to be made into more African clothes when I get back to Freetown, the market was busy (and cheaper than Freetown) and I was given goat to eat (by a relative of someone I was travelling with)- it’s nice, but the smell is very pungent and stays with you for ages. Anyway, the problems with the car meant that a 6 hour journey became an 11 hour journey, which was exhausting for all of us and the roads to Kambia were only partially graded so felt a bit like being on a roller coaster with all the ups and downs of the road- tho’ fortunately we never went over our heads! The guest house here was more basic than the one in Kono- not having running water, so it’s a ‘bucket job’ in order to have a shower and you had to fill up the tank in the top of the toilet before you flushed it-but at least it was half connected!

On Saturday we held the necessary meetings first thing in Kambia and then headed off to Port Loko to hold meetings there on our way back to Freetown- Port Loko holds the airport, so is partly well developed but most of the district needs a lot more development. We bought fruit and veg from the many stalls on the side of the road on our way back- it’s much cheaper here than it is in town and managed to arrive back mid afternoon in Freetown, which was nice as it meant I could go for a swim and do some exercise after being in a car for most of the week!

Well, that was my time spent up country in the past couple of weeks- a really interesting experience and although we spent most of our time on the main roads, the poverty we saw is still amazing and I’m sure not as bad as that experienced by those who don’t have so much access to markets and roads. SL is an amazing country and so beautiful and yet so needy in terms of development, but people are very welcoming and friendly wherever I’ve been, which has really helped.

Well done for making it to the end of this post!!

Back in Freetown

2007-01-22T17:18:00.000Z

I'm back in town- for about a day, at least that's how long I have net access (assuming that the workshop planned for tomorrow actually happens). Will then be heading up country again until somepoint next week.

Had a brilliant time touring the South- we went to Bo, Bonthe, Pujehun, Kenema and Kailahun and I hope things go at least as well up north as well. Hopefully my stomach will stay ok as well- think I might've eaten something that my stomach disagrees with while I was in the South, but it doesn't disagree with it too much, which is good. But feeling more or less back to normal again now.

I have got pics but it generally takes an age to put them up, so will try to put them all up when I come back from the North. The main problem that I am having is the camera battery never lasts as long as I want it to- so will be taking extra back up batteries with me this time!

Leaving Freetown

2007-01-15T15:13:00.001Z

The past weekend was a bit of a mix. On Friday I went to a Hajj (sorry if the spelling's wrong) party- my director came back from Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), and invited us all to his for a party. I didn’t realise this was the reason for the party until after I had arrived and it was interesting to chat to people and meet others at the party and especially to chat to people from work in a more relaxed setting.

Saturday morning was particularly boring- I was watching and supervising as two carpenters put up mosquito nets on our windows- this will hopefully mean that as the weather gets warmer, we’ll be able to have our windows open at night without having too many extra unwanted visitors.

We spent Saturday afternoon down at Lumley beach. This was more interesting than most visits to Lumely beach as the part we went to had a beach volley ball court, so we played a few games with some Poles and Russians that we met. I haven’t played volleyball since I arrived in SL (and not for sometime before that) and greatly enjoyed it- it’s so much nicer to fall/dive onto sand than other surfaces I’ve played on!

On Saturday evening, a group of us (almost entirely Brits which is unusual to have as a whole group here, but we were joined by one of the Irish contingent so it became slightly more ‘normal’) went to the Sierra Lighthouse for supper. It took ages to arrive (we knew that this would be the case tho’, since some of the group had been there before) and two people ordered blind off the menu-ie they looked at the Indian section and ordered something without quite knowing what it was. They ended up with what looked like green and brown slop (apparently curry), of varying degrees of heat.

Sunday was somewhat more successful- I went to church in the morning and then we went to Bouré beach, which was good fun and ate mackerel and oysters. The surf wasn’t particularly promising (for those wanting to surf), but it was good for swimming. The beach itself is very strange-every time I visit it, the beach has changed shape/terrain. For example, this time, there was a small inlet of water sandwiched between two parts of the beach-I’d never seen this before, despite having come to the beach at both low and high tides previously. There were a lot of people (mainly expats and Lebanese) down at the beach, relaxing in the sunshine; the water was slightly cooler than it was when I left and we think this is because the Harmattan dust stopped the sun from keeping the water as warm as normal, but still much warmer than it would be at home, particularly at this time of the year.

Anyway, back to the title of this piece- I’m going to be leaving Freetown for a bit and heading up country with work; this means I probably won’t be putting anything on my blog for a while, since I don’t know when I’m likely to have access to the net/time to write stuff for my blog, but if all goes well, I should have some good photos to bring back with me to go on my blog, as well as hopefully having avery interesting time while I'm there.

Wearing Africana

2007-01-12T11:29:00.000Z

Today being Friday, most Sierra Leonians are wearing Africana (traditional African dress) to work- it's a bit like the opposite of dress-down Fridays. Anway, I have finally been in work on a Friday (ok I was in last week but very few other people were and those that were weren't wearing Africana) so I have decided to wear Africana. Mine's very blue- but then that's a colour that I think suits me and is a lot more colourful than what I'd normally wear to work (especially if I was in the UK). The only problem is that the a/c in the office makes it pretty cold and since Africana is meant to be worn in an African climate, cold isn't what it's suited for!

