Back in Sweet Salone
So far there’s been no real rain since I arrived, although I’m told there was a bit of rain in Freetown just before we landed at Lungi (as evidenced by the large pools of water).
I had a full compliment of choices on how to get to Freetown from Lungi last night- hovercraft, helicopter or ferry. I still haven’t used the hovercraft, although I’m told it’s a pretty decent journey and before I leave I do intend to do so, but I was tempted by the swiftness of the helicopter (even waiting around in the heliport for a bit didn’t delay us much) and so I was home by 9:30pm, where awaited another pleasant surprise- NPA was on. Not only was NPA on, it stayed on until at least 8:10am this morning, when I left for work! I’m hoping that this will be characteristic of my last few months in Sierra Leone, but I’ll try not to get my hopes up too much. However, considering that I wasn’t particularly excited about coming back to the dysfunctional lifestyle that has characterised much of my time here, a swift journey home from the airport as well as power on the whole evening, it was something that definitely cheered me up a bit!
The big news here at the moment is the landing of a cocaine plane, which landed on the apparently unlit runway of Lungi airport and then taxied to a corner of the airport far away from the terminal, a Landrover then rushed to the plane and picked up the people on board and fled. Lots of people were arrested in connection with this and the Minister of Transport and Aviation has now been relieved of his position, from what I’ve heard, it’s suspected (by the Freetown rumour-mill) that he and or his brother were closely involved in this saga. The President has sworn to bring to justice all those responsible for this, although critics are expecting him to try and protect the former Minister. All told, it will probably continue for a long time as each piece of the puzzle is carefully picked over, I hope that if heads high up were involved that they are rolled as this may eventually bring people to have more faith and confidence in the SL legal system as one where justice is done to all.
Labels: power, rain, travel
Mood swings
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 177th 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.
Labels: elections, electricity, money, rain, travel
Pics from travels round SL
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.
Labels: agriculture, Mattru, palm oil, photos, roads, travel
There and back again- a trip up country in Salone
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 24th 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!!
Labels: ambush, bo, bombali, bonthe, car, districts, football, kabala, kambia, Koidu, Koinadogu, Kono, makeni, port loko, roads, rubbish, travel, water
More photos
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).
Labels: ferry, photos, travel
Another week gone...
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.
Labels: electricity, Krio, travel