I have remembered another thing that the horn is used for- to tell pedestrians and cyclists to get out of the way or to stay at the side of the road because a car's coming passed.

Due to the death of a government official known (or related) to my boss and director, work has been slow this week as they have been involved in the funeral arrangements, which has made life more difficult for them. I think he died of cancer, which is an increasing problem in developing countries. Having said that, a lot more people die from malaria and HIV/AIDS than 'rich country diseases' at the moment and the former two really need to be tackled quickly. The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in Salone is lower than in many other African countries, but is still concerning and needs tobe stopped soon.

Since I have already sent a newsletter out, this is going to be a short post and I hope you have a good weekend.

Car Meets Wall

2007-01-10T11:23:00.000Z

Not my car, not my wall and not my responsibility- fortunately!

One of our friends woke up one morning this weekend to find this car that had flipped over and turned 180 degrees and landed in his wall- the culprits made off with the number plates but they left the tax disc. They returned- with their irate father (who we think had bought the car for them) later in the day. Our friend was just glad that no one had died or been badly injured as a result of this crash!

As people here say 'Eh Salone' (best when done with a Krio/Jamaican accent)

A fun weekend

2007-01-09T12:30:00.000Z

This weekend has been much more interesting than I anticipated on leaving the office on Friday afternoon. On Saturday, after spending a quiet morning at the house we decided to go and see if there were waves suitable for surfing down at Bouré Town beach (that might be the correct spelling but I’m not 100% certain), but en route got invited to a friend’s for lunch at another beach (Tokeh), which we accepted and enjoyed delicious fresh cooked fish and rice. We then swam and enjoyed the sun for the afternoon, some people went out on a boat trip, where they saw dolphins. The dolphins were swimming in and around the nets that fishermen had been using to catch fish and they didn’t want to catch the dolphins-possibly because it is illegal, possibly because there’s no market for dolphins. Anyway, the dolphins were jumping in and out of the nets in order to eat the fish caught therein and if I can get some photos of the dolphins, I’ll put those up here as well. There were at least 5 and possibly more of them at one time.

In the evening, we stayed on the beach, with the intention of staying there overnight, but it was getting pretty cold and most people hadn’t brought suitable clothing to stay the night and there weren’t going to be enough mattresses, so several of us decided to head back to town-after having enjoyed a bonfire on the beach. We went back at around midnight, so there wouldn’t be so much traffic (therefore much safer than going back just after it gets dark when there are a lot more maniac drivers). We took the good road all the back into town-normally we’d cut across country, but because we were heading into town so late, it meant that the traffic coming through the middle of town (that the good road takes you into) and had a fantastic surprise as we passed along Siaka Stevens St (the main street in the middle of town); there were Christmas lights out (or they may be ‘election lights’ all the way down the road). Yes-that’s right, for the first time ever, I saw a whole road of street lighting in Freetown. Not only does this mean that NPA is back and working (at least for the moment and possibly up to the elections),but it’s being used to work the streetlights, so that it’s much safer travelling around in the evenings and amusingly made the centre of the town look like a Hollywood movie set.

On Sunday, we travelled up to Tokeh by speed boat (very fun- much faster and a lot less bumpy than going by road, especially if you don’t take the good roads the whole way). We picked up those who had decided to stay over for the night and then went off to Banana Island which is slightly off the coast of the Western Province. It’s a very basic island but there is both a school and hospital there, although we didn’t see inside of either of them. They have developed an area that has a lot of potential as a weekend retreat for tourists, with some very nice huts that have been newly built to help bring more money to the island. I think I was told that they aren’t properly owned/governed by the government of Sierra Leone because they used to be inhabited by outlaws and there’s not much there for others to want. The locals mainly live off the abundant fish and fruit that’s available on the island. There’s no vehicles there and we enjoyed exploring the village (Dublin) and even met the chief (or his wife- I’m not quite sure if she was the chief or if he was away and she was filling in while he was gone) for a few minutes.

We then went back to Tokeh and en route stopped off at another small island that has had a small pool built into it that is filled by the ocean at high tide. The people we were with explained that they used to have parties on this island and had at one point started building small houses (one room) to make it easier to stay the night, but the local fishermen had stolen the doors (and roofs) so they weren’t really habitable and they just had to bring tents and camp out if they wanted to stay over.

After we ate back at Tokeh- Snapper (fish) and rice, we (or perhaps here I can say ‘I’) drove the boat back to Freetown- was very good fun (and I didn’t crash, which was useful) and also pretty easy, if feeling somewhat hedonistic.

The evening was spent relaxing at Mamba Point and just chilling out (while having a supper that didn’t include fish- I chose chicken which was a nice change).

My camera decided it didn’t want to work, so I didn’t manage to get any photos but hope to get some off a friend to put up here.

Life in Freetown

2007-01-05T13:46:00.000Z

This week has been very quiet, both at home and at work, so I am missing people back at home because there’s very little to keep my mind off doing so. The difference between rich and poor and the slender thread of life was brought home to me by my housemate who told me of what had happened to one of our guards while I was away. He’s been ill for sometime and through the efforts of our Krio speaking friends (We’re still learning so it’s pretty basic), the guard’s father was persuaded to take him to hospital (rather than to a traditional witch doctor). Once at the hospital, he was diagnosed with diabetes and treated and is no recovering at home. What really amazed me was the cost of this all-about 400GBP! Which he definitely would not have been able to afford, as a compound, we have paid for his treatment, but I think he’s going to need to get insulin everyday for the rest of his life as well.

Just this disparity- I guess it’s there to an extent in some Western countries, but in the UK, if you’re ill, you go to hospital and it’s free at the point of need-yes there are problems and difficulties with the NHS, but compared to these costs, which I assume are normal by international standards, actually having the NHS is such a blessing for everyone in the UK who’s ever taken ill.

The roads are less chaotic at the moment but I think that’s because a lot of people have been/are upcountry and so fewer people are coming into work in the mornings. The taxi’s are as crazy as ever but there seem to be less horns beeping than normal. In Freetown, the most important part of a car is its horn- at least that’s what you’d expect given the amount of usage! It means any of:

- Get out of my way

- Look- there’s a white person

- I’m turning left/right (not always used for this- in fact indicators often aren’t used either!)

- Don’t stop suddenly in front of me

- I’m pulling out

- Don’t pull out in front of me

- You’re driving on the wrong side of the road

- Look at me- I’ve got a fancy car

- And I’m sure plenty more things that I’ve missed or forgotten

I haven’t got a car and haven’t driven round Freetown yet, but it’s definitely an experience where you keep your eyes and ears open the whole time (and I guess that includes being a pedestrian as well).

Well I guess that’s all for the moment- I’m not expecting momentous things to happen this weekend but will let you know if I get up to much interesting.

More photos

2007-01-03T11:25:00.000Z

These are photos there were all taken when leaving the ferry to go the the airport to fly home

The airport is not only across the water from Freetown, it's about a 45min boat trip and is in an entirely different province to Freetown. You can also take the helicopter to get to the airport, but that costs about 50USD, whereas the ferry costs about 20USD or 12GBP (or at less if all you do is the actual ferry trip, but I got a bus which took me all the way from the centre of town, across the ferry and onto the airport, hence making life a lot easier for myself rather than having to find a taxi once I'd gotten onto the other side of the water). Since the flights I've taken to SL have always arrived late in the evening/at night, it's easier and safer to take the helicopter (and certainly a lot quicker, unless you get a storm which grounds the helicopter). However, since I was leaving Freetown in the afternoon I thought I'd try taking the ferry, which worked out really nicely and was very relaxing and chilled.

This first photo was taken while still on the ferry as we were moving towards the port- the sillouettes were foot passengers on the ferry.

More people leaving the ferry- having sold their goods in Freetown.

The welcome sign at the entrance to the airport, promoting love and peace in a country where until recently there didn't seem to be too much of either, but so far things have definitely been much more peaceful and positive.

Oops- just realised that these are a bit in the wrong order- this was just after the bus had come off the ferry. It's a bit like a RORO except for the fact that you drive on and reverse off- rather than opening at both ends. I think our driver had done this before tho' as be seemed pretty good at getting the bus on and off the ferry without touching any of the other vehicles. They did put the vehicles onto the ferry very tightly tho'- the door of our bus wouldn't open because it was so close to other cars. However, the windows were large sliding ones, so we could still get a lot of air (and clamber out if we needed/wanted to).

A few photos from the beach (plus one other)

2007-01-03T10:30:00.000Z

Wahey- have managed to make it work!!

This is Bouray beach-v beautiful and clean and sometimes has good enough waves for surfing on- tho' the recent ones have been more suited for beginners than anyone else.
These were all taken sometime ago since this is the first time I have managed to get a browser to work with blogger to get photos up.

And the beach from another direction- ah it's a tough life
More beach

Taken leaving the ferry on my way to the airport to head home- these were the first people off the boat, they were all heading home having sold their wares in the Freetown markets. Apparently they sell a lot of fish, fruit and vegetables at cheaper prices than you'd normally find in Freetown.

And finally, I took this ages ago- the same time I took the pics of the beach above; it's pics of the surfboards we rented when down at Bouray (still not sure of spelling!) beach and were beginning to attempt to learn to surf (tho' these boards were pretty short thus making it kind of tough).

Hopefully will manage to get some more photos on here now that have worked out a possible way of doing it!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2007-01-03T09:47:00.000Z

I know it’s a little late to wish you a Happy New Year, but I’ve only just got back to work, so I think it’s just about allowed!

Anyway, I’m now back in SL and this time it looks as though I’m going to be here for sometime! It’s much warmer being back than it was in the UK (tho’ much cooler than it was when I first arrived, which is making reacclimatisation much easier). In another sense I also I came back at a pretty good time- basically when I left I was told that the 1st Jan was a public holiday and the rest of the week would be work as normal, but now I discover that the 2nd is as well, which means I have been able to rest and relax and make sure I’ve got me and my stuff sorted before heading back into work.Although a few of the expats are around (especially those who stayed in SL/ Africa for Christmas and the New Year), as yet there doesn’t seem to be that many people around, but I have been taking life fairly quietly so there are likely to be more people around than I realise.

Have still got a slight sniffle, which is annoying as means I shouldn’t do any swimming at the moment since I really don’t want it to get any worse-but hopefully plenty of rest yesterday will have gone a long way to sorting that all out!

NPA is back on and some people have even had it for 24 hours a day. Our meter has been replaced but they think there might be a problem with the connection hence meaning we still have to rely on a generator whenever we want some power (which is working at the moment!!)

I've tried to put some more photos on this blog but it doesn't seem to want to work at the moment, so I'm afraid you'll just have to wait until I find a computer with a better browser!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

2006-12-27T12:27:00.000Z

Hope you have (had) a very happy Christmas and will have a brilliant New Year.

The reason for the lack of posts has been because I left Salone for Christmas and have been spending time traveling round the UK seeing friends who I'm not likely to meet up with for some time to come and hence haven't always been near a computer with net connection.

Ah well, will try to write more when I get back to Salone again.

In summary, have had a brilliant (if sometimes cold) time back in the UK and it has been great seeing people again. Have managed to catch a cold (not fun) and hope that I haven't passed it onto too many people.

Winter in Salone

2006-12-11T10:45:00.000Z

Ok, another newsletter will hopefully soon be winging its way to people, so here’s just a brief update on what’s been happening. Basically life has been really interesting and also really busy, but has involved a lot of conferences and such like, keeping me away from my desk and really quite busy.

The weekends have been spent at the beach, I stood up on a surf board this Saturday, tho’ only very briefly and I’m still not sure if the board had managed to beach itself by the time I stood up- ah well, I can always practice again next time I go to the beach!

We have hit winter here- well, the beginning of the Harmattan (not sure on spelling), which is their idea of winter and means the air is a bit drier and we no longer have sudden deluges of water falling from the sky. It also means that anything that stays still for long enough gets a nice coating of red dust. I’ve been told there it will get dustier and visibility will decrease further (at the moment visibility's still fine) in January. I felt almost cold for the first time on Friday evening- we were sitting on the beach watching the sun go down (gorgeous colours but sunset happens very quickly compared to home) and there was a slight breeze that made you wish it wasn’t blowing, rather than the normal refreshment you feel when there’s movement in the air. Still, having a winter where the lowest temperature is about 23 degrees C is still slightly different to what I normally face in winter!!

We’ve managed to avoid most of the pre-Christmas trappings here- decorations in shops have only just been put up in the past week and I did see a (fake) Christmas tree being carried along the side of the road-ah well, I’ll soon hit the consumerism of the West, with the temperatures to match.

conferences take over

2006-12-06T17:20:00.000Z

Obviously I have just managed to hit conference season as am meant to have been at conferences all this week- should be useful, but just mean I can't get to the internet and can't get enough work done! So today took a day off and caught up from the work I needed to finish from last week, which is now done and means I can go and focus on what I need to know from the workshops for the next couple of days rather than thinking about the work I need to get done- ah well, a sad life but nevermind. Am heading home soon- to the cold climes of the north, so will enjoy the weather here while I can and prepare to put on loads of layers when I land!

End of the week

2006-12-01T12:07:00.000Z

Have just spent an exhausting couple of days doing the CG (Consultative Group) meeting, so am now trying to sort out and finalise the minutes. It was a good couple of days and provided a lots of useful food for thought and for further work in the future. It was a really useful interesting meeting to be involved with from a personal perspective- you get to hear a lot of different views from different people on the state of the economy and the social side of the country and where people think more work is needed to improve the country in 2007.

The workload was pretty huge leading up to this all and then I and another person had the unenviable job of typing the minutes as the meeting progressed. The good news is that my typing skills were up to it (tho’ I did need to correct quite a few typo’s) and that I kept concentrating for the whole way through the 2 days. The bad news is that I was absolutely exhausted by this (and wasn’t the only one)- because no one else needed to concentrate so much for so long. Anyway, it’s over for another year and hopefully means things will calm down a bit. Having said that, there’s still loads of stuff to be done as follow-up to this, so looks like work will be keeping me out of trouble for sometime to come!

I would’ve posted some pics from Bouray (or it may be Bouré) Town beach that we went to last weekend, where I began to attempt to learn to surf- just about managed a crouch but then fell off. However, my work computer has crashed, the hard board failed (tho’ I don’t think I lost too much work since I’d e-mailed most of the important stuff to other people already) and I’m having to borrow someone else’s computer and net connection for the moment. The upshot being that I’m having to use a slightly older version IE instead of Mozilla (which I was previously using) and blogspot doesn’t allow me to upload photos using this version of IE (and since it’s some else’s computer I don’t want to mess around with it too much!), so you’ll have to wait until I get to an internet café or manage to get a new computer with web connection before I’m able to upload more photos.

Not sure what the plans are for this weekend, but since I’m hoping to come home soon, will probably involved a spot of shopping and being hopelessly ripped off by the market traders-ah well, never mind, I just hope that I don’t get too annoyed by the endless haggling that will probably come my way as they start off the prices at 10 times more than you should expect to pay.

Wow- can't believe it's December already!!! There's none of the Christmasy things you'd expect to get 3 months early at home- tho' I did see someone carrying two fake Christmas trees with a few bedraggled bits of tinsel down the road yesterday. I think the heat also means that it feels like it really can't be coming up to Christmas yet!

I was right

2006-11-24T17:05:00.000Z

This week has been totally manic in getting all the preparations done for the meeting next week. It's been really interesting and fun as well, tho'!
Some good news-have passed my Masters, which is a relief and means that I do have a reason for heading back to the UK slightly earlier than I would otherwise (of course, 2 of my friends are also getting married at the end of that week, so I was planning to come back around then anyway of course!)
So what news from hot and sunny Salone? Well- the weather's heating up at bit, which means it can be really nice to escape into an air con room for a rest. It also means that sleeping is getting harder because our fans are broken and the main generator still isn't fixed (meaning air con units won't work), plus our connection to National Power still isn't working. The main upshot is that we still eat out a lot- which is of course very sociable but could pall after a while. however, we do have light in the evenings, which is nice and means we can do more stuff round the house than was previously possible.
Anyway, am hoping to escape work early today so will sign off and wish you a happy weekend (am hoping to see if I can begin to learn surfing if all goes well).

And work got really busy

2006-11-20T13:49:00.000Z

Hence why I didn’t write at the end of last week. I did have stuff to write about though, for example, on Thursday evening we went to an African night at the British council. It was done by the Ballanta Academy of Music and involved a singing (esp gospel), African dancing, fantastic drumming and their ‘Pets n bones’ (trumpets and trombones) group playing a mix of Salonion (Sierra Leonean) folk music and some from elsewhere in Africa. Was very cool- tho’ unfortunately we missed most of the choir due to bad traffic. The audience was mainly expat, but that didn’t stop a (somewhat cheesy) impromptu dance happening at the end.

Anyway work has suddenly got very busy- we’re preparing for a big meeting between high level donors and high level government people, so lots of work to do and things to finalise, which is really interesting and certainly keeping me out of trouble.

Our house is also beginning to look at bit more like a home, which is nice- we’ve finally got some stuff (cane furniture) to sit on for the veranda, thus making it a lot more homely and nicer just to sit and chill together in the evenings or first thing in the morning when we eat breakfast. We’ve also had the bars painted, so that they are no longer a dirty greying white, but a clean, shiny white, meaning it feels a lot less prison like (tho’ still very secure).

This weekend has been spent mainly at the beach; there’s several to choose from. On Saturday afternoon we went to Lumley beach- the closest one, tho’ certainly not a favourite of mine- tho’ does have several places you can sit and eat. Anyway, we were at Harry’s (not sure on the spelling) and sitting in the hammocks provided- v fun, until a huge wave comes up the beach and soaks everything on the ground- not good when that involves a friend’s bag (inc clothes, towel and a now very dead phone) and so the evening ended on a slightly more stressful note than would be hoped after a day on the beach.

Sunday afternoon we went the River No. 2 beach (v. original name) and this time I’ve got photos to prove it! Obviously this weekend is having a lot of very high tides because the tide came in a long way while we were there (also moving up to where we and our bags were but no ones stuff got wet, which was a relief. It was just a slight surprise, because the sandbar between the ‘kiddies pool’ (well, one that had been made naturally by the way the beach went) and the ‘proper sea’ had been big enough for some of the guys to play a bit of cricket and this got totally swamped over the course of the end of the afternoon. We ate supper on our way back to town at a popular restaurant (called Franco’s) near Sussex beach- where do they get these names from ;-) their menu is interesting and extensive tho’ it’s always wise to check what fish they have available because they invariably don’t have everything. Due to shortage of other dishes, I had lobster- was v nice, tho’ I’m still not sure what all the fuss is about, plus you have to work fairly hard to get your food.

I think that fairly much sums up what I’ve been doing. You’d be wise not to expect too much on the blog this week, since I think work is going to get even crazier as we head towards the upcoming meeting!

Pictures from River No. 2 Beach

2006-11-20T13:29:00.000Z

Well, I managed to remember to take my camera with me, so here are some pics from the weekend...One of the shelters that you can use at River No. 2 beach. And the white sand on the beach!

Looking down the beach as it moves towsrds high tide- you can also see the river that the beach is named for (tho' a lot less clearly than you can at low tide). On the right you can see the remainder of the bar of sand on which some of the guys were playing cricket.
Enjoying the waves and warm water at the beach

The beach was pretty crowded this Sunday- I have been told that it's normally a lot more deserted than this!

Making batiks

2006-11-13T11:03:00.000Z

It has suddenly got much warmer- so the fact that our generator has packed up again isn’t pleasant. Having said that, we spent very little of the weekend at home. On Saturday we got up early and went into town to sort out some curtains for our Kitchen, which used to have very old, greying, dirty curtains that really weren’t very pleasant. However, without anything round the window, it looks a bit like a prison cell, so we wanted to get something to brighten the room up a bit. We also went to look at fabrics that could be made into Africana clothes for my housemate and myself. In Sierra Leone, on Fridays, people generally wear ‘Africana’ to the office, which are very brightly coloured outfits in African styles and look brilliant. It’s a bit of a change to the ‘dress-down’ Fridays at home- more of a ‘dress-up’ day instead.

In the afternoon we (several girl friends and myself) learnt how to make batiks-fortunately we had an expert with us to help and guide us through the whole process. Batiks are wall hangings produced by drawing a design on cotton, then painting the parts of the design you wish to stay the background colour with molten wax, allowing the wax to dry and then dipping the cloth into dye. It’s a fairly long process (with me all arts and crafts are in any case) and we only put one colour onto the cloths each, but it’s amazing how good they look despite being just two colours at the moment. Since this took up most of the afternoon we’ll have to go back and do some more colours another day. I'll see if i can find some pics of the batiks we made (NB, the professionals' ones look hugely better) so you can see what we were making.

On Sunday afternoon we went to one of the hotels which has a pool. The pool’s quite nice (tho’ warmer than you’d want) but the general pool area lacked much character- it could’ve been a hotel anywhere in the world that’s warm and sunny, I think I’ll have to try for a beach again next weekend. In the evening I went to a leaving party for some who’d been here for about 7 years- he’s hoping to come back in February but nothing’s definite yet. It was a lovely evening to chill and relax and say goodbye to him, as well as to meet more people who’re going to be around in Salone while I’m here. It is amazing how much of a state of flux the expat community is in tho’- there always seems to be loads of people coming and going all the time- I guess this is something I’ll just have to get used to while I’m here.

The weeks just fly by

2006-11-10T17:03:00.000Z

Once again have reached the end of a week and realised that I’ve not added anything to my blog- ah well, never mind I’ll just try and write something interesting instead.

… Or not- I think it’s much easier to ramble on about life, the universe and everything and anyway, I did manage to send out a newsletter this week, so I guess I could say that took up my time instead ;-)

A whole load of people have gone to Dakar (Senegal) for a weekend of French patisserie, wine and cheese (the first and last are somewhat lacking in affordable quantities in Freetown). After the recent problems with various Nigerian airlines, they’re a little cautious because they’re travelling with Bellview (don’t think this one is allowed to fly in European airspace due to safety issues, but I could be wrong on that)- they intended to fly with another airline but that one cancelled the flight about a week before they were due to go, which wasn’t particularly helpful of them. Anyway, assuming all goes well with travelling they’ll be having fun in Senegal (practising their almost non existent French too!)

Yesterday evening there was a public lecture on the challenges and prospects for Sierra Leone’s economy- fairly interesting (for an economist at least) and the talk was done by the outgoing World Bank head of mission- a very astute guy. Some of the questions from the floor were also quite pertinent although some of them did go on a bit trying to make their point. I think patience is a virtue that I need to learn (either that or have it thrust upon me) while I’m here.

We’ve got a Krio lesson tonight- my Krio spelling is pretty bad but then they do have several extra vowels to remember to put in the right places. It’s definitely not the hardest of languages to learn but at the moment my Krio is still only small-small (English spelling). Ah well, I'll keep practising.

The weekends just get busier...

2006-11-06T12:30:00.000Z

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.

Tokeh beach

2006-11-06T12:18:00.000Z

Tokeh beach slightly overcast but more desrted than it had been earlier in the day- the water was amazingly warm.
Locals selling various handicrafts, from wooden eagles to elephants, as well as jewelry and cloth. In the back is the BARV tho' am sure this photo doesn't do the size of it any justice

Marines waiting to leave on the transporters

A quiet evening at Tokeh beach, with the helipad (near set of rocks) and Billy's island the further piece of land

Fish

2006-11-06T12:15:00.000Z

What more do I need to say- other than the fact that it tasted really nice!!

Another week gone...

2006-11-03T14:00:00.000Z

Hmmm,

Not entirely sure what to write about- there’s not been much going on this week. We’re more of less settled in and are now car hunting. In the middle of our Krio lesson we lost national power (somewhat annoying tho’ might be our fault for not topping up our account recently enough) and now the generator seems to be being moody. It’s amazing how useful electricity is and how annoying it is when it goes, although I’m beginning to get more used to doing things by candlelight when needs be.

It’s not true that nothing’s happened this week. As I said, we had a (short) Krio lesson on Monday, on Tues evening we went out to the film night- they were ‘seasonal’ and did something Halloween-ish which was fairly dire, although the eye-candy of George Clooney made it a bit more interesting ;-)

BA recently launched flights between Heathrow (I think) and Freetown and on Tuesday evening held a reception to celebrate it, although I haven’t met anyone (to my knowledge) who was actually invited to attend but then there are a lot of people out here who I don’t know you so am sure plenty of people turned up. The flights are probably going to be fairly expensive and currently everyone who I’ve spoken to is keen to continue flying with Astraeus, mainly because they have a 60kg luggage limit which is brilliant and altho’ the on-board entertainment might not always be described as state of the art, the flight times are good, the staff friendly and they have cheap flights around Christmas time!

Wednesday involved a leaving-do for one of the guys from Dfid who I’d got to know slightly. The reception was held at the house of the head of office and has a gorgeous pool (I haven’t been in), as well as a really nice open area to stand/sit around and meet people. A friend and I have decided that we’re not quite up to ‘oiling round the room oozing charm’ (or something similar that we were ‘recommended’ to practice during our pre-SL training week). This ended with half-a-dozen of us going to PB’s for a light bite (although for some reason the burger I had seemed to be spiked with chillies), generally PB’s food is really good but I’m discovering that they do like to litter their food with small pieces of chilli, which makes it much warmer than you first anticipate.

Thursday involved another leaving-do, which was great fun, with amazing views from the apartment out towards the beach- it’s a bit up the hill from where we live and you can see for miles around. That’s one of the things that seems to make Freetown so different to many other cities- it’s so green, everywhere. Having said this I haven’t been far towards the eastern end of the city yet, which is meant to be the poorer end, so it might be a lot less green. I think the greenness is probably because of the (up to) 5 metres of rainfall that hits this part of the coast every year.

We've also started looking for cars; there's a fair number to choose from but nothing suits yet. We'd like something suitably rugged so that it's easier to get out of the city and onto the peninsular and possibly even up country as well. We've looked at 2 this week and have heard about plenty more. Fortunately, since neither of us know much about cars, our friends have brilliant mechanic who's been helping us look at them and discuss the good and bad points of them- very useful to have around!

Enough ramblings and I definitely look forward to going to the beach this weekend- I didn’t manage it last weekend and although I’m not having withdrawal symptoms I’m really looking forward to going to explore another beach.

Part way up with some way to go..

2006-10-30T21:57:00.000Z

Part way up Leicester Peak I took this photo, you can see part of the peak in the back ground. We'd already been walking for sometime (uphill all the way).

The national hobby- football. It seems as though everyone plays. These guys were playing as we ate our lunch. They then challenged some of those who we were hiking with to a game- it was so much nicer to sit and watch!

Another weekend, another adventure

2006-10-30T21:50:00.000Z

This Saturday was so tiring that I really could do with last week’s bank holiday to be repeated, although I did have a huge rest on Sunday which was much needed.

On Friday evening we had our second Krio lesson- lots of grammar and background, which means it’s all v interesting but is also hard work and requires a lot of concentration after a week of work, especially since it lasted for 2hours- I think in the future we might just have 1 hour on Fridays.

We had a very early evening to bed on Friday, but this was partially because we were going to get up unreasonably early for Saturday morning in order to get to the pick up point (Congo Cross for those who know it) for a hike we were going on.

Anyway, Saturday was great fun but a long hike- there are some photos from it below- involving going a very long way up a fairly steep hill and then another lesser hill and then another very steep hill. However, we did get some good views of the city and were also able to enjoy a relaxed lunch while some of the guys (both expats and local since we went on the hike with a group of local scouts) with us played football with locals living at the top of the first hill. We then walked back a different way (passing the new US embassy that’s in the process of being built). It was wonderful to get home and put my feet up (really aching after 5 hours of walking).

Saturday night involved several options- a relaxing movie with some of those we had been on the hike with, chilling at home, or a party. Since I’m still trying to get to know people and be friendly and sociable, I chose the latter, which was fun- potentially amazing views from the balcony, well, there would’ve been during the day. At night you could just see loads of lights over the hillsides, which was pretty but not amazing.

Sunday morning was a youth thanksgiving service, which was good, tho’ the invited speaker perhaps included a bit too much prosperity than I’m used to. I spent the afternoon with my feet up (still needed after Saturday) reading a fictional novel based on the West Coast of Africa; it’s v good (am almost finished despite having only started yesterday but then have always been fairly voracious in terms of reading) and I think I’ll have to try and find some more stuff to read. Fortunately all the expats seem to bring a fair amount of books with them- especially if they’re out here for sometime- plus the British Council is meant to have a fairly extensive library, so I won’t run out of books to read for a bit. In the evening we went to Alex’s- a bar/restaurant on the beach, which I really like (and the company was fun too).

Didn’t quite make it down to the beach proper (at least not during the day) this weekend, but this wasn’t really a problem since we’ve already been to 3 and have only been here 3 weeks- ah well, I’ll look forward to exploring another beach soon.

Pics from Leicester Peak

2006-10-30T21:46:00.000Z

This picture is of the view from the top of Leicester peak towards Lumley beach and the Aberdeen area of town. We hiked up Leicester peak from the town on Saturday.

A view of central Freetown from part way up Leicester peak (round the other side of the ridge to the above photo. The 'large' white building towards the centre left of the picture is the Youyi (sorry if I've spelt it wrong- am not quite sure of the pronounciation either!) building, which houses several of the government ministries. It was built by the Chinese and is the only/ one of very few 'high-rise' buildings in Freetown. I work about 10 mins walk from the Youyi building (5 mins if I'm wearing very practical shoes).

The week that went

2006-10-27T15:36:00.000Z

The reason for the lack of postings this week is because on Monday we had a bank holiday (v rare in Sierra Leone so everyone makes the most of it) for Eid, so a large group of us went down to the beach for the day- it was a bit cloudy to start with but the clouds lifted in the afternoon and the sun came out. The water is so gorgeously warm, and the setting is beautiful. Yet again however I forgot to take my camera, so will obviously have to go back again, the place was unoriginally named River No. 2 beach, after the river flowing through the beach. We were also treated to some fly-bys from the marines who were moored off the coast ready to take part in various exercises this week. Thanks to my day on the beach am now a slightly more healthy colour instead of the insipid pale that I turn when I don’t see enough sun for far too long ;-)

Anyway, the rest of the week involved a trade workshop, which was really interesting (at least from my point of view) since I’m still very much in the ‘learning’ process and so could find out direct from each ministry what their priority areas were for growth/expansion and where they felt they needed more donor assistance in order to assist trade growth.

The evenings have been busy too- a strange film on Tuesday evening, a challenging study on Weds and then a girls night in last night. Tonight we’ve got our Krio lesson, tho’ I haven’t properly looked over/ remembered last weeks which isn’t good.

Anyway, that’s my excuse for the lack of writing recently and I hope this has given you an idea of what’s been going on. Am still looking for a car and haven’t found any in my affordability bracket yet, but am sure something will turn up eventually.

Look forward to hearing how life’s going with you.

Nice view

2006-10-20T19:27:00.000Z

View from the verandah- I'll try another time of day when the light's better distributed or something like that in order to balance it a bit (maybe). The foreground shows a v boring courtyard and square of grass so you're not missing much. It's definitely better when seen in person. Many of the views around the area are really stunning- much better than this one, I'll try to remember to take some while I'm here.

space to relax

2006-10-20T19:20:00.000Z

The sitting room is somewhat sparse at the moment- we're planning to get a bit more furniture in order to make the place more homely and provide more places for people to sit if they come to visit, but it's certainly a start and we have plenty of room to put things in.

You can see my housemate relaxing in one of the chairs

The Kitchen

2006-10-20T19:12:00.000Z

The kitchen- with a makeshift bin. We've now got a 'dirty-box' as it is known, as well as a water dispenser so that we have drinking water 'on-tap' assuming we go and get the barrels filled up. There's an oven/ stove coming (we only have a very basic stove currently), but we did recently get cooking-gas so tea and coffee are now available to help us wake up in the mornings! There's also a fridge/freezer just out of sight that are kind of handy for keeping food fresher than it would otherwise be (at least while there's power on).

Bedroom

2006-10-20T19:08:00.000Z

My mossie net is hung from the available light fittings- it might be a good idea to get something so that I can have it slightly less wonky in the future, but it seems to be working ok at the moment!

V blurred

2006-10-20T19:02:00.000Z

The night we arrived- catching the helicopter after waiting around for 4 hours due to a thunderstorm that had grounded the helicopter temporarily. It's a fairly new one and the trip didn't take too long but was great fun despite the noise!

And there was light

2006-10-19T18:06:00.000Z

We had a new generator fitted yesterday, which was cool (also means we should be able to use air con so will be even 'cooler')- we also had national power, so spent the evening in the light. I also went out to an international study group, which was fun- met several more people and hope to settle into the group fairly quickly.

Have finally arranged a browser that allows me to put pictures onto my blog- tho' haven't got the pictures with me to put onto it!

Work still involves a lot of reading- there's so much to learn and find out about and at somepoint I'll start doing proper work.

In the dark

2006-10-18T21:55:00.000Z

Generator was working last night due to lack of national power- unfortunately there seems to have been a problem in the connection between the generator and the house so we did everything by candle-light. Fortunately we didn’t have to spend the whole evening in the house because of a film night going on at a nearby restaurant/bar, meaning we could get food and enjoy company in the light.
Ah well, hope we have some sort of power this evening!

In town (and at the beach)

2006-10-17T20:49:00.000Z

My newsletter gives a bit more of a picture of how I've been settling in, so here I'll just give a quick flavour of thoughts and ideas instead of a full run down of what I've been up to...

Well, I've been here for just over a week and have been working for just under a week and am beginning to find my feet.

It's pretty warm and humid (as expected), keeps raining (wet season was meant to be mainly over by the end of September- somebody forgot to tell the clouds!) and has loads of places to explore and really friendly people to meet.

Went to the beach on Saturday- was amazing and is a beautiful gem- fantastic green mountains in the background, golden sand, waves suitable for gentle surfing (I think I might have to learn) and fresh cooked fish kebabs when you're ready to eat. Loved it and I've been told there's plenty more beaches to be discovered as well.

At somepoint I'll put some photos up as well- tho' I forgot to take my camera to the beach last weekend! One day I'll get organised!

The apartment is great- tho' somewhat lacking in furniture currently, my flatmate and I are trying to work out what we want and what would be most cost effective to get. We have power (wahey!- we didn't have it for most of our first week), but only when national power works or we remember to get fuel for the generator. We should be getting a bigger generator at somepoint- that way we'll have more than just lights in our bedrooms, which is nice but not particularly sociable in the evenings.

Anyway, hope that gives a flavour and look forward to reading any comments you make.

First Post

2006-10-04T12:51:00.000Z

Hi,

Welcome to my blog. If you're reading this ou've probably received an e-mail to let you know that I'm preparing to head off to Sierra Leone. I hope to be able to publish info on how life's going on through this blog, but otherwise you can always e-mail me- I really enjoy hearing how life's going with those I know.

Anyway, I'm currently doing packing and sorting stuff out. It's getting tidier (slowly) but I'm hoping that the bags won't be too much over the weight limit.

Since I have several other things to do today I'll end here and look forward to hearing any comments you want to make!